VI. Industrial and Commercial Geography
1. Present Emphasis of Industrial and Commercial Geography.
A. Reasons for that emphasis: practical and educational.
B. Industrial geography deals with the geography underlying the principal human occupations: that is, the reason for the occurrence of industries in given localities.
C. Commercial geography deals with the elementary principles of trade and commerce, and includes a study of geography of great regions of production and demand, with causes. Emphasizes interrelation of commercial areas and reasons for same.
D. Industrial geography should be emphasized in intermediate years; commercial geography in the upper grades.
E. Industrial geography should include the study of groupings of peoples according to occupations and lead up to a knowledge of the simpler reasons therefor. These groups are agriculture, grazing, lumbering, mining, manufacturing, commerce, and “scenic centers.”
F. Geography does not call for study of technique of industries, and should not include special study of details of industries. Futility of studying processes. Geographic side includes the reasons for industry and not the manner of it. Technique is largely result of human invention and is not geographic except possibly where some invention has revolutionized an industry and greatly changed relations of peoples to their geographic surroundings.
G. Geography underlying agriculture, grazing, and lumbering as examples of geographic influences.
H. Commercial geography should be based on knowledge of industrial and physical geography of earlier years, and should be a part of regional geography—not a special topic. It should include study of routes of trade, areas of supply and consumption of chief foods, textiles, manufactured products, raw materials, etc., and relative status of chief commercial nations, and reasons.