power: its significance and needs. 
39 
to be unified into a few nationalities on the strength of social bonds, 
which, with one or two exceptions, have nowhere been dissevered by 
subsequent economic influences. Thus the United States is a nation 
of many parts bound together by social unity, but separated by a 
divergence of economic interests. The development of natural re- 
sources has given rise to a marked differentiation in the quality of 
opportunity opening up to the different sections, while the boun- 
daries of the economic provinces set up in this wise are further 
emphasized by a general conformity to topographic features dis- 
favoring intercommunication. Thus this country is displaying a 
steady drift toward economic variation and specialization among its 
members. 
But national well-being is dependent upon economic unity no less 
than upon social unity. The Civil War, in the last analysis, had its 
origin in discordant economic sectionalism. A military expression 
of domestic discord is outgrown, but civil strife is not the sole mis- 
fortune that may arise from cross interests. Without economic unity 
a definite economic policy is nationally unattainable. And with no 
formulated economic policy, one of the two prime functions of gov- 
ernment is reduced to the rank of partisanship, and industry is left 
to the paralyzing influence of uncertainty as regards the future of 
prospective operations. Thus far the divergent economic interests 
of the various sections of the country have not permitted the estab- 
lishment of a constructive economic policy satisfactory to the Nation 
as a whole . 1 
Elements too numerous to specify enter into this sectionalism of 
interest, but the most conspicuous contributor to the outcome is the 
presence or absence of resources productive of mechanical energy. 
Given a region endowed with an ample supply of coal, for example, 
and all the other elements of industrial activity gather in the manner 
of an accretionary growth. Even the crudest raw materials tend 
to be drawn to the sources of energy in greater measure than is found 
true of the reverse relation. Other attractions, to be sure, such as 
labor supply, markets, and transportation facilities register strong 
claims tending to diffuse and spread the focus of development, but 
industrial concentration never migrates beyond the convenient reach 
of power, which therefore sets the outside bounds to industrial range. 
Thus certain naturally favored sections of the country have come to 
have a predominant interest in manufacture, while other sections in 
the role of producers and consumers for the manufacturing areas 
are led to react to motives and economic interests foreign and even 
1 The lack of a constructive economic policy in the United States is more than a nega- 
tive matter. The deficiency is responsible for such items as a nitrogen problem, a potash 
problem, a manganese prombem, and others, which war conditions have made apparent — 
to cite merely a few examples in the realm of mineral resources. 
