Costs Of Transportation And Labor example essay topic

547 words
Define the following terms appropriately: Agrarian Revolution Industrial Revolution What was the contribution of Alfred Weber and Von Thune n towards the revolutions? How have their theories been applicable in the United States and Europe? The Agrarian Revolution was a period of time that adopted a "common" land concept, which defined legal rights of ownership and eliminated the "open-field" system of cultivation. This improved the quality and productivity of agriculture because a clear description of property encouraged landlords to use new types of machinery and to experiment with new methods of irrigation, drainage, crop rotation, and the use of fertilizers. These changes did greatly impoverish both landless poor and the small free-holders because from that time on they could exploit resources of "common" land. As a consequence, many of them sold their holdings and either became landless laborers working for the great landowners or moved to the new industrial towns causing a real demographic revolution.

Von Th " une created a model which hypothesized about agricultural land use (pictured). He designed four rings that surround the city. The city is located in the middle within an "Isolated State" which is self sufficient and has no external influences. Dairying and farming occur in the ring closest to the city.

Timber and firewood would be produced for fuel and building materials in the second zone. The third zone consists of fields of crops such as grains for bread. Ranching is located in the final ring surrounding the central city. Beyond the fourth ring lies the unoccupied wilderness. This contributes to today's society where most major cities in the United States and Europe have town centers, a landmark or governmental building may mark this center, and everything revolves around it from social aspects to finances. Without the agrarian revolution, there would have been no industrial revolution because the British farming slowly became more and more efficient between 1650 and 1850.

The term Industrial Revolution derives from the time period between 1750 and 1830 in which Great Britain changed focus from having mostly rural farming towns to more socially oriented society revolved around factory manufacturing. The use of major new machinery inventions such as steam engines, defined this era. Other major advances took place by means of communication, transportation, and social patterns which also greatly influenced the expansion of England. It was Alfred Weber who first developed the general theory of industrial location.

His theory suggests that the point for locating an industry that minimizes costs of transportation and labor requires analysis of three factors. 1. Starting with transportation cost minimization. 2. Then overall cost minimization; by means of labor distortion, in which more favorable sources of lower cost labor may justify greater transport distances. 3.

And finally, profit maximization. To this day cities in the U.S. and all of England use this concept to improve business and economic wealth. I have created a triangle to describe what Weber has hypothesized. Material (per case) Rail Transport Cost Road Transport Cost Iron Ore $. 40/mile $.

44/mile Coal $. 35/mile $. 38/mile Steel $. 30/mile $. 33/mile.