A text-book of commercial geography

Front matter

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Preface

The author has endeavored to limit the contents of this text-book of Commercial Geography to those dominating features of commerce and industry that should be most strongly impressed upon the student. The facts of j^ommerce are treated as the effect of conditions that de- ^termine the quality and the quantity of trade. The effort is made throughout the book to connect cause and effect ; to trace the great and small streams of commerce, and also to show the causes that give them direction and volume. Geographic and many other controlling influences, such as inventions, governmental aids or impediments, and the improvement of products, industrial processes, and means of transportation, are therefore made prominent.

As a large number of articles entering into commerce may more properly be treated in a handbook than a text-book of Commercial Geography, such, for example, as most of the two hundred by-products of petroleum, they are not even mentioned in this volume. The commodities entering most extensively into trade are sufficiently numerous, and attention has been conflned to these commodities because they have a greater educational value in any attempt to elucidate for the classroom the nature of commerce and its underlying principles.

Each product is treated in the chapter relating to the commerce of that country in which the production or manufacture of the commodity is specially prominent. This plan is regarded as preferable to grouping products

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VI under the heads of animal, vegetable, and mineral commodities, which would involve some weeks of rather tedious labor, of an encyclopaedic nature, on the part of the student. Cotton and its natural distribution, for example, gain vital interest if treated in the United States, where cotton is most important, along with the facts relating to its manufacture and the general trade in it ; while in England, Egypt, India, and Eussian Central Asia cotton is treated only in its local application. A full index to all the information in the volume will be found useful for reference.

Comparatively few statistics are included in the text. The statistical tables, at the end of most of the chapters, relate to the subject-matter of the chapter to which they are appended; it is hoped that they will be found full of information, which, in small space, will helpfully supplement the text. No statistics have been used that are not believed to represent normal conditions; for this reason older data, in some instances, have been regarded as preferable to the latest information. No figures relating to some countries have been used ; in Cuba, for example, statistical data relating either to the present time or the period before the insurrection of 1895 fail to represent normal conditions of trade.

The maps have been prepared with a view to illuminating the text, and conveying much information that could not otherwise be so graphically imparted. Most of them are compilations from a considerable number of official and other authoritative map sources, each contributing more or less data required for the purpose of the book. On a few maps, reproduced from foreign sources, the origin of each map is indicated on the margin. The maps of Latin America were collated with very little cartographic material, mainly from data derived from official sources and the consular reports of the United States. The author is specially indebted to maps in the Geographisches Handbuch

PREFACE

Vll zu Andrees Handatlas, Leipzig, the Atlas General of Vidal- Lablache, Paris, the Atlas fiir Handelsschulen by Dr. K. Peucker, Vienna, Lehmann and Petzold’s Atlas, Leipzig, the Scottish Geographical Magazine and other pu^)lications for much data included in the maps of foreign countries ; also, to the Department of Agriculture for the use of valuable illustrative material.

The manuscript and proofs of the book have been critically read by practical and experienced teachers, and their suggestions in regard to logical arrangement and methods of presenting the subject have greatly enhanced the pedagogical value of the volume for practical use in the classroom.

Miss Hedvige de Hutorowicz has prepared the index ; she has also shared with the author from the first the large labor of collecting and collating the data obtained for the book from many countries and in several languages ; he desires to express his appreciation of her assistance.

The authorities constantly consulted during the preparation of the book include the consular reports, statistical publications, maps, and other data published by the departments and bureaus of the United States Government; similar official publications of other leading commercial nations ; the periodicals of many of the geographical societies, and particularly those of the American Geographical Society, the National Geographic Society, the Eoyal Geographical Society, the Scottish Geographical Society, the Imperial Eussian Geographical Society, and the Societies of Commercial Geography in France ; Petermanns Mitteilungen ; Annales de Geographic ; and Le Mouvement Geographique. Among other works that were consulted or read were : Appletons’ Universal Cyclopaedia ; the Encyclopaedia Britannica ; Eeclus’ The Earth and Its Inhabitants ; the Statesman’s Year Book ; the Almanach de Gotha ; Hubner’s Geographisch-Statistische Tabellen ; Sievers’ Allvm gemeine Landeskunde ; the Stieler and Andree atlases ; Depew’s One Hundred Years of American Commerce ; Keports of the Chamber of Commerce, New York City; Cunningham’s Growth of English Industry and Commerce in Modern Times ; The International Geography ; Keltie’s Applied Geography; Mills’ Elementary Commercial Geography and Atlas of Commercial Geography;- Chisholm’s Handbook of Commercial Geography ; Herbertson’s Commercial Geography of the British Isles ; Lyde’s Commercial Geography of the British Empire ; articles in the Forum and North American Eeview; Hann’s Klimatologie ; Dorn’s Die Seehafen des Weltverkehrs ; Kerp’s Methodisches Lehrbuch; Geistbeck’s Der Weltverkehr; Hahn’s Die Haustiere; Wohltmann’s Handbuch der tropischen Agrikultur; Schaufuss’ Die hauptsachlichsten Erzeugnisse der Erde und ihrer Bewohner ; Eitzner’s Deutsches Kolonialhandbuch ; Schmitz’s Die Handelswege und Verkehrsmittel der Gegenwart ; Supan’s Grundziige der physischen Erdkunde ; Liiddecke’s Deutscher Schulatlas ; Duffart’s Geographie Commerciale ; Deville’s Manuel de Geographie Commerciale ; and Bourgoin and Foucart’s Geographie.

Gyrus C. Adams.

The revision for the present edition of this book has embraced all the maps and statistical and other data requiring to be changed to keep the volume fully abreast of commercial and industrial conditions.

C. C. A.

Contents

CHAPTER

I. — The bases of commercial geography ....

II. — Natural conditions affecting commerce