RESOURCES OF SOUTHERN ALABAMA 



INTRODUCTION 



VER since the dawn of history men have been migrat- 

 ing from place to place with the hope of bettering 

 their living conditions in one way or another. In 

 the earliest stages they may have known little or 

 nothing of the regions toward which they were traveling, 

 but simply wanted to get away somewhere from overcrowd- 

 ing or persecution. Later some who discovered promising 

 sites in distant lands returned to impart the news to friends 

 and relatives and invite them to share the new discovery. 

 When postal service became established the pioneer settlers 

 could write back to the folks at home without going all the 

 way back themselves. At the present time home-seekers 

 depend mainly on books, pamphlets, periodicals, etc., for 

 information about distant regions that they have never seen, 

 and this gives them a much wider choice than the more 

 primitive means of communication just mentioned. 



In an area with absolutely equal advantages of soil, cli- 

 mate, etc., throughout, the population would at first tend to 

 concentrate in the more accessible portions, and would grad- 

 ually spread from thickly to thinly settled areas until it be- 

 came uniformly distributed. The earliest settlements in 

 what is now the United States were along the Atlantic coast, 

 because that was most accessible from Europe, and the 

 movement of the center of population has always been west- 

 ward, as the more remote portions gradually filled up. (It 

 is thought, however, that this year's census will show the 

 westward movement to have halted, indicating that a tem- 

 porary equilibrium has been reached.) 



FACTORS INFLUENCING DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION. 



But every state or larger area exhibits considerable 

 geographical diversity, and the distribution of the inhabit- 

 ants tends to adjust itself to opportunities. A century or 

 two ago, when agriculture was by far the most important 

 industry, the density of population on the Atlantic slope 

 was pretty closely correlated with soil fertility, except for 



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