came the revolutionary inventions of
textile machinery, of the steam-engine, and of processes for
extracting and utilizing coal and iron. The heavy, costly machinery
required capital and the factory. Concentrated capital and machinery
required workers. The working people were forced to give up their
small home manufacturing and their unprofitable farming and move to
the industrial barracks and workrooms of the manufacturing centres.
These centres sprang up where the tools were most easily and cheaply
obtained, and where lay the coal-beds and the iron ore to be worked
over into machinery. From Newcastle on the east, through Sheffield,
Leeds, Birmingham, and Manchester, to Liverpool on the west and
Glasgow over the Scottish border grew up a chain of thriving cities,
and later their people were given the ballot that was taken from
certain of the depopulated rural villages. These cities have obtained
a voice of power in the councils of the nation. In America the
industrial era came somewhat later, but the same process of
centralizing industry went on at the waterfalls of Eastern rivers, at
railroad centres, and at ocean, lake, and Gulf ports. Commerce has
accelerated the growth of many of these manufacturing towns. Increase
of industry and population has been especially rapid in the great
ports that front the two oceans, through whose gates pour the floods
of immigrants, and in the interior cities like Chicago, that lie at
especially favorable points for railway, lake, or river traffic. As in
the Middle Ages, universities grew because teachers went where
students were gathered, and students were attracted to the place where
teachers were to be found, so in the larger cities the more people
there are and the more numerous is the population, the greater the
amount of business. It pays to be near the centre of things.

READING REFERENCES

HOWE: _The Modern City and Its Problems_, pages 9-49.

GILLETTE: _Constructive Rural Sociology_, pages 32-46.

STRONG: _Our World_, pages 228-283.

NEARING AND WATSON: _Economics_, pages 123-132.

GIRY AND REVILLE: _Emancipation of the Mediaeval Towns._

BLISS: _New Encyclopedia of Social Reform_, art. "Cities."

CHAPTER XXVI

THE MANUFACTURING ENTERPRISE

186. =Preponderance of Economic Interests.=--Such a social centre as
the city has several functions to perform for its inhabitants. Though
primarily concerned with business, the people have other interests