GEOGRAPHICAL INFLUENCES IN OHIO 487 



iron products. If physiography is the arbiter, the southern shore of 

 Lake Erie, before many years, will be the center of steel and iron pro- 

 duction in this country. 12 The Pennsylvania center of this industry 

 has a momentum and a capital investment that will enable it to stand 

 out long against the logic of geography. Allied with this conservatism 

 are the artificial combinations which tend always to restrain the devel- 

 opment of new manufacturing centers. But such commercial egoism 

 will in time recognize the greater advantage in conforming to geo- 

 graphic laws. In reference to a particular nation it is probable that 

 ultimate stability will be reached in the industries concerned largely 

 with the inorganic. After the resources of a country have been thor- 

 oughly exploited, equilibrium should come, and be disturbed only 

 by responses made to world-wide influences of commerce. But in this 

 country we are still far from stability in the localization of industries ; 

 for example, the center of shoe manufacturing has steadily progressed 

 westward; flour milling left Baltimore for Bochester, and moved later 

 to Minneapolis whence it promises to shift again before many years; 

 slaughtering and meat packing, once centered at Cincinnati, later at 

 Chicago, probably now centers west of the Mississippi. 



But an almost equally important factor in the shifting of the steel 

 industry is associated with shipping facilities for the finished products. 

 In this respect, northern Ohio has even now an advantage. With the 

 insured growth of New Orleans as a transfer port for marine cargoes a 

 larger relative proportion of finished steel products will go southward. 



The earliest effort in this country to facilitate transportation found 

 expression, as already described, in highway construction. This move- 

 ment was side-tracked when attention was given to canals and later to 

 railroads. These larger needs, involving the final and longest haul for 

 agricultural products, at least, so monopolized thought that we forgot 

 the first step in the route between the farmer and consumer. Early last 

 century Ohio was given an object lesson in highway construction when 

 the national road from Wheeling, W. Va., crossed the central part of 

 the state. Ohio should have excellent roadways. The state now ranks 

 first in the annual production of road-making limestone. This fact 

 should exert an important influence in the future agricultural progress 

 of the state. 



The pasture lands of Ohio have always been important and even at 

 the present time they constitute about one third of the area of the tilled 

 lands. The eastern and southeastern parts of the state, the portion 

 encompassed by the Pennsylvanian formations, contain relatively a 

 larger amount of pasture lands. For several decades Ohio was the 



12 W. M. Gregory, " The Industries of Cleveland, Ohio," Journal of Geog- 

 raphy, Vol. VI. (1908), pp. 183-87, gives data on the magnitude of the steel 

 industry at this one lake port. 



