First part of the world review is done! Not much new information here, but I wanted to try my hand at the style of an old geography textbook. Having a turn-of-the-century geography textbook helped a lot when writing this.
The World in a New Century, Section I: The Regions of the United States
Published by the McNally Corporation in Chicago, 1901.
New England:
New England has a population of approximately 9 million people and is comprised of the states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. The major economic activities in the region are lumbering, fishing, and quarrying of stone. The great forests of northern Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine provide much of the region's lumber. However, because of the danger of extensive logging, the states have begun creating forest reserves to protect some forested areas. The fishing industry in New England is the most prized in the United States and primarily operates out of two harbors: Gloucester, Massachusetts and Bucksport, Maine. Fishermen catch all sorts of fish and lobster off the New England coast but sometimes venture as far as Greenland or Iceland for their catch. Recently, disputes with Acadia have disrupted some of the fishing in the region.
The major cities in New England are also the main cities in the region for the manufacturing and shipping of goods. Boston is the largest in the region and it, along with nearby cities such as Chelsea and Cambridge, form the economic center of New England. Boston's harbor is one of the busiest in the naiton and goods from all over the country and the world are shipped in and out of the city every day. Other large cities in New England include Portland and Bucksport in Maine, Manchester in New Hampshire, Hartford and New Haven in Connecticut, and Providence in Rhode Island.
Mid-Atlantic:
The Mid-Atlantic region has a population of almost 24 and a half million people, and is the most densely populated region in the United States. The Mid-Atlantic is home to the two most populous states in the Union, New York and Pennsylvania, as well as four of the country's ten largest cities (New York, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, and Baltimore). The main economic activities of the Mid-Atlantic are mining and manufacturing. The region is very rich in minerals and the extraction of coal, petroleum, salt, and other minerals make up a large part of the wealth that the Mid-Atlantic produces. The petroleum resources in western Pennsylvania deserve special mention as they contain the largest oil fields ever discovered so far. While the recent discovery of oil in Tejas has come close to that of Pennsylvania, the only other place in the world that currently produces as much petroleum is on the western edge of the Caspian Sea around the Russian city of Baku.
The Mid-Atlantic is one of the two main regions along with the Old Northwest that produce most of the manufacturing output in the United States. The Mid-Atlantic is an ideal location for factories due to the closeness of raw materials such as coal from the Appalachian Mountains and the ease of shipment of goods from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean. Numerous cities in the region have thrived because of the boost in manufacturing. Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and Allegheny in the west produce much of the countries iron and steel using shipments of iron from further west in the Great Lakes and coal from Vandalia and central Pennsylvania. Further east, New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore have developed into the most important ports in the nation. Almost all the goods that are exported by the United States go out of either these ports or New Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi River.
Old Northwest:
The Old Northwest has a population of over 23 and a half million people. It is the second most urbanized region in the United States after the Mid-Altantic. With the multitude of rivers crisscrossing the Old Northwest and the connections to the Missouri River, the Mississippi River, and the Great Lakes, the region is now the transportation hub of the country. Goods produced in the farms and mines of the western United States are shipped along the rivers or railroads through the Old Northwest to reach the factories, ports, and markets in the Lower Mississippi or the states on the Atlantic Ocean.
The region itself also has a number of large cities and manufacturing centers, which take advantage of the central location of the Old Northwest within the United States. Chicago and Saint Louis are major centers of the meat packing industry as cattle is brought in from the ranches on the Great Plains. Along the Great Lakes, cities like Detroit and Cleveland are home to steel companies where iron from Marquette and Itasca are brought in. Indianapolis and other cities in Indiana are quickly becoming centers of manufacturing as well thanks to their central location, and Indianapolis has become the center of the nation's new automobile industry.
South:
The South is the largest region of the United States in both area and population. Overall, 27 and a half million people live in the South. The South is made up of those states that seceded to form the Confederate States of America during the National War, plus Tennessee and Missouri. Due to the slow recovery from the devastation to the region in the National War, the South is very diverse economically. The cities and states along the Mississippi River have for the most part recovered and have a bustling shipping industry of goods flowing down the river. New Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi is the largest port on the Gulf of Mexico and one of the largest in the United States. Other important ports in the South are located at Tampa, Pensacola, and Havana.
There is little manufacturing in the interior of the mainland South, and much of its economic activity is devoted to agriculture. Cotton, rice, and other plants suited to the region's lush and humid climate are the main crops that are grown in the interior of the South. The little manufacturing in the interior of the South is concentrated in a strip spanning from Birmingham, Alabama to Atlanta, Georgia. This area has the benefit of access to the coal of the Appalachian Mountains, and so a number of factories have been built in the area.
Culturally, the South is the most racially diverse region in the United States. Because of the institution of slavery, there are millions of negroes living in the South. The coastal towns along the Gulf of Mexico, and Jackson, Louisiana and Cuba in particular, also have a large Ibero-American population. Cuba's Ibero population is a remnant of Spanish colonization of the island. The state of Cuba is the most racially diverse in the country, having a large population of whites including Iberos, negroes, Mongols, Indians, and many people of mixed race.
Southwest:
The Southwest has a population of almost 6 million people. Over one third of the people in the Southwest live in Tejas, which has grown much in the past decades thanks to the oil that was recently discovered there. Much of the remainder of the Southwest is not very densely populated. Most of the Southwest's economy is agricultural, with wheat and corn being the principal crops grown in the region. There is also a large amount of land devoted to raising livestock. The states of Houston and Calhoun are the top two cattle producing states in the United States, while Kearny produces the fifth most cattle. While most of the region is employed in agriculture, the two western states, Colorado and New Mexico, also have a large mining sector. These two states produce much of the gold and silver in the country, and owe much of their population growth to mineral rushes in the 1870s and 1880s.
Oregon:
Oregon is the least populated region of the United States and is home to only 900 thousand people. Part of the reason for this is that Oregon is the furthest from the Atlantic coast where most of the immigrants to the United States arrive, and therefore does not receive much migration from Europe. However, the increasing number of population arriving from Asia and the discovery of gold in the Oregon region are causing the population of the region to increase rapidly. Despite this, there are few large cities in the region and they are mostly concentrated along the coast or along the Columbia River.
Territories:
Along with the states, the United States also possesses a number of territories. Most of these territories are located in the northern Great Plains. These are Shoshone, Washington, Dakhota, and Pahsapa. These territories are sparsely settled by the white man and outside some smaller towns and the railroads are home to many Indians. The settled towns in the Great Plains territories are mostly in Pahsapa and Shoshone along the railroads that connect the Pacific coastal states with the rest of the country. However, recently the discovery of gold and silver in western Washington Territory has led to an increase of population there. With the population growth, these territories are likely to be fully admitted as states soon.
The other territories that the United States possesses are the Trans-Pecos Territory and the Congo Territory. The Trans-Pecos Territory is south of New Mexico and is populated mostly by Iberos. Most of the population of the territory lives in the city of El Paso, as the surrounding land is too arid for proper agriculture. The Congo Territory is an overseas possession in Central Africa that the United States gained in the Congo Conference less than a decade ago. The natives of the Congo Territory are uncivilized negroes, but the land is good for cultivating rubber and other tropical resources and so it is profitable for many American companies to operate here. The Congo Territory also handles some of the shipping along the Congo River, although the largest navigable stretch of the river is blocked from the ocean by a series of falls.