The new air world

by Willis L. Moore

From the most favorable climatic area in the middle latitudes—and the entire world possesses none more favorable or of greater extent than that possessed by the United States—the loss of health and strength due to the enervating effects of heat, high humidity, and insufficient temperature oscillations increases as one goes toward the equator. In Florida and the southern third of the Gulf States there is but one favorable period, the short winter. The enervating conditions still further are manifest as one proceeds farther southward.

In the “Principles of Human Geography”, it is stated that “in Central France and Southern Germany the seasonal variations in health and strength are much the same as in Boston, New York, Cleveland, and Detroit. That is, people are most healthy and strong in October and early November and again in May and early June, while they are weakest and most subject to disease in January, February, and early March, and again in July and August. Farther north, for example, in Scotland, Scandinavia, and Finland, the summer is the best time of the whole year and the winter the worst. To the south, on the contrary, in Italy, Spain, and Greece, the harmful effect of the winter decreases and that of summer increases, until finally on the south side of the Mediterranean the winter is much the best time of the whole year, while the long summer greatly diminishes the people’s efficiency and increases disease and death.”

As the highest mental activity is coincident with temperatures lower than those that induce the greatest physical energy, it naturally follows that in the Ohio Valley, southern New England, and the Middle Atlantic States the mental worker is at his maximum in November instead of October, and April instead of May.

Chart 17.—Map of Climatic Energy. (Huntington and Cushing.)

[Chart 17] shows how human energy would be distributed over the earth if it depended on climate alone. It is remarkable how almost exactly it agrees with what we know to be the distribution of the great political power. Japan is meant to be included in the region of high power, but the scale of the chart is too small to make this plain.

Chart 18.—Density of Population in the United States, 1910.

From the time when man began to lose his tribal instinct and to assume national consciousness, in Egypt, the Mesopotamian Valley, and the region between the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf, he has been founding empires of more or less enduring nature, and with few exceptions has builded towards the west, in the face of the prevailing winds. The center of Empire has steadily migrated along the paths of greatest storm frequency. Examine [Charts 10], [11], and [18] and note the relation between density of population and the closeness of the storm tracks. The figures at the center of each brace indicate the number of storms that originated in the region of the brace during a ten-year period, and the lines leading from the brace show the tracks followed by the centers of the storms. Bear in mind that each storm covered an area of from five hundred to one thousand miles in diameter, that it was a vast rotating eddy in the atmosphere, and that its center of rotation followed one of these storm tracks. Twelve storms came from the West Indies during these ten Augusts, fifty-seven from the Rocky Mountains and none from the Pacific Ocean; while in the ten Januaries none came from the West Indies and but twenty-two from the Pacific Ocean. But the point to which your attention is directed is that, no matter what the origin, the tendency of each storm was to move towards the Ohio Valley, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and New England. This tendency gives to these regions the most frequent changes in weather, with alternations of sunshine and clouds, and changes in temperature and air pressure—conditions essential to the development of the greatest human potential. Here population is the densest, civilization the highest, and the products of man’s brain and hand greater and more diversified than elsewhere in this country, and probably than elsewhere in the world. The United States is abundantly blessed, for nearly its entire area is under the influence of high atmospheric potential. Only the region adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico and the southwest is outside of the favored area, and here the conditions are charted as medium, and not poor; at least not poor in comparison with many more purely tropical regions.

To-day the Empire of Human Greatness is centered over the United States, that is to say, greatness as expressed in material wealth, population, and homogeneously knit political institutions. Will it continue its westward migration, or will it remain here indefinitely for the working out of a civilization higher than yet has come to any of the nations of the past, or to other of those of the present? So far as atmospheric activities have to do with its translation from place to place, we may derive comfort from the fact that storm tracks do not cross the Pacific Ocean as freely as they do the Atlantic. In fact our Rocky Mountains are a barrier to the passage of summer storms ([Chart 10]) and a reference to [Chart 11] will show that of ninety-five winter storms that crossed our continent during the ten Januaries of which the chart is a record only twenty-two came into our area from the Pacific; and we know that these twenty-two largely originated off our coast somewhere between Hawaii and the Aleutian Islands. Let us hope that the center of earthly power has reached the end of its westward journey and that here it shall remain, always to exercise a just and beneficent influence upon the less favored portions of the earth.