The growth of a commercial center is due primarily to the character of its hinterland. The part played by transportation is to determine the exact position of the city which is bound to grow up somewhere in order to handle the commerce of the hinterland. Constantinople, more than almost any other city, owes its growth to its wonderful combination of (a) a large bay, (b) a drowned river, (c) a deep inlet from the ocean extending far inland via the Black Sea, and (d) the crossing of land and water routes. Yet though its immediate position is perhaps more advantageous than that of any other city, it cannot rival New York, London, Paris, Tokio, Chicago, Berlin, and Phila delphia because it is not located in a region where cities as great as those just mentioned are yet needed.
The Human Factor in the Growth of Commercial the days of sailing vessels and post roads time was by no means so great a factor in transportation as today. Delays were expected because they were frequent, but today even an ocean steamer is expected to arrive almost on time. Then delays did not cause worry because there was no exact schedule time. Today people begin to look at their watches if a train is only ten minutes late, while many people begin to fret at a delay of a few hours in an ocean liner. These conditions have grown up partly because of the great expense of railroads and steamships. If a great steamer must lie idle waiting for room to doqk or for a proper tide, the cost including interest on the investment as well as wages, wear and tear, may run up to Q5000 per day, and even on a train a delay of a few hours is very costly. Consequently, railway yards, warehouses, dockage space, equipment for loading and unload ing, deep channels, and the other facilities provided by man are often more important than natural advantages in helping a city to grow commercially. Since shipping, far more than land commerce, can easily move from port to port, the up-to-date ports of the world vie with each other in attracting it by providing facilities for loading and unloading quickly and cheaply. Conveyor belts and lifting towers, chutes, escalators, cranes, and cold storage warehouses are only a part of the equipment, although even so there is still a great amount of work for longshoremen.
The problem of building piers illustrates the human element in the growth of ports. Most American ports have room enough to build piers which are relatively cheap, but Hamburg, for example, has had to overcome the difficulty of a narrow river by the expensive mtehod of digging slips. London and Liverpool have a disadvantage which
most American and German ports do not suffer, for the rise of the tide is excessive. So English engineers have devised a system of docks that can be closed like locks. The question of the ownership of wharves is important, for dockage rates and management have almost as much to do with the attractiveness of a port as have the channel, wharves, and warehouses. Some ports are owned by the public, for example, the municipal ports of Hamburg, Rotterdam, Antwerp, and Bristol. Others including those of London, Liverpool, and Seattle are admin istered as public trusts by the government, and still others including Galveston, Savannah, and Southampton are owned by private com panies. In Europe, public ownership predominates. In the United States the semi-public type is most common where the Federal gov ernment combines with the state or city or both, and where railroads and special dock companies also control part of the port.
A fine example of well-planned port facilities is the Bush Terminal at New York City. Built as an experiment, it was largely ignored by steamers for several years until its owners' enterprise had convinced shippers of its practicability. Now it forms a small but complete commercial city in itself, with a subsidiary manufacturing city. In 1917 the transportation system included 8 piers, 2 floating bridges, 116 warehouses, a cold storage plant with a capacity of a million cubic feet, 9 car floats, 16 barges, 11 locomotives, and 30 miles of track. Eighteen steamship lines operated from the terminal to foreign ports all the way from Norway to Zanzibar, and over a million tons of freight were handled. In addition to this there were 16 loft buildings, each a block in size, and together housing 220 industries. The working population of the terminal amounted to 24,000 people, which means that they and their families numbered at least a hundred thousand. So huge and complicated an organization is possible only where a great number of geographical conditions combine to produce a com mercial city of the maximum size, with a maximum degree of activity, and serving a highly developed and populous hinterland with enor mous resources.