illustrated by starting with some of our own needs, as was
suggested in the topics on page 12. For example, if we need a pair
of shoes, we must have money, which we will suppose that we earn
by farming. In order to farm successfully we must have machinery.
This we also buy in town; but it is manufactured for us in distant
city factories from metals procured from mines and from wood from
the forest. The shoes bought at the store were also made in a
factory employing hundreds of men and women, perhaps in
Massachusetts. They were made from leather from the hides of
cattle raised in the far west, or perhaps even in the Argentine
Republic. The leather is tanned by another industry, and tanning
requires the use of an acid from the bark of certain trees from
the forest. The making of the shoes also requires machinery which
is made by still other machines, the necessary metals coming from
mines. To smelt the metals and to run the factories there must be
fuel from other mines. Meanwhile the workers in all these
industries must be fed and clothed and housed. This means the work
of farmers, food packers, millers and bakers, lumbermen,
carpenters, cotton and woolen mills, clothing factories, and many
others. At every stage transportation enters in,--by team and
automobile truck, by railway, by water. These are only a part of
the activities necessary in order that we may have a pair of
shoes. It would seem that practically every kind of worker and
industry in the world had something to do with it. People in
communities today are indeed very interdependent.

The following item appeared in a newspaper:

HELD BACK BY NEIGHBORS