In addition to all this work directly on the harbor and port, the railway lines to the interior were much improved. All this was worth while, because Brest had suddenly acquired a great hinterland —the entire area where the American Army with its ceaseless demands for food, guns, projectiles, camp supplies, and men, was helping to win the war for the freedom of nations. By the spring of 1918 Brest had all seven of the requisites of a great seaport and soon became one of the world's busiest harbors. Nowhere else in all the world have nearly 300,000 men ever landed at any one port in a month. So great was the work of caring for the freight and passengers that passed through the port that the population increased many thousand. Then when the war was won, the Americans went away and the hinterland was reduced once more to a part of Brittany. In the other six respects Brest still ranked high among French ports, but the popu lation soon began to diminish. Brest is too far from Paris and the other great centers of population and hence has too small a hinter land to retain its position as a really great port.
Why Seaports Grow.—Just as Brest had to expand suddenly to accommodate the workers who flocked in to make it a great port, so every seaport grows more gradually to accommodate similar workers. These provide a market for other people who sell food, clothing, and other necessities; still others serve as clerks, stenographers, teachers, masons, shoemakers, mechanics, and the other kinds of workers who are needed in every large community. Thus a city arises beside the harbor.
Such a city, whether it be a port on the ocean like Baltimore, on a lake like Buffalo, or on a river like New Orleans, possesses several advantages. For the manufacturer many kinds of raw materials are cheaper and are found in greater variety there than elsewhere, while it is relatively easy to build up foreign trade because the repre sentatives of foreign business houses come to seaports much oftener than.to cities in the interior. The merchant also prefers a seaport because it puts him in such close contact with the markets of the world. The people who are chiefly interested in art, music, science, or other intellectual pursuits prefer the seaports because so many travelers come to them, and thus those who live in the seaports are stimulated by personal contact with people who bring new ideas from other lands. When once a seaport, or a port on a lake or river. is well started it grows in spite of itself.
Concentration of Population in Seaports of the United States.— The remarkable way in which transportation by water influences the size of cities is shown in the following table: States have water transportation. Ten are reached by ocean-going vessels; five are on the Great Lakes, and the other five on the Missis sippi or Ohio. One of these twenty, however, that is, Los Angeles, made its growth without the help of navigation, but felt the need of being a seaport so strongly that it reached out 20 miles and built a harbor at San Pedro, so that it is now a seaport. Washington, also, does not owe its growth to water transportation, but is included among the seaports because it is located on the Potomac estuary. In the United States thus far no city has risen to the first rank unless it is on the ocean or Great Lakes, or else on the Mississippi or one of its main tributaries. Yet the amount of land within five miles of these bodies of water is less than 3 per cent of the entire area of the country.
In the second line of the table we see that among cities of the second class with a population of from 100,000 to 350,000, about 5. third are on the seacoast or on lakes, another third on navigable rivers or canals, and the remaining 40 per cent have no water com munication. With cities of the third class having from 50,000 to 100,000 people about a third are on the coast, while a quarter are on rivers or canals, and nearly half are not favored with water transpor tation. Finally only a quarter of the little cities of the fourth class with from 25,000 to 50,000 people are on the coast, while more than half have no relation to the water. If our table included the hundreds of still smaller towns with from 10,000 to 25,000 people, the propor tion not reached by water transportation would be still greater, while with places having less than 10,000 more than 95 per cent are neither on the coast nor on navigable waterways.
Concentration of Population in Seaports throughout the World.— Not only in the United States, but in all parts of the world the de mands of commerce cause the greatest cities usually to be located beside the sea. Of the 40 largest cities in the world, 23 can be reached by ocean steamers, and 2 by those plying on the Great Lakes of North America. Even among the 15 interior cities 7 are located on large navigable rivers such as the 1Iississippi, Danube, Vistula, and Nile, 3 are on small navigable rivers of no great importance, such as the Seine, Spree, and Oka, and only 5 are wholly without com munication by water.
These facts, like those shown in the table for the United States, indicate that there is a great concentration of large cities on the coasts of oceans and great lakes. As time goes on this concentration increases, for it is the logical result of the growth of manufacturing and commerce and the establisment of closer relations among the nations. But to accommodate more commerce the seaports must have more docks, bigger ships, deeper channels, and more offices and warehouses, while more railway trains must pull into the great ter minals. Hence the big seaports and lakeports grow more and more huge, so that some like New York can scarcely find room for all their buildings.
Oceans and Civilization.—Year by year the commerce carried upon the ocean grows more important. The lines of steamship traffic are like arteries and veins which carry life wherever they go. Merchant vessels break down the barrier of the sea, and open the seaboard parts of the world to the influence of all the other parts that have harbors. The more the life of the nation depends upon them, the more important it becomes that they should not be de stroyed by calamities like the Great War.
Before man became civilized the sea and the other great bodies of water played almost no part in his life, except to regulate the rain fall and temperature of the lands, to furnish fish for food, and to pre vent his migrating in certain directions. To-day the navigable waters are of supreme importance, for they enable the distant parts of the earth to contribute to one another's support; they are one of the conditions of the growth of our largest cities; they enable civiliza tion and commerce to spread to all parts of the globe; and their con trol enables a nation to develop without fear of being overcome by its enemies.