ELECTRIC POWER DISTRIBUTION 347 



The distribution of manufactures in our own or any other 

 country would be a most curious and interesting subject 

 of study. The first thing to stand out conspicuously in the 

 investigation would be the gradual tendency toward concen- 

 tration in the larger cities, and the gradual recession of manu- 

 factures outside them. Certain sections of the country are 

 full of decaying communities, once active, but from which 

 the chief industries have been withdrawn. If investigation 

 disclosed the fact that certain centers of manufactures had 

 become such through the pre-eminent natural advantages, 

 such a condition would be easily explained; but in fact, 

 natural advantages have comparatively little to do with the 

 matter. It is common enough to find large manufacturing 

 plants of a particular kind concentrated in a place that is 

 only moderately good as a working point. Some one shrewdly 

 managed factory has made a success there, and has gathered 

 others about it till by sheer force of output and combination 

 of interests they have frozen out the scattered factories with 

 small capital. Taking into account the steady tendency of 

 population to move toward the cities for various causes, the 

 outlook for local enterprises seems far from good. In fact, 

 the situation is fraught with the gravest dangers to the com- 

 munity at large. A country consisting mainly of large cities 

 with merely incidental rural population has taken a long 

 step toward final disintegration. Moreover, even if actual 

 disintegration is not eminent, there exists the curious and 

 anomalous condition of a community in which the transpor- 

 tation and distribution of commodities is the predominant 

 element — in which producer and consumer stand at the ends 

 of a long chain of intermediaries. It is bad enough in this 

 respect, even at present, but every step toward further con- 

 centration of industry and population makes it worse. No 

 country in which the productive forces are steadily being 

 subordinated to an intricate (and, upon the whole, wasteful) 

 mechanism of distribution can long remain prosperous. 



It is the recognition of this general principle that is the 

 basis of the present agitation for regulation of railway rates 

 and of similar movements. 



