In the spring and early summer there is much traffic in early vegetables, like the trade in this country from our southern states and California to our northern cities.
In the attempt to find something to sell, the people of Milan make straw hats and in Lombardy and the Rhone Valley they have undertaken the great labor of making silk. This is one of the most intensive uses man can make of land. The Rhone Valley silk has helped Lyon to become one of the leading silk-manufacturing centers of the world.
We shall study more about silk in Japan. (Sec. 664.) Of late years, Barcelona in Spain, and Turin, Milan, and Naples in Italy have be come busy manufacturing centers, and Italy is now exporting cotton cloth, although the manufacturers who do not use water power must pay high prices for imported coal.
Manufacturing is far less important in this region than it is in England, Switzer land, or the Low Countries. A short time ago, Constantinople (Sec. 542), a city larger than Detroit, did not have a single smoke stack. Many articles that are made in England by the use of machines are still being made by hand in parts of every Mediterranean country.
567. New sources of power.—Any large increase of population in the Mediterranean world must be supported by manufacturing. This requires power, and imported coal is very costly. Perhaps Italy can harness
her volcanic forces. In a volcanic region near Florence, Italian engineers have learned to run steam engines with the heat of springs, whose water is made hot by the heated earth. This power is now taken by wire to Florence and other cities, and it is possible that Italy may get much power from the hot earth near volcanoes which have in the past only destroyed lives and property.
Palestine has hopes of a great water-power planton the shores of the Dead Sea. (Fig. 441 The plan is to dig a tunnel 37 miles long from the Mediterranean to the cliffs overlooking the Dead Sea. Since this fast-evaporating sea is below the level of theMediterranean,the sea water, after flowing through the tunnel, will fall to the level of the Dead Sea, which is a distance of 1292 feet, thus making power for one of the greatest power plants in the world. There is plentyof water in the Mediterranean. All the water of the Jordan may be used for irrigation. How would the drying of the Jordan be a help to the power plant? Power from such a plant might run factories to support thousands of people living within 300 miles, perhaps 500 miles, of the plant. If this project is carried out, Jerusalem may become more prosperous than she was in the days of King David or King Solomon.