THE INDUSTRIAL TITAN OF AMERICA 



399 



cars and perhaps a hundred thousand 

 locomotives with this life - protecting 

 boon. Another of the Westinghouse 

 group makes the switch and signal equip- 

 ment now in use on roadbed mileage 

 sufficient to establish a ten-track line en- 

 tirely around the earth. Still another is 

 the giant electric machine company that 

 creates everything electrical, from a sad- 

 iron to a dynamo of ten thousand horse- 

 power. 



A STATE OVERFLOWING WITH CITIES 



No State in the American Union pos- 

 sesses so many thriving urban communi- 

 ties as Pennsylvania. With Philadelphia 

 not far removed from the two-million 

 mark in population, and Pittsburgh driv- 

 ing upward to the three-quarters of a 

 million, both the east and west sections 

 of the Commonwealth are possessors 

 of industrial communities of first rank in 

 the Western World. But as these two 

 cities will later be the subjects of articles 

 to appear in the "Cities of the Nation"' 

 series in The Geographic (see "New 

 York — Metropolis of Mankind.'" in the 

 July, 1918, number, and "Chicago Today 

 and Tomorrow," in the January. 19 19. 

 number'), further reference will not be 

 made to them here. 



In addition to these, the State has two 

 other cities that have passed the hundred 

 thousand line, three that are in the sev- 

 enty-thousand class, and two in the sixty- 

 thousand class. It also has three with 

 fifty-odd thousand people, the same num- 

 ber with forty-odd thousand, and a like 

 number with thirty-odd thousand. Four- 

 teen cities have passed their teens and 

 have not reached their thirties, and thirty 

 or more have outgrown four figures, but 

 have not yet passed out of their teens. 



SCRAXTOX. A HFVE OF INDUSTRY 



Starting down the list after the Quaker 

 City and the Smoky City, one comes to 

 Scranton, situated in the heart of the an- 

 thracite region, in Lackawanna County. 



Imagine buying power on the basis of 

 two dollars a. ton for buckwheat anthra- 

 cite delivered at your furnace-room door. 

 Fancy twenty million tons of black dia- 

 monds coming up out of the earth in one 

 community every twelve months. Picture 

 a people so progressive that they raise a 



community fund of a million dollars to 

 be used in aiding responsible industries 

 to expand. That's Scranton. and why it 

 is growing at such a rapid rate. 



One factory turns out three million 

 buttons a day. One-third of the nation's 

 raw silk is carded and spooled in its met- 

 ropolitan district. More than half a mil- 

 lion people live within twenty miles of 

 its court-house. Bees in a hive in the 

 springtime were never busier than the 

 hustling, bustling, go-ahead folk of the 

 Electric City. 



Almost at Scranton's very doors are 

 the famous Pocono Hills, the Delaware 

 Water Gap. and the lakes of southern 

 New York. A city of homes, public 

 health is almost an obsession with its 

 people, and a death rate of only thirteen 

 per thousand is the result. 



A CITY OF HOSIERY AXD HARDWARE 



Next in order of size comes Reading, 

 the nation's second city in the production 

 of hosiery and builders' hardware. With 

 the anthracite region at its back door and 

 the splendid farming communities of 

 southeastern Pennsylvania to the right 

 and the left and in front of it, the city is 

 keeping pace with its larger neighbors in 

 a way out of proportion to its size. It 

 has more than five hundred manufactur- 

 ing plants, which make commodities 

 ranging from adding machines and rail- 

 road engines to spectacles and art glass. 

 For the diversity of its manufactures, the 

 prosperity of its people, the advantages 

 of its location, and the promise" of its 

 future. Reading is an urban community 

 that iustifies the pride of its citizens. 



AYilkes-Barre. built upon the beautiful 

 banks of the Susquehanna, calls itself the 

 "Diamond City."' More than three hun- 

 dred thousand people live within a radius 

 of ten miles of its central square. The 

 production of anthracite coal in Luzerne 

 County, of which it is the court-house 

 town, is worth more than the gold pro- 

 duction of the L nited States. Alaska in- 

 cluded. In the beauty of its buildings. 

 the character of its citizenry, the extent 

 of its civic development, the strength of 

 its financial resources, and the progres- 

 siveness of its policies, the city can stand 

 comparison with any urban community 

 of like size anvwhere. 



