A German banker's house collapsed and he was imprisoned by falling timbers. Fire was rapidly approaching. His wife, in a desperate but vain effort to save his life, amputated the legs.

My interpreter lost his home, wife and four children and in a heartbroken voice said: "Now, I am only a coolie."

A man, finding no vestige of his house or family, concluded that the disappearance was due to the opening and closing of a fissure in the earth.

A young girl lost all relatives and friends, and was absolutely alone in the world.

A highly educated Holland merchant had accumulated a modest fortune, represented by a collection of rare porcelains and curios, left Yokohama for a week-end at Nikko. Expecting to return home Monday, he forwarded his trunks Saturday, the morning of the earthquake. He and his wife were left penniless, having lost. everything excepting the contents of a suitcase.

A man in his room in the third story of the Oriental Hotel, Yokohama, opened the door and saw an abyss, he then climbed through the window and down the side wall to the street level, which the earthquake had elevated almost to the third story.

. An Englishman in a rickshaw, was on a bridge spanning a canal in Tokyo, at the moment of the earthquake, which destroyed the rickshaw, killed the rickshaw man in the shaft, and the Englishman walked away practically uninjured.

A woman in a bathtub, in the second story, slid to the street uninjured, and was supplied with a kimono by a Japanese.

This appalling catastrophe immediately aroused the intense sympathy of Americans for the Japanese in their hour of suffering. President Coolidge's prompt proclamation, urging the American people to help Japan, was followed by the giving of more than $5,000,000. The American Warships were the first to arrive, and supplied Japan freely with money, food, physicians, nurses, medical supplies, tentage, and other necessities. These prompt and generous actions made a profoundly favorable impression upon the Japanese.

Out of this great calamity has come a better understanding of Americans by the Japanese, which has converted suspicion and hostility into confidence and friendship.

APPALACHIANS*

By K. C. MCMURRY

University of Michigan

The Muscle Shoals controversy has done much in recent years to direct attention toward the industrial possibilities in the region of the Southern Appalachians. To be sure, the states of North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee are still largely engaged in agricultural pursuits. However, they have possessed important manufactures in some sections for a long period, and recently there has been very rapid growth.

Water power long has been a significant factor in the develop ment of manufactures in the region, particularly along the fall line. The rivers which flow from the Piedmont onto the coastal plain have many falls and rapids which have been used for power, in some cases for a long time. Indeed, water power of this kind, utilized directly at the point of generation, is still an important factor in the industrial economy of the region. The natural conditions throughout the region of the Southern Appalachians favor the large scale development of water power. The rainfall is heavy, especially in the upper portions of the drainage basins; it is fairly evenly distributed throughout the year, which tends to promote the relatively even flow of streams. The falls and rapids at the edge of the Piedmont were used early, but both within the Piedmont and in the mountains there are many possible power sites. In the west, both in the Great Valley and about the Highland Rim, several powers have been developed, and there are unused sites. In most cases the power available has not been so large as to require prohibitive amounts of capital for its development, and the comparatively small additions to the supply of power which have been added as one after another of the projects have been developed have been absorbed quickly.

Steady progress has been made in recent years in the development of manufactures throughout the region. During the decade 1909 to 1919 there was a notable increase in the value of manufactured goods, but more significant were the increases both in labor

*Read before the Nineteenth Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1922.

employed and in power equipment. The latter is especially noteworthy, for largely within the past ten years there has come about an almost revolutionary change in the source of power. The new force which has entered into the industrial expansion of the region is hydro-electric power. Few parts of the country at present are better supplied with electric power than is this region which is commonly thought of as backward in industrial development and methods.

The total industrial power equipment of all kinds has had a rapid growth in recent years. It expanded from 1,553,000 horse power in 1909 to 2,348,000 in 1919, an increase of 51 per cent. The most remarkable fact, however, is the change in kind of power rather than the increase in the total amount. During this period the steam power, other than that used to generate electricity, along with the directly utilized water power, actually decreased slightly in Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia, and increased only to a very slight extent in South Carolina and Alabama. The great power expansion of the past ten years throughout the region has been almost entirely due to the growth of electric power. The following table gives the percentages of electric to total power for the States.

A rather high degree of specialization in the use of electric power is apparent in the cases of certain industries. In North and South Carolina and in Georgia the cotton manufacturing industries use much more than their average proportions of electricity. The following table shows their relative importance in these states in 1919 and the extent to which they utilize electric power.

Thus, in South Carolina the manufacture of cotton goods, by far the most important industry in the state, uses 60.5 percent of all labor employed, and 67 percent of all power, while 48 percent of the power is electric.

In the lumber and timber manufactures, which rank next in importance in each of these states, little electric power is used. In the vegetable oil and oil cake industry 75 percent of all power is electric, and about the same proportion holds for the manufactures of fertilizers in South Carolina and Georgia.

In Alabama iron and steel manufactures and their allied industries utilize 55 per cent of all industrial power, though employ. ing only 28 percent of the wage earners of the state. Even in these industries, which are commonly thought of as based almost entirely upon coal, a third of the power used is electric. The load of the Alabama Power Company, which furnishes about 80 percent of the electric power of the state, was distributed as follows on a typical day in 1922.1

In Tennessee the situation is somewhat different from that in the other states for the manufactures are more highly diversified.. No single industry holds a position such as cotton manufactures in the Carolinas' and Georgia, or iron and steel in Alabama. However, electric power is growing rapidly in importance in most industries, and in several, it is the chief power used.

There are two other large consumers of electric power, electrochemical industries and public utilities. The Aluminum Company of America has a 60,000 kilowatt hydro-electric plant at Bandin in North Carolina, and one of 35,000 kilowatts at Cheoah in East Tennessee. In the latter case, at least, the power is not sufficient to meet the needs of the company, as it is the largest single purchaser of current from the Tennessee Power Company. As already

'Data furnished by the Alabama Power Company.

noted, the Alabama Power Company furnishes current to electrochemical industries to the extent of eight percent of its output.

Data are not at hand as to the use of power by public utilities except in the case of Alabama. Here about a third of the output. of the Alabama Power Company is consumed by these companies. This is aside from the power generated by the utilities themselves. The figure may be taken perhaps as a rough average for all the states in the group. Its addition to the power used industrially certainly would make the use of electric power for the whole region more important than directly used steam power, exclusive of railroads.

The great bulk of electric power used industrially is rented from the large service companies. Apparently these large companies, with their generating establishments distributed over considerable areas, can produce power more efficiently than can the individual manufacturer. The rented power, which is almost invariably, electric, makes up the following proportions of the total industrial power in the region.

The major part of the power furnished by the public service companies is hydro-electric in origin. There is a large number of plants, widely distributed over the region. These vary greatly in size; some have generating capacity of only a few thousand horse power or less, while others are equipped with ninety to a hundred thousand horse power. The public service companies do not operate all the hydro-electric powers of the region, but together they have approximately a million horse power installed capacity. This compares with 1,647,000 horse power of total water power for the region, which includes the directly used water powers as well as the hydro-electric plants. The hydro-electric power operated by these companies is nearly three times as great as that developed at present on the American side at Niagara Falls. It is twice the

1U. S. Geological Survey. Atlas of Commercial Geology, Water Powers of the World.