THE- INDUSTRIAL TITAN OF AMERICA 



373 



and leather than any other State repre- 

 sented on our starry flag. 



A VERITABLE TREASURE-HOUSE: 



As might well be imagined, such ver- 

 satility in its manufacturing industries, 

 coupled with seemingly endless natural 

 resources, has created great wealth. 

 Therefore, when it is stated that the es- 

 timated true value of all the property in 

 the Commonwealth amounts to more than 

 fifteen billion dollars, on a pre-war basis 

 of values, the mind fails to grasp its full 

 meaning. But when one stops to consider 

 that this is four billion dollars greater 

 than the aggregate wealth of all New 

 England and only five billion less than 

 the national wealth of all Italy, the sig- 

 nificance of the figure begins to appear. 



With this epitome of the State's role as 

 a component part of a powerful nation, 

 one's interest turns to the elements of its 

 greatness. Politics gave it the familiar 

 sobriquet — Keystone State. Yet even 

 politics is a matter of geography. Six 

 colonies lay to the east and north of 

 Pennsylvania and six to the south, so it 

 was the geographical keystone of the em- 

 bryo nation. The early development of 

 its iron deposits and opening up of its 

 coal mines made it preeminently an in- 

 dustrial keystone. 



By the time its limited supplies of iron 

 ore were exhausted the industries based 

 thereon had become so well established 

 that even the discovery of unprecedented 

 deposits of ore in Michigan and Minne- 

 sota could not break the State's position 

 of leadership in those fields. The Moun- 

 tain of Manufacture refused to go to the 

 Mahomet of Ore, so the Mahomet of 

 Ore came down the Great Lakes to the 

 Mountain of Manufacture. 



Coal and limestone are as essential in 

 the production of iron and steel as is the 

 ore itself, and Pennsylvania has both in 

 as great abundance as Minnesota has 

 iron. Furthermore, heavy manufactur- 

 ing seeks the neighborhoods of rich coal 

 deposits as unerringly as the needle seeks 

 the magnetic north. 



THE VALUE OE A FAVORED LOCATION 



By favor of location as well as by rich- 

 ness of resource, Nature made Pennsyl- 

 vania a great State. Call the roll of the 



forty-eight commonwealths of the Amer- 

 ican Union and another will not be found 

 that shares with the land of Penn the 

 honor of being in navigable connection 

 with three of the nation's water fronts— 

 the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, 

 and the Great Lakes. 



Through the Delaware River the ship- 

 ping of the world may come to the very 

 foot of the chief street of her principal 

 city. Down the Ohio the wealth of her 

 mines may float, through the very heart 

 of the nation, to New Orleans and the 

 Gulf of Mexico. At Erie are touched 

 the broad waters of the unsalted seas, 

 where the raw materials and the finished 

 products of the West and East flow back 

 and forth in the busiest water-borne com- 

 merce in the world. 



With the Delaware River meandering 

 southward in such a way as to give the 

 State two great salients into New Jersey ; 

 bounded on the north by the forty-sec- 

 ond parallel and a bit of Lake Erie ; sep- 

 arated from Maryland and West Vir- 

 ginia by Mason and Dixon's Line, and 

 from Ohio^by on.ejhat runs nearly mid,} 

 way between the'" eightieth an^ eighty-! 

 first meridians, the State is a'paralleloj 

 gram except for the wandering course of 1 

 the Delaware River, the arc of Delaware 

 State, and the jog up to Lake Erie. 



THE ROEE-CAEE OE COUNTIES 



From the Maryland line to the New 

 York line is 158 miles, while from the 

 Ohio line to the deepest salient in the 

 Delaware River sector, between Trenton 

 and Bristol, is 306 miles. The diversity 

 of physical aspect, soil, and resource is 

 great. Southeast of the Blue Ridge 

 Mountains lies one of the finest agricul- 

 tural regions east of the Appalachian 

 chain. Franklin, Adams, Cumberland, 

 York, Lancaster, Lebanon, Berks, Bucks, 

 Montgomery, Chester, and Delaware — 

 was there ever a group of counties with 

 fairer farms than these possess ? 



Then come the eastern mountains and 

 beyond, the wonderful succession of ridge 

 and hollow that embraces the anthracite 

 mines, the slate quarries, the cement rock 

 beds, and so much else of the State's re- 

 sources. Further westward is the great 

 Allegheny upland region, whose deposits 



