REDISTEIBUTION OF MANKIND— DIOKSOX. 565 



distribution of mineral deposits, providing metals for machinery, 

 and so on. It may, however, be remarked that the useful metals, 

 such as iron, are widely distributed on or near regions which' are not 

 as a rule unfavorable to agriculture. Nevertheless, the fact remains 

 that while a more uniform distribution is necessary and inevitable in 

 the case of agriculture, many of the conditions of industrial and 

 social life are in favor of concentration; the electrical transmission 

 of energy removes, in whole or in part, only one or two of the cen- 

 tripetal forces. The general result might be an approximation to 

 the conditions occurring in many parts of the monsoon areas — a 

 number of fairly large towns prett}^ evenly distributed over a given 

 agricultural area, and each drawing its main food supplies from the 

 region surrounding it. The position of such towns would be deter- 

 mined much more by industrial conditions, and less b}^ military con- 

 ditions, than in the past (military power being in these days mobile, 

 and not fixed) ; but the result would on a larger scale be of the same 

 type as was developed in the central counties of England, which, 

 as Mackinder has pointed out, are of almost equal size and take the 

 name of the county town. Concentration within the towns would, 

 of course, be less severe than in the early days of manufacturing 

 industry. Each town would require a very elaborate and highly 

 organized system of local transport, touching all points of its agri- 

 cultural area, in addition to lines of communication with other towns 

 and with the great " north-and-south " lines of world-wide commerce, 

 but these outside lines would be relatively of less importance than 

 they are now. We note that the more perfect the system of local 

 transport the less the need for points of intermediate exchange. 

 The village and the local market town will be " sleepy " or decadent 

 as thej^ are now, but for a different reason; the symptoms are at 

 present visible mainly because the country round about such local 

 centers is overwhelmed by the great lines of transport which pass 

 through them ; they will survive for a time through inertia and the 

 ease of foreign investment of capital. The effect of this influence 

 is already apparent since the advent of the " commercial motor," 

 but up to the present it has been more in the direction of distributing 

 from the towns than collecting to them, producing a kind of "sub- 

 urbanization" which throws things still further out of balance. 

 The importance of the road motor in relation to the future develop- 

 ment of the food-producing area is incalculable. It has long been 

 clear that the railway of the type required for the great through 

 lines of fast transport is ill adapted for the detailed work of a small 

 district, and the "light" railway solves little and introduces many 

 complications. The problem of determining the direction and capacity 

 of a system of roads adequate to any particular region is at this stage 

 one of extraordinary difficulty; experiments are exceedingly costly, 



