Synopsis The great geographical fact on which commerce depends is that different parts of the world yield different products, or furnish the same products under unequally favourable conditions. Hence there are two great results of commerce: the first, to increase the variety of commodities at any particular place; the second, to equalise more or less, according to the facilities for transport, the opportunities for obtaining any particular commodity in different places between which commerce is carried on. Among the difficulties of transport to be overcome we here include all the profits necessarily levied in the transference of goods from hand to hand (profits of exchange).

The variety of products in different places is due either to artificial production, whether by cultivation or manufacture, or to original distribution. The original distribution of minerals of economic value is an important matter for consideration in commercial geography, but under this head we must consider, not merely the latitude and longitude of the place of occurrence, but all the varied conditions, local, political, or historical, which help to render mineral deposits commercially available. Original distribution under the same provisos is likewise the prime consideration in the case of forest products, where the forests have not been planted by the hand of man.