122 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



The first effect was to release labour for other purposes. And the 

 industrial countries set out to equip themselves with new means of trans- 

 port, roads and canals, ships and railways, and now motor vehicles and 

 roads, with new buildings for industry and commerce and for the growing 

 population. This led to, and was accompanied by, the development of 

 the engineering industries ; for engineering in all its branches is essentially 

 the tool-making industry, and as such it may claim to be the fundamental 

 industry of civilisation. Its development is the most immediate cause 

 of the many economies of labour in other occupations. 



A second effect was the enormous development of secondary industries, 

 concerned no longer with the satisfaction of urgent primary needs ; and 

 a great amelioration of living conditions. Children have been taken out 

 from the ranks of producing workers and sent to school. Leisure is more 

 abundant and more widespread. Though it is clear that as a community 

 we are still very far from having realised the full possibilities of the tools 

 which science has put into our hands. 



The food-producing industries were, and are, those which require 

 their workers to be spread about the land. The agricultural workers, with 

 their families and dependants, are the basis and the majority of the rural 

 population. But the many workers released from these occupations 

 could be grouped together ; and the early developments of manufacturing 

 industry, in respect to both the organisation of its labour and the use of 

 machines and mechanical power, demanded such a grouping. So manu- 

 facturing industry is essentially an urban occupation, and industrialisation 

 has everywhere been accompanied by urbanisation. However much its 

 towns may be loosened out by the better use of improved transport, this 

 urban character of an industrial population seems likely to persist ; and 

 so every increase in the numbers and importance of the secondary industries 

 will contribute still further to the concentration of more and more of the 

 people in and near to the great conurbations. 



All these developments have been dependent on, and aided by, the 

 rapid improvements in transport which have accompanied them. It is 

 obvious, so obvious as to be usually forgotten, that no town can exist unless 

 it can obtain adequate supplies of food, and that these must be transported 

 to it from the rural areas in which foodstuffs are produced. It is equally 

 true and obvious, that the maximum limit of any population is fixed by 

 the amount of food available to maintain it. Hence I have regarded the 

 conditions of the production of food as the primary determining facts in 

 the numbers and distribution of mankind. The developments of trans- 

 port since the early nineteenth century have made this dependence of 

 urban on rural populations no longer local. But for the artificial and 

 often arbitrary barriers interposed by human, mainly political, restrictions, 

 the resources of the world might be regarded as a common pool for the 

 supply of the needs of its inhabitants. And the developments of transport 

 which justify this assertion have been so decisive that it is possible to ex- 

 press a large part of the problems and trends of population distribution 

 in terms of transport. 



Within the Major Human Regions which we have distinguished there 

 are smaller areas of marked concentration of population. The United 



