DISCUSSION.

The article presents discussions by economists on various papers that are published in the May 1, 1953 issue of the journal "American Economic Review." The author states that economist John H. Dales paper is an application of location theory to the problem of the industrial potential of a region. It highlights certain requirements, which must be fulfilled before a region can become industrialized and which might be neglected without a location approach. The author states that Dales has constructed a macroscopic theory in which industrial structures or regions are units and not individual plants. He has, however, refrained from attempting to define the region. Much of the discussion relates to this weakness in the argument deriving from the lack of a precise unit. The author first accepts Dales premise that Central Canada can be distinguished as an economic region and comments on certain conclusions made by Dales. The author makes it clear that the low fuel-electricity consumption ratio in Quebec is attributable to the absence of heavy fuel-using industries and to the presence of industries, which consume large quantities of power. High inputs of either power or fuel are characteristic of plants in early stages of manufacturing and not in consumer goods plants. Thus, the low fuel-electricity ratio is not the result of the attractive force which cheap power has for light manufacturing plants in relation to that of cheap fuel.