power: its significance and needs. 
41 
illustration of centralized industry, establishing itself first in New 
England and migrating later to the Central Atlantic States and thence 
westward, the South displays a regional deployment of industry, 
nowhere intensely focussed, but spread, on the contrary, in diluted 
form over a large area. The contrast is suggestive ; for permanence, 
for national well-being, for the common good, it would appear that 
a balanced economic life in which each section manufactures, in large 
measure, its own products is preferable to a highly intensified manu- 
facture setting up its own interests in opposition to the more extensive 
producing areas. The South presents an example of power supply 
disposed to create a normal development from within, with minimum 
detraction from the opportunities peculiar to other sections . 1 
These are but two illustrations of fields in which power supply is 
a strong economic force. Each section of the country, in point of 
fact, has its own peculiar reflex to this matter. The Pacific coast, 
for instance, has a specialized and acute power problem to meet; 
there the rich oil fields of California launched a period of industrial- 
ism which this source of power can not much longer sustain. The 
industrial life of this whole section is threatened by the impending 
decline of its oil fields. Similarly with the Southwest. The power 
influence, then, is country-wide — here throttling established indus- 
try; there leading to overbalanced growth; elsewhere retarding 
needed developments ; rarely promoting well-rounded economic 
growth; on the whole, making for divergence of economic interest. 
This situation, undesirable as it stands, is bound to grow worse 
if matters are left to untrammelled evolution. Human labor is mo- 
bile; it is becoming standardized, even nationalized; cheap labor 
locally restricted is disappearing. Thus the factor of labor supply 
is losing its distributive effect upon industry. In consequence, 
the presence of mechanical labor (power) will become an even 
greater centralizing force than heretofore ; manufacturing dis- 
tricts will tend to be more strikingly developed than ever. The 
natural tendency, in short, will be toward the building up of cen- 
tralized industry enjoying monopolistic advantages of power sup- 
ply, a condition in itself constituting a restraint in respect to the 
adequate unfoldment of other industries beyond the reach of the 
favored source. 
Such an interplay of economic forces is complex and proclivities 
can not be expected to travel far undeflected by new conditions, but 
whatever the uncertainties of the matter, the power situation merits 
attention in respect to its present untoward bearing on economic 
policy. If a constructive economic policy is desirable for this coun- 
try, and if the conclusion is valid that the power supply represents 
1 The Government project at Muscle Shoals may prove to be a disturbing factor in the 
present distributive unfoldment of southern industry. 
