Industrial Expansion and Location

Abstract

IN APRIL of the prewar year of 1940, manufacturing accounted for approximately 10.3 million workers out of a total employment in nonagricultural establishments of about 30.8 million. (Total nonagricultural employment, including proprietors, the self-employed, and domestic workers was nearly 6 million higher.) Among metropolitan areas there was a wide variation in the relative importance of manufacturing. In nearly half of the 120 major industrial communities in the eastern part of the country-southeast as well as northeast-one-half or more of the workers in nonagricultural establishments were employed in manufacturing, whereas in several of the trading communities in agricultural sections of the South and West the portion was under one-fifth. It is also significant that in these less industrialized communities the factory operations were usually restricted to consumer goods made for the local population. In the older industrial areas manufacturing is for the most part confined to definite districts, whereas in many of the trading areas plants have been scattered throughout the commercial part of the city. The difference has resulted from the nature of the operations. Large-scale metal fabrication and chemical processes, because of their space and transportation requirements, are usually carried on in a separate part of the area, whereas food processing, printing, and other types of production for local consumption are often mixed with or adjacent to commercial zones. Moreover, wherever manufacturing is of considerable local importance, operations are often specialized. This results from a number of factors, among them, the success of an early prominent concern, the skills of the labor force, and the special service industries that develop. An area thus tends to devote a large portion of its industrial activity to making a few outstanding products. One area is an automobile center. Another is devoted mainly to steel; still others to textiles, tires, machine tools, furniture, foods. There were, of course, before the war, areas that were sufficiently diversified so that no one industry accounted for more than 10 per cent of the total value of manufactured products; but these were exceptional, and during the war most of them came to be dominated by a few munitions products. Not only is the local economy often concentrated in a few industries, but wherever the economies of size operate in an industry, a few plants employ a large fraction of the area's work-