of the location of all economic activity in the days when the country was predominantly agricultural, although even then physical barriers to population movement and the historic process of settlement had produced a pattern of economic activity which by no means exactly followed the distribution of land resources. Today the soil remains the resource to which are attached the largest single blocks of population and of economic activity. An examination of map 1, however, and especially a comparison of the distribution of agricultural population shown there with the distribution of crop land shown in chapter III, maps 3-5, indicates that the distribution of agricultural population does not correspond closely to the distribution of valuable agricultural land. Rather, the heaviest concentration of agricultural population is in the southern areas where land resources are less adequate than in the Middle West. A secondary concentration of persons engaged in agriculture appears in the Middle Atlantic and the northeastern areas where intensive use of the land for truck farming, dairying, and poultry raising is induced by the presence of city populations and city markets. In the distribution of agricultural activity there is thus

In contrast to farming which is attacnea to the land, retail trade follows the location of consumers. A comparison of map 3 with the population maps in chapter II (maps 1 and 2) brings out the fact that it is effective consumers, those with purchasing power, who determine the location of trade and other consumer-located activities. The relatively thin employment in retail trade in the South corresponds more closely to the low level of purchasing power in that area shown in chapter II, map 2, than to the high density of population shown in chapter II, map 1.

Manufacturing and wholesale distribution, maps 2. and 4, are not tied directly either to resources or to consumers, but tend to be highly localized in the urban centers, primarily in the northeast section of the country. The degree of such geographical concen

Although southern farms have been supplying workers to northern and southern industries for decades.

UNITED STATES TOTAL 11,758,000 ENGAGED IN MANUFACTURING OR 24.1 PERCENT OF ALL GAINFULLY EMPLOYED

Each dot represents 500 people

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE

NEG. 32262

BUREAU OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS

Source: Census of Manufactures, 1935.

tration is emphasized in map 6 which shows the manufacturing population of the 200 counties in which 75 percent of all manufacturing activity is carried on.

The approximate proportions of persons engaged in the various activities whose location is primarily determined by resources, consumers, or neither, are indicated in table I. Approximately 28 percent were⚫ located close to resources, 48 percent close to consumers, and 24 percent were relatively footloose.

The above series of maps covers 61.6 percent of the persons employed in all types of activity. Satisfactory maps for construction and service could not be obtained. The latter would closely approximate the distribution of population and of purchasing power shown in chapter II, since services must of necessity be carried on close to the consumer.

In maps 7 and 8 the flow of goods from points of production to points of consumption is indicated in terms of the railroad freight traffic passing from one

Source: Patterns of Resource Use, National Resources Committee, tables 1 and 2. For the classification of manufacturing industries, see appendix 8, table I.

EACH DOT EQUALS 250 PERSONS EMPLOYED

PREPARED IN OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL RESOURCES COMMITTEE

Source: Bureau of Mines

freight area to another on a given day. This represents only about a third of all freight shipments, for the bulk of freight, as indicated in table II, passed between points within these areas; motor transport of goods also involved mainly short hauls. Water transport also accounts for important flows, particularly of ore and wheat. The flows shown are between the freight areas indicated by the dotted lines, not between the points where the arrows originate or terminate. Interregional shipments of freight, however, indicate roughly the direction and magnitude of the long-distance flows of goods.

The major elements that enter into the pattern of industrial location are typified in the four examples of manufacturing activity shown in maps 9 to 12. In each of these examples, the principal influence determining location is different. Certain types of industrial activity, as well as the extractive processes, must be located close to the natural resources. Map 9, showing the location of cottonseed oil manufacture, illustrates this type of activity. The processing of products extracted from soil or mines tends in general to take place close to the resources themselves, especially where the product is perishable, e. g., in the canning of fresh

Source: Interstate Commerce Commission, Freight Traffic Report, Dec. 13, 1933.

vegetables and quick freezing of berries and fruits, and where the product is bulky and is reduced in bulk or weight by the fabricating process, e. g., lumber mills which reduce the weight and bulk of timber by the amount of waste and sawdust.3

3 See appendix 16, maps A-15, A-40, A-42. All bulky or heavy products are not necessarily processed close to the resource, for it is the difference in transportability of the unprocessed and processed product which is involved since the processed product has to travel on to the consumer. The tendency to locate automobile assembly plants in consumer centers reflects a situation in which the product becomes more bulky in the process of fabrication and transportation is easier prior to the fabrication of the finished product than it is subsequently.

Source: Census of Manufactures, 1935,