Commercial geography

Front matter

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Contents

SOME FIRST PRINCIPLES ..... : EXAMPLES OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS: (1) THE CEREALS .

EXAMPLES OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS: (2) LUXURIES AND TOW AIMALERIALS i eh eo ik

NATURAL PRODUCTS OF ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE ORIGIN .....

Chapter I

CoMMERCE, as we all know, means the interchange of commodities, and at first sight it may not be perfectly apparent what geography has to do with such interchange.

~ But a moment’s reflection will convince us that before it can take place there must be a, difference in the productions of the regions’ which are trading with one another. If we could imagine a large area of the earth’s. surface perfectly uniform in relief, in climate, in soil, in the occupations of its inhabitants, in its relations to surrounding areas, then obviously within such a region all forms of trade would be impossible; for there could be nothing to serve as a basis of exchange. In other words, commerce depends ultimately upon differences in the products of the various parts of the earth’s surface, differences which find their explanation in geographical facts. Let us take a very simple illustration. In 7 eI the north of England the more or less barren Pennine upland separates from one another two lower areas in which fertile plains and river valleys occur. The upland is made of old, hard rocks, often limestones; over these the soil is always thin, sometimes locally absent as in the limestone “deserts” of Ingleborough; surface water is often deficient in amount, owing to the presence of underground streams; the climate is relatively extreme. The net result of these geographical conditions is that the upland area is partly unutilised, partly pastoral, and yields also in certain localities minerals, notably lead, but not coal.

On the other hand the lowlands which bound the upland are sometimes rich in coal, sometimes have stretches of fertile soil, and are thus adapted in places for industry, elsewhere for agriculture. Throughout the extent of the central upland, both to the east and to the west, towns, villages and hamlets, which are virtually absent on the central — hills, tend to occur at the margin, where lowland meets upland. Some of these settlements have developed into large industrial towns, owing to the exploitation of the adjacent coalbeds; others are decaying agricultural villages. All were originally simple examples of the market town or village.

We may take as a type the little town of Appleby on the Eden. To this town on market days the inhabitants of the upland farms bring their produce, chiefly cheese, butter, eggs, poultry, with, at special times, the wool of their flocks and live stock. In the town they exchange these, virtually if not actually, for the flour, the fruit, the vegetables which result from the agriculture of the plain, the simple forms of implements which are locally produced, the more com- ~~ plicated industrial products of more distant ~ regions, and now, though not in earlier days, for luxuries brought from afar. The town, which is the market, owes its origin to the junction of plain and upland; exchange is possible here, first because of the difference in the products of the two regions, and second because no unsurmountable transport difficulties intervene to prevent it.

Thus in this simple case the three elements which form the basis upon which commercial geography is built are all present. We have first the difference in the products of two adjacent regions with which exchange originates; second, the physical possibility , | i of communication between the two; third, (e) the definite spot at which interchange takes place, that is the market. Commodities; | transport ; market, as involving the actual process of exchange — these are the three fundamental conceptions upon which commercial geography is based.

The commodities produced in the different parts of the earth’s surface, the road by which these may be conveyed —these are relatively simple notions. Somewhat more complex is the third element, that actual process of exchange which we visualise as the market. The example chosen above has the disadvantage that the region forms part of a country which has been long civilised.

If we trace the fortunes of the town of Appleby backward through the centuries, we find that the darkness deepens before we come to a period when exchange did not exist. Thus the illustration tells us little of the origin of the impulse which first led men to trade.- By its very familiarity also it tends to obscure the fact that a certain: A) measure of civilisation is necessary before « steady interchange can go on, and further | that trade, once established, tends to develop \ t) civilisation. Let us, therefore, take another illustration which may help to make this point clearer.

The forest tribes of equatorial Africa, no-« tably the Congo pygmies, exhibit a strong — and still largely unsatisfied — desire for salt and for iron and iron objects. Such products are obtainable in regions not far off, as the modern world counts space, and not separated from the forest area by any insuperable obstacle. But though the pygmies show keenness to satisfy their desire, within the limits set by their incapacity for sustained effort in any direction, they have not sufficient steadfastness of purpose to strive continuously to overcome the difhculties involved, as the navigators of fifteenth-century Europe strove ceaselessly to overcome the far greater difficulties which stood between them and the pepper and spices of the East.

Once again, the pygmies up to, apparently, a very recent period, found in the forest all that they needed. Their hunting gave them animal food, the fruits, nuts, and roots of the forest supplied the necessary vegetable matter. But they are now beginning to find that the bananas and sweet potatoes, grown by the agricultural tribes on the outskirts of

12 COMMERCIAL GHOGRAPHY the forest, are far more satisfying than the forest produce, and these agricultural tribes _ in their turn are eager for their surplus meat, and, under European influence, very eager for their ivory. Thus there exist the beginnings, the unsystematised beginnings, of a trade between the agriculturists and the pygmies, a trade which gives to each luxuries which have not as yet become necessities. Such a trade is not likely to reach great importance, for neither party can in the general case produce any considerable surplus for trade. The illustration may serve to show

“ that the commercial geographer cannot limit himself to the three prime conceptions of commodities, transport and exchange in the limited sense. The extent to which different human groups are organised, their capacity for production, their powers of concentration, their social and industrial traditions, are all of great importance, and must come within his survey.

It is this fact which redeems the subject .

from pettiness, and makes it worthy of the attention of the student and the philosopher. The cynic may say that it is an ignoble thought that the discovery of America, with all its myriad consequences to the human race, came about fundamentally through the desire of the European for cheap pepper. But a saner thinker would point out that it matters little what is the lure which leads man on in the first instance. Whatever the motives with which he began, in the end he discovered not only America but within himself the power — absent apparently in the ape, latent in the savage and the young child among civilised people — of carrying through a set purpose despite all difficulties in the way. Man has made trade, but trade has also helped to make him more truly man, and thus cannot be neglected by the student of humanity.

Again, if the significance of the last example has been clearly grasped, one main cause of the origin of trade will be obvious. It is clear that it tends to originate in luxuries, purchased by means of a local surplus of necessities. The pygmy could not live unless the forest supplied all his needs, and it must always be so with primitive peoples. To take another illustration —we read that the great king Solomon obtained from Hiram of Tyre “ cedar trees out of Lebanon,” and also ‘‘ great stones, costly stones, and hewed stones, to lay the foundations of the house,’

and he gave in return “twenty thousand measures of wheat, for food to his household, and twenty measures of pure oil.” In other words, Solomon’s greatness consisted in the fact that his people were able to produce a surplus of food stuffs after their own needs were satisfied, and with this surplus luxuries, on a previously unknown scale, could be bought from an adjacent region.

In such a fashion trade must always begin, but we should note that its effect, when well established, is to smooth out these very inequalities to which it owed its first origin. The negro on the borders of the African forest is largely, if not exclusively, vegetarian, and lives upon the products of his plantations. The pygmy lives upon the natural yield of the forest. When interchange begins the diet of the two tends to approximate. While Solomon lives, and his country prospers, gold is nothing ‘accounted for, though there was none in his dominions, and those ships which brought “gold and silver, ivory, apes and peacocks,” took back, we may be sure, such loads of wheat and pure oil, that they also were as naught in the countries with which the great king traded.

The same thing happens, but to a much greater degree, in modern times. As commerce develops the material basis of life tends more and more to approximate in all ~ the trading countries, and what were once luxuries speedily became necessities. Perhaps this may seem a gloomy thought, and raise visions of a world where life has everywhere lost relation to local conditions, where everyone wear similar cotton clothes, eats bread made of American wheat, and meat from the world’s great savannas, uses similar machines, and lives in the same kind of house. But we have to remember that the process of smoothing out natural inequalities is never more than partial, local conditions continuing to exert their influence, and, especially, that civilised man is enormously affected by his social and literary traditions, which though they originate as the result of a special environment, have yet great powers of survival under changed surroundings.

With these preliminary considerations in mind we may now proceed to discuss the exact: meaning of the term commercial geography, and the best methods of studying the subject. In the volume of this series

entitled Modern Geography, it was stated

that the aim of the general subject was to discuss the surface relief of the earth, and the influence which this relief has upon the distribution of other phenomena, especially upon the life of man./ In other words scientific geography begins with the physical aspect of the surface of the earth, but keeps always in view the effect of the conditions described upon the life of man. That special branch of the general subject which we call commercial geography, on the other hand, begins with one aspect of man’s activities, the economic one, and studies this in relation to local conditions and place relations. The general subject begins with the earth and leads upwards to man; the sub-division discusses the relation between man’s commercial activities and earth form and structure.

As we have seen, the first effect of local conditions on commerce is that they lead to local differences in production. The in-

_ , fluence of local relief, structure, and climate _|/ may be direct. Thus certain shallow seas "are rich in food fishes, while deep seas are usually poor in these; mountain slopes up _% \to @ certain elevation are generally forest- ~ covered, while above this level there are no _ ©\ trees; useful minerals tend to occur in certain ~ special types of rocks, Ta particular

~~ conditions of climate, as nitrate of soda in deserts. In other cases the influence of the natural conditions acts, not directly, but through man. For example, the potate plant arose in nature in response to a particular set of conditions of climate and relief, but owing to man’s skill and ingenuity it can be grown with success in regions far removed,”

both in space and character, from those in which it occurred originally. Generally we.

shall find, with certain exceptions, of which minerals, marine products and the yield of i)

forests are the most important, that the — commodities upon which world trade depends ~_.

are due rather to man’s activities than directly to the natural conditions. Thus it is the effect of these conditions upon man’s activities which is the most important point for us.

Once again, local conditions and place relations have very great influence upon the question of transport. Water carriage is cheaper than land carriage; constant winds are, or have been, of much value in driving certain types of vessels; moving water affords a direct means of transport: such facts as these have exerted great influence upon industrial development, especially ix ai, the period before the great development of machinery. Their result is to make the distribution of land and water, the nature of the water surfaces, the relief of the land, supremely important in commercial geography.

The effect of relief and its consequences upon the actual process of exchange is far less obvious, but, on the other hand, the position of the market, as the point at which interchange takes place, is greatly affected by the physical conditions.

But if in this way the production of commodities, their transport, and the site of the market are all influenced by physical conditions, it would seem as if, to be logical, our study of commercial geography should begin with the general survey of the physical geography of the earth. Such a course is, however, never adopted in books on the subject, and that for reasons partly of convenience, and partly of method. In the first place we have to note that whole areas of the earth’s surface are of no practical importance to the commercial geographer, even though their theoretical interest may be very great. The wast ice-covered wastes near the Poles have

< for him only the negative interest that lines of transport tend to avoid them. The dark, chill ocean depths, with their strange inhabitants and their beds of ooze, only affect him because the cables which link together the commercial countries may have to be laid across their floor. The lofty mountain chains, which to the geographer proper present so many problems of profound interest, are for the economist but obstacles tending to interfere with commerce, obstacles to be overcome or avoided.

Further, for a very practical reason, political divisions count for more in commercial geography than physical ones. There is great similarity in relief, in climate, in productions, between parts of the plains of the United States and the adjacent plains of Canada. Thus the physical geographer would be tempted to classify the two together. But the economist knows that the illogically straight boundary-line on the political map means that statistics in regard to one part of the plains must be looked for in one set of publications, and in regard to the other section in a set published in a different town, and arranged in a different fashion. Naturally therefore for him geographical logic has to yield place to practical convenience. Thus

~ po Rak it is usual to find at least the greater part of books on commercial geography devoted to a consideration of the countries of the world, classified according to political divisions.

On the other hand, although the fact that only certain parts of the earth are of importance in commercial geography make it impossible to discuss its relief as a whole in books devoted to the subject, yet the cireumstance that almost all man’s activities are more or less affected by climate, makes it of great economic significance. Thus most commercial geographers, abandoning the dictates of strict logic, give in their books a longer or shorter treatment of climate, considered purely from the physical geographer’s standpoint. The space available here renders all such excursions impossible; the particular one is the less necessary as the essential facts will be found in the late Prof. H. N. Diekson’s companion volume on Climate and Weather.

Limits of space render it impossible to consider in detail here even the chief commercial countries of the world. What it is proposed to do is to study first of all some typical commodities, in relation to the geographical conditions under which they are produced. Next we shall discuss the question of transport, that is the road along which the commodities are conveyed, and the methods by which the movement is effected. Finally, we shall take one or two representative communities to illustrate the conditions under which the production and exchange of commodities actually occur.

This arrangement necessitates in the first place some form of classification of commodities, for a mere dictionary list would avail us little. For our purpose the following simple arrangement may suffice: —

(1) Certain commodities owe their origin to causes wholly beyond man’s control, and are independent of the ordinary process of growth and reproduction. To these the term minerals in the wide sense is applied. As thus used the word not only includes water and ice, as it does also for the geologist, but also what the geologist calls rocks, a term which, it will be remembered, includes clay and sand, as well as the rocks of ordinary speech. Such products cannot be renewed when once exhausted. In commercial geography, in the general case, the conditions under which the minerals occur is of as much importance as the mere fact of their occurrence.

(2) Other products are due to the ordinary process of growth and reproduction, uncontrolled by man. Here are included forest products, fishery products, furs of wild animals, and so on. It has been found by experience that natural processes of reproduction are incapable of keeping pace with man’s destructiveness, so that such “natural” commodities are always tending to diminish in amount, and to be replaced in the markets of the world by those due to man’s activities. Thus the primeval forest yields place to woodland; wild rubber is replaced by plantation rubber; fur-bearing animals are bred m captivity.

(8) More important than either of the — above are the animal and vegetable products due to natural processes of reproduction, controlled and aided by man. Thus a very large proportion of the commodities which enter into world trade are due to the industries of agriculture and stock-rearing.

(4) Finally raw material formed in any one of the three foregoing ways may be utilised by man to produce manufactured articles, whose value lies in the skill and ingenuity with which they are constructed, or their cheapness as compared with natural products, as in such cases as artificial silk or synthetic dyes.

We shall begin our general survey of the commodities of commerce by a consideration of some of the products of agriculture and stock-rearing, for this will enable us to study the more striking effects of the control exercised on man’s activities by climate and relief. Before doing this one further word may be added on products in their relation to trade. We have said that trade always tends to begin with articles which are luxuries to the recipient. Not till much later do we reach the stage where trade is carried on in necessities. But we should perhaps add that it is one of man’s peculiarities that almost no human group is totally without luxuries.

Fundamentally it may be said that man’s prime needs are food, shelter, generally clothing in some form, fuel, tools and implements or weapons. But on the other hand we have to remember that not at every moment of his existence does he want all of these; there are moments when none is essential. It is a paradox, but not without its importance that his demand for luxuries is at times more clamant than that for necessities. The striving after the satisfaction which luxuries bring has, we may repeat, initiated trade, and has also initiated and maintained civilisation.

But we must be careful not to exaggerate. Trade, from one point of view, originates in certain distinctively human attributes, and tends to increase as human groups become ‘more stable and more complex. On the other hand it is obvious that we cannot measure civilisation by volume of trade. It could hardly be maintained that, on the whole, Chicago, a great trading town, is more civilised than was ancient Athens. Trade tends to develop with civilisation, but its volume depends not directly upon the degree of civilisation but upon human capacity to increase production, and to overcome the difficulties of transport. The enormous development of commerce which the world has seen in the last hundred years has been due first to increased production, partly owing to the tapping of the resources of hitherto almost unutilised lands, and partly owing to improved methods, especially the elaboration of machinery and the use of the energy of steam or of electric power to drive it. It has also been due perhaps to an even greater degree, to the vast improvement in modes of transport, without which increased production would tend merely to glut the local market. It is to these two subjects that we must devote most space here, and we may close this chapter by repeating that while the impulse which starts trade is the desire for luxuries, it can only be maintained where a local sur- _ plus can 4 !tontinuously pr roduced, and as continuously conveyed eyed to regions having need of it.

Chapter II Examples Of Agricultural Products (1) The Cereals

It was pointed out in the previous chapter that the cultivation of plants is one great source of the commodities which are the object of world trade. Now, fundamentally, the fact that agriculture usually leaves a surplus for trade after the needs of the producer are satisfied is due to the power which the green plant possesses of building up living matter, if supplied with air, sunshine, water and certain mineral salts. (See Prof. T. B. Farmer’s Plant Life in this Library.) As is well-known, the plant is a chemical laboratory in which, by means of the energy of sunlight, simple and cheap substances, of some of which the supply is unlimited, are built up into complex and more costly ones. This is true alike of the cultivated and the wild plant, but the former is placed under specially favourable conditions by man, is artificially protected in the struggle for existence, and in consequence shows the organism’s power of growth and reproduction in a more highly developed degree than the wild product.

While this is true, however, we have to remember that it is only under certain special conditions that cultivated plants flourish to such an extent as to yield a large surplus when the demands of the cultivator and his household have been satisfied, and it is only when they do this that an extensive trade in agricultural produce can arise. Further, we have to realise that over considerable parts of the globe, including among them the most important agricultural areas, the climatic conditions suitable for plant growth and reproduction only exist during a part of the year. Thus in many climates the summer plenty has to be stored to meet the dearth of winter. In consequence the yield of the land must keep the cultivator not only during the working period, but also during the time when little work is possible; only after this has been done can he have a surplus for export. As his most productive crops may not be directly capable of storage, or may fail to meet all his demands, the question of the possibility ‘of exchange very greatly affects his capacity for great seasonal over-production. In point of fact the entrance of agricultural produce into the world market on the present gigantic scale is a phenomenon of recent development, and is directly dependent upon recent improvements in means of communication and methods of preservation.

The older type of agriculture was that which tended to produce all that was necessary for the sustenance of the farmer and his household: throughout the year, and left relatively small amounts of surplus products available for trade. The newer type tends to specialise on crops for which the local conditions are particularly favourable, and to dispose of practically the whole yield, which thus forms what is called a money crop. Thus what we may describe as industrialised agriculture tends to be enormously productive, but can only be carried on when access to a market is easy. It is therefore far from universal at the present day, even in the civilised parts of the world. At the same time its development has had a very marked reflex effect on various parts of the civilised world, which, owing to unfavourable conditions of surface, soil or climate, or the difhculty of access to markets, are unable to apply industrial methods. The cultivators in such regions, when they occur in crowded parts of the western world, as we shall see, are almost everywhere constrained either to give up tillage, or to take advantage of peculiar local conditions, of a tradition of skill and care, or of some other special circumstance to produce relatively small amounts of costly commodities, demanding much skilled labour, in contrast to the great bulk of cheaper ones produced by the regions where industrial agriculture reigns.

‘Thus we reach the conception of two main kinds of agriculture yielding products which enter into trade in the civilised — or perhaps we should say the commercialised — world, which means for the economic geographer the parts of the world in which transport is cheap and well-organised. ‘These two kinds are: (1) Industrial agriculture, which with the help of animals and machinery produces vast amounts of cheap and bulky commodities, and (2) Intensive agriculture, which needs trained cultivators and yields much smaller amounts of costly products. The wheat of the inland plains of Canada and the United

States; the wine, olive oil, fruits, and silk (as resulting from the growth of the ‘mulberry ) of the Mediterranean area, are typical products in the two cases.

It is not of course intended to maintain that the old self-sufficing type of agriculture has ceased to exist, even within the confines of the civilised world in its narrowest sense. There are groups and communities here and there still producing as few money crops as, for example, the farmer in Scotland did a hundred or more years ago. But the point is that such individuals or groups scarcely concern the commercial geographer at all, for their surplus is at best so insignificant that it does not count in the trade of the world.

If we extend our survey beyond the confines of the civilised world, we find that where means of transport are absent or very poor the cultivator tends again to be almost entirely self-supporting, and to have no considerable surplus for exchange, so that we may pass him by. Where, however, lines of communication are present, even in relatively unspecialised form, and the conditions are favourable to plant growth, then another form of agriculture tends to arise. This is (3) the Plantation System, in which commercial products are grown on the large scale with the aid of cheap labour under skilled supervision. Since the cold parts of the earth’s surface are usually unsuited for agriculture, and the temperate regions are generally devoted to the kinds already mentioned, there is a tendency for the plantation system to be limited to warm or tropical regions, though there is often an intermediate tract within which the methods of industrial agriculture and of the plantation system seem almost equally applicable, a fact well illustrated in the Southern United States. As a rule the plantation system tends to produce luxuries and minor articles of food, such as tea (in some cases), coffee, cocoa, bananas, and so forth, or the raw materials for manufacture, e.g. cotton and rubber, all on the large scale. It is thus contrasted both with Industrial Agriculture, which in itself and owing to its association with domesticated animals tends to produce bulky and cheap food products, such as cereals and meat, and with intensive agriculture which, though it generally produces luxuries, yields those which demand care and skill, and - cannot therefore be produced in large amount. Tea is rather an interesting example of a product which has to a considerable extent been taken over by the plantation system from the Japanese and Chinese, who originally carried it on intensively. |

The more important of the products of agriculture which enter into commerce are produced in one or other of the three ways which we have illustrated, and there are many curious instances, in addition to that just mentioned, of a commercial product passing from one class to another. Thus the issue of the conflict between cane sugar, produced in warm or hot climates by cheap, coloured labour, and beet sugar, produced in temperate ones by highly industrialised methods, is still uncertain, and has been rendered more so by the effects of the war. The issue in this case is complicated by the fact that machinery and modern scientific methods are being utilised for the production of sugar-cane in parts of the tropics. There is of course no reason to think that cheap labour will be permanently preferred in tropical regions to the use of machinery, and there is much to lead us to believe that the causes which have raised the price of labour in the temperate regions will also act, if more slowly, in tropical regions. At the same time the simple classification given may aid us in considering briefly some of the commercial products of agriculture in their relation to modes of land utilisation.