Note 1439 — Chapter XVII · —The Influence Of Climate

The advantage of the Temperate Zone is not only its moderate and adequate allowance of heat, but its contrast of seasons. Beyond the range of a vertical sun, grades of temperature change rapidly from latitude to latitude and from summer to winter. The seasons bring variety of activities, which sharply react upon one another. Manufactures were in their origin chiefly winter industries, as they still are in small isolated communities. The modern factory system flourishes best in cooler parts of the Temperate Zone, where the agricultural demands of the summer, spreading over a shorter period, leave a longer time for winter work, and where that once long winter of the Glacial Period, by the scouring action of the ice cap, has reduced the fertile area of the northern fields. The factory system is also favored, as Heinrich von Treitschke maintains, by the predominance of cool or cold weather, which facilitates the concentration of numerous workmen in large buildings, and renders possible long labor hours the year round,1439 —conditions unthinkable in a warm climate. The iron and steel industries which have grown up about Birmingham, Alabama, find that the long hot summers and mild winters reduce the efficiency of their skilled labor imported from the North.