134 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



Carter Goodrich. In a chapter of their Migration and Economic Oppor- 

 tunity entitled, ' The Changing Pattern of Industrial Location,' they 

 divide the areas of the U.S.A. into seven types : (A) principal cities ; (B) 

 satellite cities ; (C) industrial peripheries ; (D) other cities of 100,000 

 population ; (E) peripheries of ' D ' cities ; (F) important industrial 

 counties ; and (G) the rest. The proportion of all ' wage jobs ' and of 

 wage jobs in particular industries are then given for recent years according 

 as they are situated or ' located ' in each of the seven types of area. In 

 the last thirty years the trend of American manufactures as a whole is 

 found to have been away from large cities. In 1899 39*5 per cent, of 

 all manufacturing wage jobs were in large cities ; in 1933 only 33-1 per 

 cent. The types of area that gained in jobs were the suburban industrial 

 areas ' B ' and ' C,' or ' G ' — the country. Goodrich and associates also 

 show what particular industries favour the different types of area. Steel- 

 works, pottery banks, and worsted mills seem particularly to favour 

 suburbia ; flour-milling, clay products and woollen goods the country. 

 Here, undoubtedly, a new line of economic research is opened up ; the 

 problem of the optimum urban-rural distribution of industry in general, 

 and the most efficient incidence of particular industries in that pattern. 



§ 3. The Size of Plants. 



The problem of size arises continually in the policy of industrial 

 organisations when they have to decide whether to take or refuse addi- 

 tional orders and how far, if at all, to extend and develop or, as in flour- 

 milling and shipbuilding, to close down the works. It arises at irregular 

 intervals in an acute form when there is some project of association or 

 combination on foot. The State is now also taking a hand in size policy 

 through its schemes of amalgamation of mines, of limitations by quota, 

 closing down of redundant plant, and marketing boards for agriculture and 

 coal. The bulk of the whole planning programme is in a sense a size 

 policy. The size referred to is sometimes that of the technical factory 

 and plant, sometimes thai of the firm or combine or association that may 

 control one or more plants. Has recent economic research discovered 

 any rational basis for a policy either toward larger or smaller plants or 

 firms ? 



Research into the problem of size of industrial organisations has pro- 

 ceeded further than into that of site. The stage of devising descriptive 

 measurement has been passed and the grounds for supposing one size to 

 be more efficient than another are being explored. To a certain degree 

 mere description of the actual situation is a test of efficiency, since a given 

 situation in sites or in sizes is the result of efficiency in survival from past 

 policies ; and efficiency is tested to a yet greater degree by the description 

 of the trend of changes over a period of years. In comparing sizes of 

 organisations, however, more direct tests have been adopted, such as 

 costs and profits. The evidence of the actual distribution of sizes of 

 plants, and trends in this distribution, will be considered first, beginning 

 with manufacturing plants. 



The actual distribution of sizes of factories, measured by men em- 

 ployed, is now at last obtainable for separate British industries in the 



