Geographic Factors Influencing the Manufactural Industries of Upper East Tennessee

This study presents an inventory and analysis of the geographic and socio-economic factors influencing the location and development of manufactural industries in Upper East Tennessee. A combination of many determinants has gradually changed the basic economic structure of the area from that of a modified form of subsistence agriculture to one of manufactural importance within the state and in the United States. Integration of the physical and cultural complexities of the area shows causation for the present and continued position of manufactural prominence. Some of the elementary facts concerning the location of manufacturing which make this area prominent are: (1) this is the area where white man made his first permanent settlement in what is now Tennessee; (2) from its first settlement this area has been the cross roads of transportation from the northeast to the southwest and from the Eastern Piedmont of North Carolina to beyond the Cumberland Plateau of Kentucky; (3) industries tend to locate where a combination of factors such as markets, raw materials, labor, power, and transportation make it economically feasible; (4) manufacturing tends to concentrate geographically once the advantage of an early start has occurred; (5) an attractive industrial environment and governmental influences work together in the location of plants geared to military production.