MONTANA INDUSTRIAL POSSIBILITIES 



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In Variety, Quantity and Quality of Ran', Process and Fuel Materials, Montana 



Is Excelled by hlo State — Trend Toivard Decentralization of Production 



and Rapid Qrowth of Western Markets Encourage Manufacturing. 



A survey of the many tremendous resources of Montana, which are adapted 

 above those of most states to industrial blending, impels the conclusion that with 

 the growing expansion of the oriental marlvets and the upbuilding of the Pacific 

 coast, the time is not distant when Montana will be an industrial center of the 

 first magnitude. The western and oriental markets will be big enough to absorb 

 products manufactured in ^Montana from Montana materials sooner than is gener- 

 filly realized. One-fifth of the total exports of this country in 1922 were 

 to the orient. California and Washington competed to an appreciable 

 extent for the first time in 1922 with Chicago for Montana livestocli. Coast com- 

 petition with Minneapolis for Montana wheat for the first time was generally 

 felt in 1922. 



Industry in Montana is still almost wholly in the primary stage. For the 



most part, a few of the state's resources have been exploited for the extraction of 



raw materials that have been transported long distances, there 



In Exploitative to be converted into manufactured products. There has been 



or some secondary industrial development in Montana, such as 



Primary Stage plants for making grain into flour and cereal stuffs, lumber 



into mill products, livestock into meat products, milk and 



cream into butter and cheese, beets into sugar, gypsum and limestone into 



cement and plaster, clay into ))rick, tiie and pipe, copper ore into copper rods and 



wire, and crops of orchards and farms into canned products of commerce. But 



many other primary resources of the state have been ignored, and practically no 



attention has been given innumei-able other resources of chief importance to 



secondary industries in the fabrication of raw materials. 



The dominant fact about Montana is that it is not a single-industry, but a 

 potentially multiple-industry state. ]\Iany states have large agricultural areas, 

 many have coal and water-power, many have luumber, oil, copper, iron, gold, 

 silver and zinc and a score of non-metal minerals, that are essential to industry, 

 but in the variety, quantity and quality of these resources no state excels and few 

 possess what Montana has. 



Consider the significance to Montana's industrial future of these facts: 

 One-tenth of the potential minimum water-power of the United States is in Mon- 

 tana ; its coal fields, covering 39,532 square miles with an esti- 

 Vast Multiple mated available supply of 381 billion tons, are exceeded by those of 

 Industry only two other states, the coal of which is of lower grade ; its 

 Resources natural gas fields constitute one of the largest reserves of this 

 resource in the United States; its rapidly-growing petroleum 

 production seems destined to place it among the leaders ; in silver, manganese and 

 precious stones it stands first ; in copper and zinc third. Its manganese ores are 

 the largest known reserves in the country. Its phosphate belongs to an inter- 



