Module 8
The United States and Canada
a. Area and Population
Canada’s 3.85 million square miles (9.97 million sq km) makes it slightly larger
in area than the United States’ 3.72 million square miles (9.63 million sq km), but Canada
is less wealthy than the United States and much less powerful on the global stage. The
region’s map comparison with Europe and the continental United States is compared with
Latin America. Canada had a population of 33 million in 2007, compared with 302
million in the United States. Together the two countries have 5 percent of the world’s
population, on 13 percent of its land surface, including Antarctica.
The United States reached the milestone of 300 million people in 2006, meaning
that more than half the people who had ever lived in the country were living there that
year. A snapshot of that population on a given day in 2006 would show 11,000 babies
born and 3,000 immigrants arriving—both much larger fi gures than the number of deaths
and emigrants. If the 2006 growth rate is sustained, it would put the population at 400
million—double its 1967 population—around 2043.
Canada and the United States share the longest international border in the world—
5,527 miles (8,895 km). About 90 percent of the Canadian population lives within 100
miles (161 km) of this border, on only 12 percent of Canada’s territory. In contrast, only
a small percentage of the U.S. population lives within 100 miles of the Canadian border.
Canadians and Americans are overwhelmingly urban, with city dwellers accounting for
79 percent of both Canadians and Americans.
Canada’s population is concentrated in the cities of four main regions: the
Atlantic region of peninsulas and islands at Canada’s eastern edge; the culturally divided
core region of maximum population and development along the lower Great Lakes and
Saint Lawrence River; the Prairie region in the interior plains between the Canadian
Shield on the east and the Rocky Mountains on the west; and the Vancouver region on
and near the Pacifi c coast at Canada’s southwestern corner.
In the United States, people are most concentrated in urban areas of the Northeast
and portions of the West, with more than half that population living within 50 miles of
the coast. About 54 million people, or 18 percent of the national population, live in the
Northeast on 5 percent of the nation’s area. The Northeast’s population density is several
times that of the South, Midwest, or West. The density is much more extreme within the
narrow urban belt stretching about 500 miles (c. 800 km) along the Atlantic coast from
metropolitan Boston (in Massachusetts) through metropolitan Washington, D.C. The belt
is known as the Northeastern Seaboard, Northeast Corridor, Boston-to Washington Axis,
megalopolis, or “Boswash.” Here, seven main metropolitan areas, including the country’s
largest—New York— have about 40 million people, or 1 in every 7 Americans. In the
West are another 69 million people, nearly one-quarter of the nation. More than half live
in California.
The United States is the only MDC in the world that is experiencing signifi cant
population growth. This is due mainly to immigration rather than natural increase, and
both the United States and Canada are best appreciated as nations of immigrants and of
continuing immigration. These themes are carried into the discussion of cultures later in
this, but an overview of modern migration fl ows is provided briefl y here. Each year,
over a million immigrants arrive in the United States and over 200,000 in Canada.
Each year, 40,000 people are granted permission to enter the United States as
“guest workers.” Far greater numbers do not obtain permission and enter as illegal aliens;
most undocumented workers manage to obtain temporary or longer-term employment
despite their illegal status.
The status and future of illegal immigrants is a particularly contentious issue in
the United States, where an estimated 8 million, or two-thirds of the total, are employed.
Many U.S. citizens fear that an unstoppable tide of poor immigrants will take their jobs
and bleed social and other services. Others, particularly in the business community, argue
that the low-wage immigrants are vital for the American economy, generally taking jobs
shunned by most Americans (but also displacing some of the mainly uneducated
Americans who would take those jobs), while also contributing to the economy through
their purchases. Their low wages also help keep some jobs in the country that might
otherwise be offshored. While they do burden schools and others social services, most
undocumented workers also pay federal taxes (a price paid for their using fake Social
Security and taxpayer ID cards). The satirical fi lm A Day without a Mexican depicts a
U.S. economy in disarray when deprived of its undocumented workers.
Measures are being taken to extend physical barriers that would deter new
arrivals, including terrorists seeking easy entry into the United States. In the Secure
Fence Act of 2006, the U.S. Congress passed legislation calling for lengthening existing
15-foot (4.5-m) border fences (to 700 miles or 1,120 km). Through its Secure Border
Initiative, known as SBInet, the government is also building a so-called virtual fence, a
multibillion-dollar, mainly high-tech surveillance system for the border region. Critics
feel that determined immigrants will fi nd their way over and around the physical
barriers, which in any case, they said, will probably end up being built by illegal
immigrants! Environmentalists, joined in Arizona by the Tohono O’odham Indians, who
view wildlife as kindred spirits, worry about the impacts of long fences on wildlife,
particularly migrating animals. The virtual fence would present no such obstacles, but its
effectiveness in reducing or preventing border crossings is much debated.
U.S. lawmakers are struggling over whether and how illegal immigrants should be
granted what is effectively amnesty; they would not be prosecuted for being in the
country illegally if they met certain conditions and would be granted permanent resident
status (which would eventually make them eligible for citizenship). Detractors say that
amnesty programs will simply attract more illegal immigrants.
b. Physical Geography and Human Adaptations
The natural environments of the United States and Canada are remarkably diverse
and include some of the most spectacular wild landscapes on the planet. They have
presented people with a vast array of opportunities for land use and settlement. It is useful
to consider how landforms (and what lies beneath and above them) have promoted or
hindered human uses and how climates have also done the same. This wide range of
environmental settings is associated with a great variety of natural hazards.
The ancient core of North America, with rocks up to 3 billion years old, is called
the Canadian Shield, covering roughly the area from Nunavut south to Minnesota and
northeast to Labrador. Human settlement is sparse in this vast region, and agriculture is
limited by poor soils and a harsh climate similar to that of northeastern Siberia. The
Canadian Shield was scoured by glaciers until about 10,000 years ago, and today the area
is dotted with many large lakes and thousands of smaller ones. The surface is mostly
rolling, though areas of hills and low mountains can be found, such as the Superior
Upland of Minnesota and Wisconsin. Hydropower, wood, iron, nickel, and uranium are
the major resources of the Canadian Shield.
Southeast of the Canadian Shield lie the Appalachian Mountains and associated
highlands. The Appalachians were possibly the highest mountains in the world when they
were formed 400 million years ago, but erosion has reduced the elevations to between
2,000 feet (600 m) and 6,684 feet (2,037 m). Rising in northern Alabama and Georgia
and running northeast toward the Gaspé Peninsula of Quebec (the island of
Newfoundland is also Appalachian in origin), the Appalachians are a complex system
where mountain ranges, ridges, and rugged dissected plateaus are interspersed with
narrow valleys, isolated lowlands, and rolling uplands. The western Appalachians are
known for their large coalfi elds. About 80 percent of the Appalachians and adjacent
lowlands of New England are forested, a remarkable turnaround from the 19th century,
when over twothirds of the original forest had been removed. After 1850, farmers
gravitated toward the much richer soils of the Midwest, and hydropower and fossil fuels
replaced timber as fuel. These shifts eased pressure on the forests, and with their rebound
also came increasing numbers of moose, beaver, and other wildlife.
Canada’s and Alaska’s tundra climate, with its long, cold winters and brief, cool
summers, promotes vegetation of mosses, lichens, sedges, hardy grasses, and low bushes.
The subarctic climate zone, also in Canada and Alaska, has long, cold winters and short,
mild summers, with a natural vegetation of coniferous (boreal) forest resembling the
Russian taiga. In 2003, an unusual coalition of energy and forestry companies,
environmental groups, and Native American communities joined an agreement to
preserve at least 50 percent of Canada’s subarctic forests and to develop the other half in
sustainable ways. Population is very sparse in the subarctic and tundra climate areas.
Scattered peoples engage in trapping, hunting, fi shing, mining, logging, and military
activities; many live largely on welfare. The severe winter in vast sections of the tundra
and subarctic zones requires unusual adaptations—like having to wait until the spring
thaw to bury loved ones who died during the winter.
The humid continental climate with short summers is characterized by long, cold
winters and short, warm summers. Agriculturally, emphasis is on dairy farming except in
the Far West, where spring wheat production dominates. The humid continental long-
summer climate (“humid continental warm”) has cold winters and long, hot summers;
agriculturally, this belt, which includes the agricultural riches of the Midwest, emphasizes
dairy farming in the east and corn, soybeans, cattle, and hogs in the midwestern (interior)
portion.
The Mediterranean or dry-summer subtropical climate region of central and
southern California, where almost all rain comes in winter, is associated with irrigated
production of cattle feeds, vineyards, vegetables, fruits, cotton, and numerous other
crops. These products, together with associated livestock, dairy, and poultry, make
California the leading U.S. state in total agricultural output.
In the semiarid steppe climate region, occupying an immense area between the
Pacifi c coast of the United States and the landward margins of the humid East and
extending north into Canada, temperatures range from continental in the north to
subtropical in the south. The natural vegetation of short grass, bunch grass, shrubs, and
stunted trees supplies forage for cattle ranching, which is the predominant form of
agriculture. More moist areas are used for wheat (both winter wheat and spring wheat).
Other crops are grown in scattered irrigated areas, often associated with major rivers such
as the Columbia, Snake, Arkansas, and Rio Grande.
The desert climate of the U.S. Southwest is associated with scattered irrigated
areas and settlements emphasizing mining, recreation, and retirement. The high, rugged
mountains of the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada have undifferentiated highland climates
varying with latitude, elevation, and exposure to moisture-bearing winds and to the sun. I
t cannot be assumed that the long-standing distribution of biomes as mapped in
will be accurate in the coming years. There is growing evidence that as global
temperatures rise, agricultural and natural vegetation zones will shift poleward in the
United States, as they are doing elsewhere. The 2006 Arbor Foundation map of hardiness
zones for typical garden plants in the United States showed that many bands are a full
zone warmer, and in some places two zones warmer, than when the last map was
published in 1990.
c. Cultural and Historical Geographies
The indigenous cultures of Middle and South America. The indigenous cultures of
what are now Canada and the United States, especially those of what is now the U.S.
Southwest, were related to them in many ways. Some developed civilizations, the rather
complex, agriculture-based ways of life associated with permanent or semipermanent
settlements and stratifi ed societies. In what are now the southwestern states of Arizona,
Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico, three dominant Native American civilizations
emerged: the Mogo llon, Hohokam, and Anasazi. Despite their arid environment, these
peoples developed productive agricultural systems that borrowed from and interacted
with the Aztec and other cultures of Middle America. The same basic crop assemblages
were found across all these cultures: corn, beans, squash, and chili peppers were the
staples.
The Hohokam of what is now southern New Mexico had a very productive
system of irrigated agriculture. Their culture fl ourished between 100 b.c.e. and 1500 c.e.
The Anasazi developed a dwelling pattern based on the pueblo, in which interconnected
mud-brick (adobe) residences and ceremonial centers, with beamed roofs of mud, sticks,
and grass, were built into cliffsides or on the fl at-topped mesas of the region. The
Mogollon culture that thrived between 300 b.c.e. and 1400 c.e. inherited these building
traditions and was effectively absorbed by the Anasazi, whose heartland was in the Four
Corners region where Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah meet. Around 1300
c.e., the Anasazi began to abandon their pueblos and the productive agriculture associated
with them. The reasons for the Anasazi decline remain unknown, but drought, invasion
by hostile neighbors, or simply political decisions to relocate may have been responsible.
Some Native American groups of the region today, including the Hopi, Zuni, and Tiwa
peoples, carry on the architectural legacy of the Anasazi by continuing to dwell in
pueblos.
The Native American groups not associated with complex societies, ceremonial
centers, and civilizations were varied and numerous. As many as 18 different culture
regions for these groups are recognized; this text uses 11. The best way to categorize their
essential features is to acknowledge some of the major groups within each region and
their original languages. Although the past tense is used in this discussion (because these
cultures fl ourished in pre-Columbian times), none of the languages mentioned is extinct,
and speakers of all of them may still be found— although for most, English is their fi rst
or second language.
Seven Native American language families are represented in the United States,
Canada, and Greenland by more than 250 languages. The Aztec-Tanoan language family
that sprawled across most of northern Mexico was represented in the U.S. Southwest by
languages including Hopi, Comanche, Shoshone, and Papago. Some of the groups that
spoke these languages carried on the agricultural and pueblo-dwelling lifestyles pursued
by the earlier Mogollon, Hohokam, and Anasazi civilizations, while others were nomadic
hunter-gatherers who sometimes supplemented their diet by raiding the pueblo-dwelling
peoples.
What all these diverse groups had in common was an exceptionally well-
developed set of adaptations for living in the local environment. Native American
economies spanned a remarkably wide continuum, from simple foraging and hunting to
complex agricultural systems. These were not static adaptations but changed and
generally improved over time—for example, through greater mastery of fi ner tools. As
the Lakota and others demonstrated by giving up village agriculture in favor of a nomadic
life based on horses, these cultures were capable of dramatic adjustments to changing
opportunities. It was once supposed that the Native Americans always lived within the
limitations imposed on them by local ecosystems, but it is now known that they
transformed landscapes in signifi cant ways by fi re and other means and may even have
hunted populations of large animals to extinction; this is the Pleistocene overkill
hypothesis. One trait apparently shared by most if not all the Native American groups
was their deep reverence for the natural world. Animals, forests, geological features, and
the people themselves were tied together intimately in animistic belief systems that
emphasized the kinship between these diverse elements of life on earth.
How many Native Americans lived in what are now Canada, the United States,
and Greenland when Columbus made landfall in 1492 is uncertain. The most common
estimate is 1 million, with about three-quarters of that population in what is now the
United States and almost all the rest in Canada. As in Latin America and Australia, the
European contact initiated years of population losses among Native Americans through
disease, famine, and warfare. In the United States, Native American populations crashed
to an all-time low of fewer than 250,000 between 1890 and 1910 but are now back up to
1.8 million. Their growth has been particularly strong in the Great Plains, where there are
now more Native Americans (and bison) than there were in the late 1870s. In Canada, the
current population of Native Americans is about 1 million. Collectively, these peoples
refer to themselves as the First Nations in acknowledgment of their pre-Columbian
cultures and claims to the land. In Canada, this defi nition excludes the Inuit, who were
relative latecomers but who are referred to as among the First Peoples. The indigenous
Greenlanders, known as the Kalaallit, are related linguistically and ethnically to the Inuit
of Canada, Alaska, and Siberia. The offi cial name of their island is Kalaallit Nunaat,
meaning “Land of the Greenlanders.”
Gambling revenues have contributed to economic and other improvements in
many Indian communities. The semiautonomous status of their territories allows casinos
to circumvent many restrictions that prohibit casinos elsewhere. About one-third of the
roughly 563 federally recognized Native American tribes in the United States have
developed casinos since Congress legalized gambling on their lands in 1998. This gaming
industry has been a mixed blessing for the Native Americans, with a wide variety of
successes and failures in different places. In some, gambling revenues have supported
community education, health care, and cultural centers, but in others, they have lined a
few pockets and failed to benefi t many members of the community. Some Native
Americans complain that several of the groups that have established casinos are not
legitimate, historical tribes to begin with. Nonnative people often resent casinos because
they view them as a windfall of special treatment for individuals who have not earned it.
In all cases, casinos have introduced signifi cant changes.
European settlement of what are now Canada and the United States took place in
a series of waves propelled by religious persecution in Europe, colonization of new lands
by European powers, and then the expansionist efforts of newly independent Canada and
the United States. Canada’s core region of Québec and Ontario developed with the
French entry into the interior of North America. The French founded Québec City in
1608 at the point where the Saint Lawrence estuary leading to the Atlantic narrows
harply. Their fortifi cations on a bold eminence allowed control of the river there.
From Québec, fur traders, missionaries, and soldierexplorers soon discovered an
extensive network of river and lake routes with connecting portages reaching as far as the
Great Plains and, via the Mississippi River, to the Gulf of Mexico. Montréal, founded
later on an island in the Saint Lawrence River, became the fur trade’s forward post for the
interior wilderness. Between Québec City and Montréal, a thin line of settlement grew
along the Saint Lawrence, forming the agricultural base for the colony. Population grew
slowly in this northerly outpost where the winter was harsh and only French Catholics
were welcome.
The George W. Bush administration’s secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, aptly
described slavery as “America’s birth defect.”3 The plantation economy that supported
the American South was built on the exploitation of more than 500,000 black slaves
brought to America from Africa between 1619 and 1807. People of mainly African
ancestry, known as blacks and African Americans, occasionally as Afro-Americans, and
formerly as Negroes, number about 35 million, or 12 percent of the U.S. population. The
group also includes many people of mixed black and other ethnic extraction and blacks
who came from regions other than Africa. Blacks were acknowledged as the largest
minority in the United States until 2000, when census fi gures revealed that the number of
people identifying themselves as Hispanic slightly exceeded the number of African
Americans.
The non–Native American religions and languages prevailing in Canada and the
United States refl ect both early colonial infl uences and more recent waves of
immigration. English and French are Canada’s offi cial languages, with French usage
confi ned largely to the traditionally French southeast. The United States does not have
an offi - cial language (despite repeated efforts to pass a constitutional amendment that
would establish it as English), but 96 percent of U.S. residents speak English. The
language map well illustrates the growth of Hispanic populations in the Southwest and
southern Florida. “Spanglish,” a hybrid tongue of Spanish and English, is moving from
Hispanic neighborhoods of southern California into the mainstream media and culture of
the United States. Spanglish uses “code switching,” substituting words or phrases from
one tongue when speaking in another (for example, “Vamos a la store para comprar
milk,” meaning “Let’s go to the store to buy some milk”) and also coining new words,
like perro caliente for “hot dog.”4 In the larger cities of both the United States and
Canada, there is a dizzying array of languages associated with ethnic neighborhoods.
d. Economic Geography
The United States and Canada are very wealthy nations. Per capita GNI PPP fi
gures for the countries are $44,260 and $34,610, respectively, compared to the world’s
highest, Luxembourg, at $55,970. The United States has the world’s largest economy and
is by far the world’s largest producer and consumer of goods and services. It consumes
far more than it produces and is thus the world’s leading example of consumption
overpopulation. With just about 5 percent of the world’s population, the United States has
a third of the world’s wealth and each year consumes, for example, more than 25 percent
of the world’s energy output, 50 percent of its diamonds, 50 percent of its illegal drugs,
and 75 percent of its rubber.
Generally, in the globalized economy, the United States may be seen as having
built an economic structure of consumption. By contrast, China and most other major
economies have built economies of production and export. The United States borrows
money from other countries (it has the world’s largest federal foreign debt, as well as the
world’s largest national debt), and it sells off assets to fi - nance its consumption. The
nation has a trade defi cit (for which China alone accounts for about one-third), exporting
$1 trillion worth of goods while importing $1.8 trillion annually. Once the world’s largest
exporter of goods, the United States lost that position to Germany in 2003. The United
States’ share of global gross domestic production fell from 31 to 28 percent between
2000 and 2007 (while in the same period rising by 3 percent to a combined 11 percent in
the four leading emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China—the so-called
BRICs).
This region, particularly the United States, is blessed with very large endowments
of some of the world’s most important natural assets. A number of geographic, political,
and other circumstances have complemented this resource wealth in the development of
these economically powerful countries. Both countries are among the fi ve largest in the
world. A wide range of environmental settings has both allowed and stimulated full use
of human ingenuity in economic development. The combined population of both
countries is large, yet neither country is “peopleoverpopulated.” A large population
represents both a big pool of prospective labor and talent to promote economic growth
and a vast market for the goods and services produced. Both countries developed
mechanized economies early and under favorable conditions. Innovations continue to
replace human labor with machine labor, generally increasing effi ciency and
productivity (while also leading to unemployment in traditional manufacturing sectors).
Although raw materials contribute much to their wealth, the United States and
Canada have become prosperous mainly because of machines and mechanical energy,
complemented in recent decades by a boom in information technology (IT). From an
early reliance on waterwheels powering simple machines, especially along the fall line in
the Northeast, the United States increasingly exploited the power of coalfi red steam
engines. Later came oil, internal-combustion engines, and electricity, all harnessed for
greater and more effi cient energy use.
In this energy-abundant and mechanized economy, the United States was able to
take advantage of unique circumstances. Its abundant resources attracted foreign capital
and stimulated domestic accumulation of capital through largescale and often wasteful
exploitation. There was also a labor shortage that attracted millions of immigrants as
temporary low-wage workers but also promoted higher wages and laborsaving
mechanization in the long run. A culture of striving for advancement emerged. This
emphasis on productivity, dubbed the Protestant work ethic but shared by people of many
faiths and ethnicities, characterized the struggle for economic success and the American
dream of a comfortable life. Only occasionally did national energies have to be diverted
excessively into defense and war.
Each of these countries is a vital trading partner of the other, although Canada is
much more dependent on the United States than vice versa. In 2007, Canada supplied 16
percent of all U.S. imports by value and took in 22 percent of all U.S. exports, making
Canada the leading country in total trade with the United States. That same year, the
United States supplied 55 percent of Canada’s imports and took in more than 82 percent
of its exports. Except for Canadian exports of automobiles and auto parts to the United
States, the main pattern of trade between the two countries is the exchange of Canadian
raw and intermediate-state materials—primarily ores and metals, timber and newsprint,
oil, and natural gas—for American manufactured goods.
Free-trade agreements designed to open markets and increase revenues for both
countries have facilitated this exchange. Nevertheless, the countries have periodically
tried to protect their industries from one another, often with poor results. In the 1990s,
there was a so-called wheat war between the two countries as they struggled for greater
market share in an environment of high yields and low prices. With agricultural prices for
grains and pork dropping to the lowest levels in more than 50 years, many farmers both
south and north of the U.S.-Canada border went bankrupt. U.S. producers claimed that
Canada was dumping (selling the product for less than it cost to produce it) its durum
wheat on the United States market.
Both governments have sought to enhance national unity and economic strength
with transportation networks spanning their vast landscapes. In both countries, east-west
networks have been built over long distances, against the “grain” of the land, especially
the great north–south-trending ranges of the Rocky Mountains. The coasts of both
countries were fi rst tied together effectively by heavily subsidized transcontinental
railroads completed during the second half of the 19th century. Later, national highway
and air networks improved transportation.
e. Geopolitical Issues
There were several sources of antagonism. The northern colonies failed to join the
Revolution, and the British used those colonies as bases during the war. A large segment
of the northern population had come from Tory stock driven from U.S. homes during the
Revolution (Tories were the “friends of the king,” colonists who wanted to maintain
political connections with the British government). And tensions were high over the issue
of who would have ultimate control of the central and western reaches of the continent.
The War of 1812 was fought largely as a U.S. effort to conquer Canada. Even
after its failure, a series of border disputes occurred, and the United States openly
expressed ambitions to possess this British territory in North America. Offi cials in the
United States threatened annexation throughout the 19th century and even into the 20th.
The United States long enjoyed the geographic advantage of being something of
an island situated far from the world’s hot spots—especially Europe and the Middle East.
In both world wars that ravaged Europe in the 20th century, the United States initially
clung to isolationism—the view that those confl icts were Europe’s and that the United
States would do best to stay out of them. Only late in World War I, at the unpopular
insistence of President Woodrow Wilson, did the United States enter the stalemated war
on the side of Britain and France. The United States lost 116,516 soldiers in that war, but
in helping its allies secure victory, it also gained unprecedented infl uence and
importance on the world stage.
That war was succeeded by the Cold War, in which the two leading powers, the
United States and the Soviet Union, faced off against one another, fl anked by a host of
often strong but always less powerful allies. U.S. concerns about the spread of
communism from the Soviet Union and China into the newly independent countries of
the postwar world—and the so-called domino theory that one after another of these
countries might fall to communism—led to numerous and sometimes very costly
American military interventions. The Vietnam War was the most signifi cant of these.
The peaceful conclusion of the Cold War around 1990 was followed by a decade
in which the United States sought a new role for itself on the world stage. There were
military inventions to quell the confl ict in disintegrating Yugoslavia and to try to deliver
lawless Somalia from famine, but there was a new sense of security—and, in hindsight,
complacency. There was no longer any defi ning framework, such as east-west relations,
in international affairs. Terrorism was thought to be a problem that existed far from
home.
The attacks of September 11, 2001, brought an end to the notion that geographic
distance protected the United States. The events of that day represented a great watershed
in U.S. geopolitical history. The United States under President George W. Bush
developed a policy of preemptive engagement: whenever and wherever the country
perceived a threat to its security, it would take military action if necessary to defuse that
threat. That action would be unilateral, if necessary; in its fi rst term, the Bush
administration downplayed the need for diplomacy and partnership. The preemptive
engagement policy was founded mainly on the premise that such actions would prevent
potentially devastating terrorist attacks on the U.S. homeland, perhaps with chemical,
biological, or nuclear (CBN) weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Such threats could
emerge not only from transnational groups like al-Qa’ida but from “rogue states,” most of
whom are on the United States’ list of offi cial state sponsors of terrorism, which includes
North Korea and Iran.
The Bush administration justifi ed the invasion of Iraq in 2003 on the grounds that
Iraq was a state sponsor of terrorism (and had links with al-Qa’ida) and had WMD that it
might use against the United States or its allies, especially Israel. The United States
suffered a great setback in the court of world opinion when no conclusive evidence was
found either of weapons of mass destruction or of links with al-Qa’ida. Worldwide
opinion polls about the United States refl ected the country’s resulting loss of stature.
Detractors also wrote of a new American imperialism, proposing that U.S. post-9/11
actions marked the beginning of a new era of aggressive global involvement for the
country. The Bush administration denied such intentions, insisting that its actions in Iraq
and elsewhere had helped protect Americans at home and strengthen democracy and the
rule of law abroad.
f. Canada’s General Traits
Canada is different in some ways from most other developed countries. It has an
unusual pattern of trade. Most developed nations export mainly manufactured goods and
import a mixture of manufactured and primary products. Canada is among the world’s
top ten MDCs in terms of manufacturing. But despite its exports of automobiles, aircraft,
industrial machinery, and some other manufactured goods, Canada is primarily an
exporter of raw or semifi nished materials, energy, and agricultural products: wood pulp,
timber, petroleum, natural gas, and hydroelectric power are among these. It is a major
importer of manufactured goods, including machinery and equipment, motor vehicles,
and consumer goods.
Another distinctive trait is Canada’s overwhelming dependence on trade with a
single partner, the United States. In 2007, the United States took in 82 percent of
Canada’s exports and supplied 55 percent of Canada’s imports. No other developed
country comes near these percentages of trade with just one other country.
Still another difference is the degree to which the Canadian economy is fi nanced
and controlled from outside the country; Canada is again overwhelmingly dependent on
the United States. About two-thirds of all foreign investment in Canada is American. The
extent of U.S. economic dominance in Canada has long been a sore point with many
Canadians, who resent suggestions that their country is an American “economic colony.”
These irritations are heightened by the degree to which American mass-produced culture
has permeated Canada and by how little Americans seem to know or care about Canada.
Few U.S. schools offer courses on Canada, and a high percentage of American college
students cannot even name Canada’s capital (Ottawa). American news media give little
coverage to events in Canada.
For some time, a movement has been afoot in Canada to achieve a more
predominant position for Canadians within their own economy, to strengthen economic
relations with industrial countries other than the United States, and to heighten cultural
self-determination. But there seems to be no way for Canada to pull away from the
United States without risking its own prosperity. The country’s economy has long been
geared to a close interchange with the gigantic economy next door. This relationship
became even more deeply rooted with the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA), passed in 1994.
Canada has a regional structure with some special problems. The country is
divided between a thinly settled northern wilderness occupying most of Canada’s area
and a narrow, discontinuous band of more populous regions stretching from sea to sea in
the extreme south. These southern regions are very different from one other and
sometimes confl ict politically with each other and with the federal government in
Ottawa. Following is a survey of the Canadian.
g. Atlantic Canada: Hardscrabble Living
The easternmost of Canada’s four main populated areas has strips and pockets of
population, mainly along and near the seacoast in the provinces of Newfoundland and
Labrador, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. These four provinces
are known as the Atlantic Provinces, and three of them (excluding Newfoundland and
Labrador) as the Maritime Provinces. Mountainous wilderness separates their main
populated areas from the more populous and more prosperous Canadian core region in
Québec and Ontario. Prince Edward Island, Canada’s smallest and most densely
populated province, is a lowland with farms and small settlements. It prides itself on
taking the lead in Canada’s ambitious alternative-energy future: the island wants to meet
30 percent of its energy needs from renewable sources, mainly wind power, by 2016. The
main populated areas of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland are in valleys
and upland coastal strips.
Conditions were not always like this. During the fi rst two-thirds of the 19th
century, the Maritime Provinces were a relatively prosperous area with a preindustrial
economy. Local resources supported this development. There were harbors along the
indented coastlines, fi sh for local consumption and export, timber for export and for use
in building wooden sailing ships, and some agricultural land. The region had extensive
trade with Britain and the West Indies. Then a period of economic decline set in. This
area’s ports were so far from the developing interior of the continent that most shipping
bypassed them in favor of the Saint Lawrence ports or the Atlantic ports of the United
States. Halifax in Nova Scotia and Saint John’s in New Brunswick are the main ports of
the region today, but neither is in a class with Montréal or the main U.S. ports.
The fishing industry was long the economic backbone of Canada’s Atlantic
region. Before the beginning of European settlement in the early 17th century, and
probably before Columbus arrived in the Americas in 1492, European fi shing fl eets
worked these waters, primarily on the banks along and near these shores. This area lies
relatively close to Europe, and its waters were rich in fi sh.
Atlantic Canada is a diffi cult environment to farm. The four provinces lie at the
northern end of the Appalachian Highlands and are mainly hilly. Under a cover of mixed
forest, most soils are poor. Agriculture is concentrated in small patches of the best land.
Climate also makes agriculture diffi cult. The Maritime Provinces have a humid
continental short-summer climate, and Newfoundland has a subarctic climate. The entire
region is humid and windy, with much cloud cover and fog. Strong gales are frequent in
the winter. Summers are cool, and colder and less hospitable conditions increase with
elevation; a good part of upland Newfoundland is tundra. Although most areas in the
Maritimes and Newfoundland are agriculturally marginal, there are some lowlands with
better soils, especially in Prince Edward Island and the Annapolis-Cornwallis Valley of
Nova Scotia.
Railroad construction also undermined agriculture in the Maritimes. The rails
prompted settlement of Canada’s interior and brought cheaper farm products into the
Atlantic region. Today, quite a few people in the Maritime Provinces still farm
(especially potatoes, dairy products, and apples), but they do so on a small-scale, part-
time basis while earning their living from other jobs—a pursuit known as “hobby
farming” in the United States.
Having suffered economic setbacks related to natural resources, people of the
Atlantic tried to develop industry. Many small cotton-textile factories were built during
the 19th century, but they failed because of competition from mills in New England,
central Canada, and Europe that were closer to major markets. A coal-mining industry
and an iron and steel plant were developed in Nova Scotia. But in time, the plant closed
and the coal mines declined.
Atlantic Canada is fi nally making an economic comeback in the current century.
Canadian and American tourists alike are drawn to the region’s stark beauty and
picturesque villages. The export of electricity to adjacent provinces and the United States,
especially from Labrador’s large Churchill Falls hydropower installation and from New
Brunswick, is helping. Most important, Newfoundland and Labrador has been
experiencing a boom in offshore oil production and onshore refi ning. The offshore
platforms do not require large numbers of workers, and so Atlantic Canadians are still
leaving the region, relocating especially to the booming “oil patch” around Alberta’s tar
sands. But the surge in the petroleum and nickel industries, again linked to China’s
commodities appetite, doubled the value of Newfoundland and Labrador’s economy
between 1997 and 2007. Federal subsidies also help sustain the Maritime Provinces.
h. Canada’s Core Region: Ontario and Quebec
The core region of Canada, with about two-thirds of Canada’s total population,
has developed in a narrow strip along Lakes Erie and Ontario and seaward along the
Saint Lawrence River. In this area, the Interior Plains of North America extend
northeastward to the Atlantic. Northern parts of the two provinces that share the core
region—Ontario and Québec—include large and little-populated expanses of the
Canadian Shield. Québec has a strip of Appalachian country along its border with the
United States. But most of the core region lies in lowlands bordering the Great Lakes and
the Saint Lawrence River from near Windsor, Ontario, to Québec City, Québec. The
entire lowland area is known as the Saint Lawrence Lowlands.
The Ontario Peninsula between Lakes Huron, Erie, and Ontario is often
recognized as a separate section. Ontario and Québec account for about 40 percent of
products marketed from Canadian farms. Three-fourths of Canada’s total manufacturing
is in this core region, but in the pattern of deindustrialization also seen recently in Europe
and the United States, China’s output has caused factories here to shut down; household
appliances, electrical equipment, plastics, rubber, and textiles have all been hit hard. The
great majority of people work in the service industry, refl ecting the region’s status as the
business and political center of the country.
The two sections of this vital region differ in their agricultural, industrial, and
cultural features. The Ontario Peninsula, which has strong British roots, mirrors the U.S.
Midwest’s crop belts, with corn and livestock production, dairy farming, and specialty
crops like tobacco. Ontario, where about 85 percent of the people speak English as a fi rst
language and only 5 percent speak French as a fi rst language, is the most populous of the
nine mainly Englishspeaking provinces.
In its evolution to industrial dominance, the Canadian core profi ted from a
number of clear advantages over the rest of Canada: superior position with respect to
transport and trade, accessibility to the largest markets, advantageous labor conditions,
and access to signifi cant resources for industry, commercial agriculture, and forestry.
The region has abundant energy. On their descent from the Canadian Shield to the plains,
many high-volume, steeply falling rivers drive one of the world’s largest concentrations
of hydroelectric plants. Major hydroelectric plants are at Niagara Falls, along the Saint
Lawrence River, and at sites on the Canadian Shield, including the James Bay. Coal
requirements are met from nearby Appalachian fi elds in the United States, and oil comes
from Atlantic or Middle Eastern ports by tanker up the Saint Lawrence. Both oil and
natural gas come by pipeline from western Canada.
Among the core region’s greatest geographic advantages are its lowland and
water connections between the Atlantic and interior North America. Rapids on the Saint
Lawrence River long barred ship traffi c upstream from Montréal, but railways were built
in the lowland along the river, and canals constructed in the 19th century bypassed the
rapids to allow smaller ocean vessels to enter the Great Lakes. Finally, in the 1950s, the
river itself was tamed by a series of dams and locks in the Saint Lawrence Seaway
Project. Since then, larger ships have been able to reach the Great Lakes via the river.
The Welland Canal, which bypasses Niagara Falls between Lakes Ontario and Erie by
means of a series of stair-stepped locks, predated the seaway. The canal admits shipping
vessels to the four Great Lakes above the falls. Farther up the lakes, the Soo Locks and
Canals allow ships to pass between Lake Huron and Lake Superior, and natural channels
interconnect Lakes Erie, Huron, and Michigan. The total length of the Saint Lawrence
Seaway and associated waterways is 2,342 miles (3,769 km). It allows cities on the Great
Lakes both in Canada and the United States to serve as international ports, with wheat,
iron ore, petroleum, and durable goods shipped out from about mid-April to mid-
December.
The Saint Lawrence Seaway system has changed the commercial geography of
North America’s heartland in many ways. Through unwanted events, it has also changed
the ecology of the region, particularly with the arrival of zebra mussels. The mussels,
which originated in the Caspian Sea, diffused into these interior waters in the 1980s and
have become a major blight on shipping and machine operations. The bivalves attach
themselves to the intake pipes of irrigation, drinking-water, and power generation
systems, impeding water fl ow and damaging machinery. They also deplete food
resources for native marine life.
i. The Northeast: Center of Power
. The Northeast includes six New England states (Maine, New Hampshire,
Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island), plus fi ve Middle Atlantic
states (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland), and the District
of Columbia. Delaware and Maryland have important historical links with the states of
the American South, but their character today is more like that of the Middle Atlantic
states, so they are included in this region.
About 62 million people, or 20 percent of the national population, lived in the
Northeast (5 percent of the nation’s area) in 2007. The region’s population density is
many times that of the South, Midwest, or West. But the density is much more extreme
within a narrow urban belt stretching about 500 miles (c. 800 km) along the Atlantic
coast from metropolitan Boston through metropolitan Washington, D.C. In this
megalopolis, known as “Boswash” and the Northeast Corridor, seven main metropolitan
areas contain about 40 million people: Boston (4.4 million), Providence (1.6 million),
Hartford (1.1 million), New York (18.8 million, the country’s largest city), Philadelphia
(5.8 million), Baltimore (2.6 million), and Washington (5.2 million). These are major
centers of political decision making, corporations, fi nance, sales, services, and
manufacturing.
Most of the Northeast lies in the Appalachian Mountains and its associated
highlands, but small sections lie in the Atlantic Coastal Plain and the Piedmont. Atlantic
Coastal Plain areas include Cape Cod in Massachusetts, Long Island in New York State,
southern New Jersey, the Delmarva Peninsula (which includes most of Delaware and
Maryland’s eastern shore), and parts of Maryland’s western shore. The plain is low and fl
at to gently rolling, with sand dunes, marshes, and swamps. Soils are sandy and not very
fertile. Broad, deep estuaries (low portions of rivers that have been drowned by the sea)
indent this plain. The largest northeastern seaports are on the estuaries of the Hudson
River (New York), the lower Delaware River (Philadelphia), and the Patapsco River
(Baltimore) near the head of Chesapeake Bay.
Between the Coastal Plain and the Appalachians, the northern part of the
Piedmont extends across Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. The rolling Piedmont,
with generally good soils, is higher than the Coastal Plain but lower than the
Appalachians. The fall line boundary between these two physiographic regions of
Piedmont and Coastal Plain required goods in transit by river to be offl oaded and
reloaded. Along with hydropower resources, this “break of bulk” requirement made the
fall line a logical place to locate settlements. Along the line grew cities including
Washington, Baltimore, Wilmington (Delaware), Philadelphia, Trenton (New Jersey),
and the New Jersey suburbs of New York City.
The old mountains of New England and northern New York form several ranges
characterized by rough terrain, cool summers, snowy winters, and poor soils. The
Adirondack Mountains of northern New York rise from lowlands as a circular mass.
Heavily forested and pocked by numerous lakes, these glaciated mountains reach over
5,000 feet (1,525 m). They are bounded on the east by the Champlain Lowland (named
for Lake Champlain), which extends northward into Canada as a continuation of the
Hudson Valley. East of it, the low Green Mountains take up most of Vermont and run
southward to become the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts and the Litchfi eld
Hills of Connecticut.
Farther east across the narrow valley of the upper Connecticut River, the White
Mountains take up northern New Hampshire and spill into Maine. Here, in the
Presidential Range of New Hampshire’s White Mountains, Mount Washington rises to
6,288 feet (1,917 m). This highest mountain in the Northeast is notorious for rapid
weather changes. Treks to its summit have fooled climbers, sometimes fatally, because of
sudden temperature drops and howling winds. Gusts of greater than 225 miles per hour
(360 km/h) have been recorded on Mount Washington. There are other notable highlands
besides Mount Washington; the Adirondacks and the mountains of New England are
major recreation areas for the Northeast’s urban populations, and their autumn colors lure
tourists.
Between the mountains and the sea, the hilly New England Upland is part of the
Appalachians. Glaciers deposited stones across this area’s soils. Early settlers cleared
stones and trees to farm this area, using the stones to make New England’s famous stone
fences (these are like the hedge rows of Great Britain). Many have been torn down to
make way for modern farming and urban development, but some fences still keep quiet
guard where woodlands have overgrown abandoned farms.
The poor upland soils proved unable to support longterm commercial agriculture,
and the late 18th and the 19th centuries saw a large migration of New Englanders from
unproductive farms to northeastern cities and, especially with the completion of the Erie
Canal in 1825, to more fertile agricultural areas to the west. This migration carried a New
England cultural fl avor across the continent, all the way to the West Coast. The
Appalachians are broken in New York by a narrow lowland corridor called the Hudson-
Mohawk Trough, which is made up of the Hudson Valley, running from New York City
northward to Albany, and the Mohawk Valley, which extends westward from Albany to
Lake Ontario.
Except for Washington, D.C., the largest metropolises of the Northeastern
Seaboard began as seaports, many located at river mouths. The federal capital’s location
was a political compromise of 1790. It was on the border between the agrarian southern
states, with their large slave populations, and the more economically diversifi ed northern
states. The site also placed the capital on the fall line. Many state capitals in the United
States were located as a result of political compromises, while others were situated as
centrally as possible in the states as a convenience for their citizens.
Boston developed differently because its New England hinterland produced little
agricultural surplus. Instead, colonial New England emphasized living from the sea. Its
forests yielded excellent timber for shipbuilding, and both timber and ships were
exported. Cod and other fi sh were once abundant along this coast. Whaling, based
mainly on the Massachusetts island of Nantucket, was important in the 18th and 19th
centuries. A “Nantucket sleigh ride” was the experience boatmen had when they
harpooned a sperm whale and were dragged through Atlantic waters at speeds up to 23
miles per hour (37 kph). New Englanders also developed a wide-ranging merchant fl eet,
trading with far-fl ung partners. Such activities characterized many northeastern ports,
Boston being the largest.
As the American Midwest was settled, especially between 1800 and 1860, its
agricultural surpluses and needs for manufactured goods expanded the trade of New
York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. These ports raced to establish transport connections
into the interior. New York City won, especially because of its access to the
HudsonMohawk Trough, the only continuous lowland passageway through the
Appalachians. The Erie Canal was completed along this corridor in 1825. Connecting
Lake Erie at Buffalo to the navigable Hudson River near Albany, the canal was a key link
in an all-water route from the Great Lakes to New York City. It lowered transport costs
between New York and the Midwest to a small fraction of what they had been and
stimulated growth in the Midwest. In 1853, New York and the growing city of Chicago
were connected by rail along this same route.
The United States’ largest city, New York City is centrally located on the
Northeastern Seaboard’s urban strip midway between Boston and Washington. An
enormous harbor, an active business enterprise, and a central location within the economy
of the colonies and the young United States had already made New York City the
country’s leading seaport before access to the Hudson-Mohawk route gave it an even
more decisive advantage. Superior access to the developing Midwest then moved New
York rapidly to unchallenged leadership among American cities in size, commerce, and
economic impact.
Of the city’s total population today, more than 35 percent are foreign-born, with
the largest contingents coming from the Dominican Republic, China, and Jamaica. Their
growing numbers more than offset the out-migration of longerresident New Yorkers, with
the trends of whites and Asians moving elsewhere in the greater New York region,
Asians moving to the West Coast, retiring whites to Florida, blacks whose families
originated in the South moving back to the South, and some Puerto Ricans returning to
their home island. Immigrants make up more than 40 percent of New York City’s labor
force, including more than half in restaurants and hotels, about 60 percent in construction,
and nearly 70 percent in manufacturing. Most live in the outer boroughs, with two-thirds
of them in Queens or Brooklyn. Whereas New York historically was an ethnic
checkerboard of Irish, Italian, Jewish, Chinese, and other groups, Queens and Brooklyn
are ethnic stewpots where immigrants from numerous countries live cheek by jowl.
Restaurants and other services in these areas are extraordinarily diverse
The Northeast rose to economic dominance through the production of 10 specialty
products. First was clothing design and manufacture, concentrated in metropolitan New
York City. The clothing industry in Manhattan was originally an outgrowth of New
York’s role as an importer of European-made cloth and clothing. Skilled immigrant
workers of the late 19th century, among them Jewish tailors fl eeing persecution in tsarist
Russia, drove this industry forward. There are still clothing manufacturers in the Fashion
District, but their numbers fell by about half between 1995 and 2007, and most of the
vacated space has been converted to studio offi ces and loft apartments.
Buffalo and Pittsburgh are good example of what has happened in the old steel
towns. The opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway in 1959 diminished Buffalo’s
geographic advantage of being the western terminus of the Erie Canal. This began the
downtrend of the city’s industries that culminated with the closing of its Bethlehem Steel
plant in 1983. Free trade and outsourcing continued to eat away at manufacturing. The
city’s population plunged to half its 1950 number, and Buffalo became a fi tting symbol
for the industrial ruin of the Northeast. Images of the weary people of Buffalo regularly
shoveling snowfalls measured in feet rather than inches did little to attract newcomers.
But Buffalo’s fortunes are changing. New businesses include a plant to process corn-
based ethanol, shops to attract tourists to the renovated Erie Canal terminus, and a casino.
Buffalo (population 1.1 million) wants to become a biomedical technology hub,
following the 2006 inauguration of its New York State Center of Excellence in
Bioinformatics and Life Sciences. There is a remarkable contrast between Buffalo’s blue-
collar image of the past and the white coats associated with the center’s search for ways
to treat or prevent serious diseases like Alzheimer’s and cancer.
The term Rust Belt has come to describe parts of the Northeast and Midwest as a
region of manufacturing industries that have become obsolete. This region’s old
smokestack industries—especially the steel and other heavy- metallurgy industries—
experienced depressed sales and profi ts, high unemployment, and in many cases
complete factory shutdowns. These industries have been either replaced with “greener,”
more high-tech industries and services (such as described here in Pittsburgh, Boston, and
North Carolina)—the classic process of deindustrialization that is also typical of Europe
today—or have moved elsewhere in the United States and even abroad. The so-called
Sun Belt of the South and West has been enjoying much faster growth in population and
jobs, including those in manufacturing, in part due to migration from the Rust Belt. The
Sun Belt is an elastic term, but it connotes the region encompassing most of the South
and the West as far north as Denver, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco.
j. The South: Dixieland
Most of the South has a humid subtropical climate, with summers that are long,
hot, and wet. January daytime temperatures average from the 30s Fahrenheit (c. 0°–5°C)
along the northern fringe to the 50s (c. 10°–15°C) near the Gulf Coast and the 60s (c.
15°–21°C) in southern Florida and the southern tip of Texas. More than 40 inches (c. 100
cm) average annual precipitation is characteristic, rising to over 50 inches (c. 125 cm) in
many Gulf Coast and Florida areas and more than 80 inches (c. 200 cm) in parts of the
Great Smoky Mountains. High humidity brings discomfort in both summer and winter.
There are advantages and drawbacks to these climatic conditions. They favor
rapid and abundant forest growth, and forest-based industries are important in the region.
Agriculturally, they provide long growing seasons, heat, and moisture for a wide range of
crops. But insects and pests fl ourish, and heavy rainfall leaches out soil nutrients and can
bring erosion and fl ooding. Florida’s subtropical environment makes it a haven for
hundreds of exotic species of plants and animals that have crowded out and even
eliminated native species. Brazilian pepper and Australian pine are among the more
prolifi c exotic fl ora. Over 200 exotic animal species, many originating as escaped or
released pets, slither, crawl, fl y, and swim across Florida. These include Burmese
pythons, boa constrictors, green iguanas, Cuban tree frogs, vervet monkeys, macaques,
capuchin monkeys, parrots, and cockatiels.
Topographically, most of the South is made up of plains with three major
landform divisions: the Gulf and Atlantic Coastal Plains, the Piedmont, and the Interior
Plains. The Coastal Plain is on the seaward margin from Virginia to the southern tip of
Texas, including all of Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana and parts of the other southern
states except West Virginia. It is low, with large fl at areas near the sea and along the
Mississippi River; in most inland sections, the surfaces are irregular.
The Interior Plains section takes up central and western Texas and all but
easternmost Oklahoma. The Balcones Escarpment of Texas forms an abrupt boundary
between the so-called hill country of the higher Interior Plains and the lower Coastal
Plain. Most of Texas’s larger cities, including Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio, lie on the
Coastal Plain. Irrigation, ranching of angora goats and other livestock, and dry farming of
wheat are important to the rural population of this plains region.
The South’s patterns of population density, urbanism, ethnicity, and income are
distinct. Until recently, this was generally a region of farms, villages, and small cities.
But for the past several decades, the South has been experiencing rapid population
growth, second only to the pace in the West, and its farm population has plummeted. It
has surpassed the Midwest in population density, although both lag behind the Northeast.
Due to the swift growth of many small cities, the South has more small and medium-
sized metropolitan areas than any other region of the country. It has relatively few large
cities, however. The biggest, Dallas– Fort Worth, has 6 million people, followed by
Houston (population 5.5 million), Miami (5.4 million), Atlanta (5.1 million), and Tampa–
Saint Petersburg (2.7 million). These southern cities continue to grow rapidly. The urban
patterns will be discussed in more detail shortly.
The population of the South has less ethnic variety than most other U.S. regions.
The major groups are white Protestants of British ancestry, African American Protestants,
and Mexican American Catholics. White Protestants of Anglo-Saxon origin are the
largest contingent. The original European settlers along the Atlantic were British. Small
groups of Spanish Catholics settled in Florida and Texas, and some French Catholics
settled in Louisiana and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast.
There is a strong agricultural heritage in southern landscapes and cultures, but
change has overtaken tradition. In appearance and land use, the modern South is not
overwhelmingly rural. Over large areas, less than half the land is in farms, and the
region’s population is only about 1 percent agricultural. Farms tend to be small in size
and production. Animal products (especially beef and dairy cattle and broiler chickens)
are much more important than crops in total sales. The leguminous soybean plant, which
adds nitrogen to the soil and can be used for hay, is the most important southern crop. Its
beans are pressed for soybean oil (for use in paints, soap, glycerin, printing ink, and many
other chemical-based products), with the residue (oilcake) fed to cattle and poultry.
Soybeans are use to produce ethanol. Grain sorghum, which has low moisture
requirements, provides cattle feed in drier parts of Texas and Oklahoma.
Most industries in the South are in the Piedmont and adjacent Coastal Plain and
Appalachians. Within this Eastern South Industrial Belt, textiles long had the lead in
manufacturing, with clothing, chemical products, furniture, tobacco products, and
machinery also important. After the 1994 signing of the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA), however, many textile and clothing manufacturers shifted to
Mexico, Jamaica, and other “offshore” manufacturing sites. These were in turn undercut
by lower labor costs in China and elsewhere, particularly after textile trade quotas expired
on January 1, 2005. The immediate and cumulative impacts on textile mills in North
Carolina and other states were ruinous. More than 17,000 jobs were lost in the fi rst three
months, and the dizzying descent continued. With the imported garments costing 80
percent less than what Piedmont loomshops could produce, the factories closed.
A distinct Texas-Oklahoma metropolitan zone includes the two largest urban
clusters in the South, Dallas–Fort Worth and Houston, plus four other metropolises with
populations of about 900,000 or more: San Antonio and Austin, Texas, and Oklahoma
City and Tulsa, Oklahoma. Houston is a seaport by virtue of the Houston Ship Canal (or
Channel). This major port serves Texas and the southern Great Plains and is the main
center for the oil and gas fi elds and the chemical industry of the Gulf Coast. Houston is
one of the country’s largest ports in terms of shipping volume. Dallas–Fort Worth, San
Antonio, and Austin grew along and near the western edge of the Coastal Plain in a
north-south strip of unusually fertile limestonederived soils known as the Black Land
Prairie. Interstate 35, beginning at Laredo on the Mexico border and running north
through San Antonio, Dallas–Fort Worth, and be yond, has borne a huge share of the
truck traffi c associated with NAFTA. A controversial, privately owned 10-lane toll road
known as the Trans-Texas Corridor has been proposed to ease the strain on I-35.
