Excerpt from Principles of Economic GeographyThis book begins with the simplest elements of economic geography and proceeds upward to those that are most complex. Everywhere, however, it goes back not merely to the plants, animals, and minerals that provide the basic commodities and give rise to the basic industries, but further to the physical conditions of earth, air, and water. It explains how these conditions exert a biological effect by limiting or encouraging the growth and development of plants, animals, and even human beings. Then it goes on to show how the combination of physical conditions on the one hand, and biological conditions on the other, influences the occupations, transportation, mode of life, and other activities of all human beings, no matter where they live.In thus going from the simple to the complex three main lines of thought are braided into a single cord. Along one line we survey the world from regions of low productivity, scanty population, and limited occupations to those of high productivity, where a great many people get a living by means of highly diverse and numerous occupa tions. Along another line we rise in the scale of organic life, beginning with plants and the principles which govern their distribution and use, passing next to animals, and then discovering how closely man conforms to the principles which govern the distribution Of the rest of organic life. The third strand in the braided cord of this book consists of human occupations-which tend to be simple in regions of low productivity where man relies on only a few types of resources, but become more and more complex in regions of high productivity as man learns to use not only plants and animals, but also minerals of all sorts.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.