Rock Island daily Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1886-1893, 1893-01-12
OUR GREAT CITIES.
.uteresting Facts About the Location of
Americas Business Centers.

.uteresting facts ABOUT the Location OF
Americas Business Centers.
!, is upon the business of transferring
freight from one system to another, from
external to internal, or from land to water,
or vice versa, that the growth of COM
mercial cities largely depends, and as the
most advantageous location for such
break of bulk" is at the head of naviga-
tion, enabling freights to be carried as far
as practicable by water. the cheapest
known medium of transit, the locus of the
city will be found at that point farthest
inland which can be reached by ocean YES
sells of the deepest draft.
But although water is nonproductive of
freight, it is very convenient medium of
transportation, and hence, wherever there
exists large body of productive land sur
rounding or contiguous to a navigable
channel there will be found the elements
of a great emporium. Thus London, the
metropolis of Great Britain, is not at
Lands End, the point of England nearest
to the foreign commerce of the world, but
at the head of navigation of the River
Thames; Paris is not on the sea, but on
the Seine, and so situated as to place it in
the center of the most highly developed
system of interior waterways in the world
Canton, Constantinople, Liverpool, Glas-
gov, Antwerp and many other foreign
cities might be cited in illustration of this
principle. In our own country the same
conditions prevail Baltimore and Phila-
delphia are at the head of navigation
New York and Chicago are welded to-
gether by thousand miles of waterway,
at each extremity of which there must OF
necessity be break of bulk
Situated at the re-entrant angle of the
coast, and having the great water artery
draining the heart of the country flowing
into her magnificent bays, New York has
exceptional facilities for controlling inland,
coastwise and foreign commerce There is
one link, however, which needs to be
opened to render the southwestern COM
merce more fully accessible, and that is
the ship canal across New jersey from,
Raritan bay to the Delaware river. and
thence across the Delaware peninsula to
Chesapeake bay.
a review of the returns of the eleventh
census shows that the twenty-eight cities
in which the population exceeds O.OOC
are located at the stragetic points of trans.
portation systems, and that with few ex
ceptions they are commercial cities, stu.
ated upon navigable waters. 1t will alsc
be observed that as a general rule these
great centers of trade follow in the wake
of immigration and are on the western side
of the great waterways, as well as at the
points of transshipment between water
and land carriage.
Viewing the United States as a whole. il
will be found to consist of four great
transportation areas, namely, the regions
tributary to the Atlantic, to the Pacific
to the lakes and to the gulf, and the strate
gic points of these four systems are those
where the lines of least resistance TO traffic
are most numerous.
In the center of the transmississippi re
gion, and equally distant from lake, gull
and ocean lies Denver, the hub of thi.
great territory, from which ramify more
than dozen lines of railway reaching t.
all parts of the continent. and in its cen
ter there is to be seen depressed basir
forming a natural site, where the stream.
of commerce can be readily commingled
in the great transfer yards and stations
which are being rapidly developed in this
enterprising city of Colorado.-Cosmopoli
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