The Amazing Argentine: A New Land of Enterprise
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Title: The Amazing Argentine: A New Land of Enterprise
Author: John Foster Fraser
Release date: October 18, 2012 [eBook #41104]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AMAZING ARGENTINE: A NEW LAND OF ENTERPRISE ***
THE AMAZING ARGENTINE
JOHN FOSTER FRASER
[Illustration]
THE AMAZING ARGENTINE
[Illustration: THE MAYO AVENUE, BUENOS AIRES.]
THE AMAZING
ARGENTINE
A NEW LAND OF ENTERPRISE
BY
JOHN FOSTER FRASER
WITH FORTY-EIGHT PLATES
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
NEW YORK
FUNK AND WAGNALLS COMPANY
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
1. THE INVADERS 1
2. SOME ASPECTS OF BUENOS AIRES 21
3. ROUND AND ABOUT THE CAPITAL 31
4. RAILWAY DEVELOPMENT IN THE REPUBLIC 43
5. SETTLEMENT ON THE LAND 52
6. ARGENTINA'S PART IN FEEDING THE WORLD 63
7. THE CONSTITUTION AND GOVERNMENT 72
8. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE COUNTRY 89
9. "CABBAGES AND KINGS" 101
10. LIVE STOCK IN THE REPUBLIC 116
11. THE STORY OF THE RAILWAYS 134
12. ROSARIO 154
13. CORDOBA AND ITS ATTRACTIONS 158
14. BAHIA BLANCA AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND 176
15. THE FUTURE OF AGRICULTURE 186
16. MENDOZA 199
17. A TRIP INTO THE ANDES 212
18. THE CAMP 223
19. A MIXED GRILL 235
20. TUCUMAN AND THE SUGAR INDUSTRY 248
21. THE INDUSTRIAL SIDE OF THE REPUBLIC 257
22. THE NORTH-EAST COUNTRY 265
23. PROSPECTS AND PROBLEMS 270
INDEX 281
LIST OF PLATES
The Mayo Avenue, Buenos Aires _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Plaza Del Congreso, Buenos Aires 20
The Plaza Hotel, Buenos Aires 22
The Tigre, Buenos Aires Rowing Club 26
Lola Mora Fountain, Buenos Aires 32
La Recoleta 36
The Government Building, La Plata 38
The Southern Station at La Plata 40
In the Great Square at La Plata 40
Statue presented to Argentina by the French Community on
the occasion of the Centenary of Independence 42
Central Argentine Railway Company's Grain Elevators at
Buenos Aires 46
Latest Type of Passenger Locomotive 50
Latest Type of Dining Car 50
View of Grazing Lands 54
A Drinking Place on an _Estancia_ 54
Branding Calves on an _Estancia_ 60
A Group of Gauchos 64
The Chamber of Deputies 74
The Kindergarten at Mendoza 78
Ox-Carts in the Argentine 90
A Typical Argentine Public Park 100
A Regatta near Buenos Aires 110
A Fine Argentine Bridge 114
Breaking-in Horses in the Argentine 120
Interior of Dining Car, Central Argentine Railway 134
The Statue of Christ on the Argentina-Chili Frontier 148
Plaza Constitution Station at Buenos Aires 150
The Rosario Express, Central Argentine Railway 156
On the Way to Market in Cordoba 162
The Ninth Green at Alta Gracia 166
In the Courtyard of the Monastery at Alta Gracia 166
The Hotel at Alta Gracia 170
A Typical House in Cordoba Province 174
A Street in Bahia Blanca 176
The Elevators at Ingeniero White 180
Plaza Riverdavia, Bahia Blanca 182
A Bahia Blanca Bank 184
The Town Hall at Bahia Blanca 184
Conveying Alfalfa to a Railway Station 194
The Entrance to the Park at Mendoza 200
The Promenade in Mendoza Park 202
The Grape Harvest in the Suburbs of Mendoza 204
In a Mendoza Bodega 208
"Chico" in Charge 212
A Corner of the English Club at Mendoza 212
The Hotel at Inca 218
The Inca Bridge in the Andes 220
General View of an _Estancia_ 224
A Gaucho and his Family 226
La Rambla, Mar Del Plata 234
The Esplanade, Mar Del Plata 238
A Historic Building: "Casa Independencia," at Tucuman 250
The Statue of San Martin at Tucuman 256
The Longest Girder Bridge in the Republic, near Santa Fé 266
THE AMAZING ARGENTINE
CHAPTER I
THE INVADERS
It was on a boat which was laden with bananas and running from Colon, on
the Isthmus of Panama, to New York.
The steward called me at dawn. He thought I was mad because I stood in
pyjamas without apparent heed of the mirky drizzle. Beyond the sad
waters there was little to see but a low-lying and dreary island with a
melancholy lighthouse. No vegetation brightened the scene. There was no
gorgeous sunrise. There was nothing but a lump of barrenness heaving out
of the sea. But this was the island of San Salvador, the western land
which Columbus first touched when he sailed to find the Indies.
There are now near one hundred and fifty millions of people of European
descent in the Americas. And a little glow came into my imagination that
rain-swept morning when I felt I was the only traveller on the boat who
had crawled forth to gaze at San Salvador. I tried to picture what
thoughts must have crowded the mind of Columbus when he sighted this
shore. He never knew what he had discovered for Spain. He could never
have dreamt he was the first in the greatest invasion the world has ever
witnessed.
A year later I was on an Atlantic liner. The fo'c'sle was thronged with
poor Spaniards from Vigo and poor Portuguese from Lisbon. In the voyage
across the Atlantic I had watched them in the steerage--tawny-visaged,
easygoing men, and broad-set, figureless women, sprawling, gossiping,
drowsing. To the accompaniment of an accordion they lifted their voices
in song on the balmy, starlit evenings whilst the ship churned through
the tropical seas.
Another misty morning and I climbed on deck. Saloon passengers were
tucked in their bunks. But all the steerage had turned out and were
crowding the foredecks, and were gazing at a dim strip of land and
watching a blinking light. The land was the coast of Brazil, and the
light was the harbour of Pernambuco, which means "the Door of Hell."
The immigrants raised a long-drawn shout of joy. They hailed Latin
America. There was the country of which they had heard so much. They had
broken with the Old World. Four hundred years ago their ancestors came
across these seas with eyes greedy for gold. Now they came, not to
snatch gold from temples or to terrorise the natives into showing where
the metal could be found, but to work on sugar plantations, to nurture
the coffee plant, to rear bananas, to do the humble work in the building
of towns and the construction of railways, to toil in the jungles, to
sit in the saddle and round up cattle on the prairies. They had come to
the New World to get gold by industry.
How much we talk and write about the enterprise and colonising power of
the Teutonic races, and how prone we are to dismiss the Latin races as
effete and played out! But our generalisations will not bear
examination. The spirit of adventure cannot have left Italy and Spain
and Portugal. Every year hundreds of thousands of people sail from those
countries across the Atlantic.
We speak of North America as Teutonic--made prosperous by the stock of
northern Europe--and South America as Spanish. Latin America, however,
does not all lie south of the Panama Canal. We must begin to reckon it
from the territory line which separates the United States from Mexico.
Southwards from the banks of the Rio Grande the Latin tongue is spoken,
chiefly Spanish, but with much Portuguese in Brazil, and Italian in
places right down, through the Torrid Zone, the heavy tropics, reeking
with luxuriant vegetation, to the bleak and rocky, inhospitable Tierra
del Fuego.
There are millions of Latins. They have set up half a score of
Republican governments. The wealthy world slowly and then impetuously
realised the possibilities of this strangely diversified region. Untold
gold has been poured forth to develop it and get quick return.
It is not stories of treasure which bring a glint into the eye of
modern men. It is enterprise and development which appeal. There are
cattle to be reared on the ranches of Mexico; there is rubber in Peru;
there are nitrates and fabulous mineral wealth in Chili and the
neighbouring lands; there are cotton and sugar and coffee in the mighty
sweep of Brazil; there are the illimitable wheat areas of Argentina, and
cattle rearing and the giant possibilities in supplying Europe with
frozen meat; there is the opening up of immense areas by networks of
railroads.
"The stuff is there; it has only to be got," says the man who knows and
talks with the fire of enthusiasm.
South America is not the land of the future. It is the land of to-day.
Nowhere in the world is the speculator, the investor, more busy than in
Latin America. The tales told by the first Spaniards are baby talk to
the stories told to-day by those who have been and seen and are
fascinated. Of course it is overdone. Of course there is exaggeration.
Of course some of the jewels in El Dorado are useless stones. Of course
some of the caves of Aladdin are found empty. But what the modern world
ranks as precious is in abundance.
I like to conjure a contrast between the little barques of a few hundred
tonnage bobbing on unknown seas with the big fifteen-thousand tonners
which make their ports of call according to time-table. The early
invaders went into the unknown, crept along unmapped coasts, battled
with savages, and died like flies before the scourge of fever. The
whole story of the conquest and settlement of the Americas is one of
slow victory through a mist of tragedy. The invaders of other days left
their native lands with little hope to return. The invaders of to-day
set forth waving an au revoir to their friends on the dock side.
The man with the flimsiest imagination can think of the tiny craft,
ill-lit, ill-furnished, with scurvy-providing food, running before the
trade winds, lolling with idle sails in the doldrums, and with
uncertainty as constant companion. To-day the huge vessels scorn the
tides. Aflame with electric light they press through the dusk, and the
ship's orchestra plays ragtime music. You cross the Equator to the tune
of a Gaiety light opera. Sultry afternoons are relieved with
exhilarating deck sports. The warmth of the dinner hour is softened by
the whirl of electric fans. In the evening a space on deck is enclosed
and hung with the flags of all the nations, and dancers in fancy dress
whirl blithely on the powdered floor. These are the circumstances of the
modern invasion. The journey is a holiday with nothing of grim adventure
about it.
What Latin America means to-day is told in the personalities of the
passengers. There are the rich Argentines, after six months in Europe,
returning to Buenos Aires, occupying the cabins de luxe. They offer you
the information how much they are paying, contribute largely to the
sports fund, and their ladies dress with frank display. Whether Spanish
or English they are proud of the name of Argentine, and never weary
telling of the progress of their country. They have open contempt for
their Portuguese neighbours in Brazil. The wealthy Brazilian men,
swarthy and fat and bejewelled, do not join the deck games, but, with
cigar between lips, saunter the decks, leering at every woman with a
passable countenance. The Argentines thank God there is no nigger blood
in their veins. The Brazilians retaliate they could buy the Argentines
up. Care must be taken not to mix the two nationalities at the ship's
tables. Each nation sports its own flag. Sometimes rivalry threatens
tragedy.
There is the Englishman "with interests in Argentina" going out to look
after his property, frequently an _estancia_, or ranch, purchased when
land was cheap, and before the boom came. Now a railway cuts through his
property, and it has increased seventy-fold in value. Sometimes he
mentions drought; occasionally he shudders at the mention of locusts.
But he recalls the state of things when he went out thirty or forty
years ago "with not much more than a bob," and now he has a fortune made
out of meat shipped to Europe, and his only regret seems to be the
iniquitous amount of death duties which will have to be paid by his
heirs.
"Argentina is not what it was," he tells you. That means the winning of
a fortune is going to be increasingly harder to this and subsequent
generations. But he is a fine type of Englishman, for he went forth
before South America had grown beyond its monthly revolution, when the
continent chiefly bred restlessness amongst the Spanish settlers, and
when life and prosperity was a gamble. He has come through the fire.
Foresight, daring, and good luck have swung him, as they have swung
thousands of others, into affluence. He has "retired." He lives at home
in Belgravia, and gives fine dinner parties. But he keeps an eye on
Argentine stock, and when you encounter him in the club he repeats that
"Argentina is not what it was, but still----" and then he makes you wish
you could place your hand on some of the plums that remain.
There is the rich Argentine who shows what he is made of by insisting
upon everybody in the smoking-room drinking champagne at his
expense--and he is uncomplimentary if anybody deliberately refuses his
hospitality. There is the man who hires a band to play to him during the
voyage. There is the delicate lady who has a special cow on board so
that she may be sure of fresh milk. The boat carries a cow so that the
children may have milk. The charge per pint for the milk is high. "Why,"
said one passenger when he heard what the price was, "I think I will
give my children champagne; it will be cheaper."
British gold has flowed like water into South America to make the
dormant region fruitful. British interests are colossal. The United
States has not taken much of a hand in development, partly because the
Latins do not love their northern neighbours, and partly because the
financiers of the States have been sufficiently occupied in their own
country. Three hundred million British pounds sterling has been invested
in Argentine railway and tramway companies, and there are on board men
who manage the lines--tall, stalwart, clear-skinned Englishmen, with
cool nerve and steady eye.
There are the big _estancia_ men, proud and ambitious, who pay enormous
prices for famous race-horses and get the best breeding stock from home
in cattle and sheep, no matter what competition forces the price up to.
There are shrewd men going out on behalf of syndicates to throw their
eyes round the country and scent out possibilities for money-making on
the grand scale. In the free talk of the smoking-room they speak with
vagueness of what their special mission is. There are the men who have
been charged to take control of city development schemes--for all ports,
towns, and cities in South America are crazy for development, and are
piling their backs with debt to achieve their desires. There are the men
who represent English firms who are intent on extending their
connections or in establishing branches. There are engineers, with jobs
in the far interior, proceeding to fill five-year contracts. There are
young bank clerks, flushed with increased salary, exchanging London for
a pampa town and scarcely realising they will find living three times as
expensive as at Bromley. There are the men who laughingly acknowledge
they have no direct mission except that they intend to see what they
can pick up. But they are mostly a good brand of Briton, well set, and
with courage in the veins. And when one remembers the growing Latin
population, and listens to captivating explanations about potentialities
and hears what has been accomplished--more wonderful in the making of
cities than a tale out of the Thousand and One Nights--there is the fact
in the background that all this continent must long have continued to
lie undeveloped if it had not been for the constant and confident inflow
of British money.
Beyond the rails are the second-class passengers, folk of humbler aim,
but going to play their part in the land of adventure. But, above all,
are the third class, the steerage--few British here--travelling to South
America with little but hope and muscle to do the labourer's part. It is
labour the country needs to-day more than capital. In the spring of the
southern hemisphere the Atlantic is trailed with ships packed with
Italians, Spaniards, and Portuguese. The continent swallows them. They
are men of courage, or they would never have gone forth. They take with
them their fiery Latin temperament and fierce political, frequently
anarchist views. The native Indians are mostly too cow-like to be of
much use in industry. The millions of negroes in tropical Brazil are too
lazy to be relied upon. Labour is the need, the ever-pressing need.
Emissaries are busy in southern Europe booming South America and filling
the boats which sail from Lisbon and Vigo and Genoa--chiefly from Genoa,
for the Italian is the ideal immigrant for a warm clime. He is
industrious, sober, frugal.
All the towns along the South American coastline have futures. They talk
about the future, always the future, and are preparing for it. Swung in
a basket from the deck of the liner, I boarded a tug and went ashore at
Pernambuco. The buildings which stood were decrepit, as though erected
by the original Portuguese, like their ramshackle homes on the other
side of the ocean, and they had done nothing to them since except an
occasional smear of pink, blue or yellow colour-wash. Most of the place
was in ruins; whole streets were literally choked with débris,
suggesting there had been a frightful earthquake, or that a
revolutionary episode had perpetrated dire havoc. In fact, Pernambuco
was in the throes of improvement. The first necessity of all these South
American towns is not a system of drainage but an Avenida--a wide main
thoroughfare with bedizened buildings on either side, and cafés and
bands and electric lights and motor-cars and a theatre. They have begun
with a theatre. But the ways of Western civilisation have travelled so
far because, instead of drama and opera being presented, the theatre is
devoted to kinema entertainments.
As though cleared with a hundred cannon, there is a way right through
the town; this is where the Avenida is to be. Open matchbox tramcars,
drawn by weedy mules, rumble over uneven metals. The next time, however,
I visit Pernambuco electric cars will whiz along the roads. There are
no cabs or carriages, even of ancient pattern, to be hired; but there
are plenty of motor-cars. There is a breakwater built on a coral reef;
yet huge harbour works are in progress, and before long liners instead
of lying outside will be fastened to the dock side. There are big shops
where you can buy most things, including the inevitable picture post
cards, though you pay twopence each for post cards of a kind which you
can buy for two a penny at home. I paid 1s. 8d. for a drink for which no
hotel at home would have charged me more than 6d. The neighbourhood is
rich in vegetation, but potatoes and fruits are imported from Portugal.
The people are town proud. They are proud of Brazil. The Brazilian flag,
with its yellow ground and star-spangled blue globe in the centre, waves
everywhere.
The next day we were at Bahia, picturesquely reclining on a wooded hill.
It used to be the great port in the slave trade, and most of the
inhabitants are negroes. Indeed, it must not be forgotten that most of
the population are negroes, or negro Indians, or negro Portuguese, or a
mixture of all three. However, it is only the Portuguese, a mere handful
in the total, who exercise political influence in the country. On the
boat came many Bahians. All down the coast, whilst we were losing the
European invaders, we were taking on board and losing Brazilians. Most
of them were podgy, and an inky tinge on their skins indicated there was
mixture in their blood.
The healthy sports which had entertained the English travellers on the
Equator were things of the past. There was a new sport, and it was
played in the smoking-room all day long and far into the night, when
most of us had gone to bed. The rattle of the dice-box never ceased.
Gambling was in the veins, and the English sovereign was constantly
shuffled from hand to hand on the green baize tables. There was
baccarat, first for low stakes and then for high. There were two glib
Yankee-Negro-Spaniards who had such luck that spectators shrugged
shoulders and exchanged glances. In a single game they netted £150, and
one young Englishman was a loser by £80.
From gambling at the tables one turned to talking about gambling in the
country. The enormous liabilities to foreign countries are all incurred
in a great gamble that the hinterlands will yield produce which will pay
for all and leave massive surpluses. The coffee trade of Brazil is
immense. But all merchants do not make their incomes by watching and
nursing the market. That is too slow. Transactions are decided quite as
often by the throw of the dice as by negotiation and bargaining.
Reckless, far removed from business principles, all this is; but it
bespeaks a buoyancy of belief that, notwithstanding the lapse of luck,
there is a bottomless well of prosperity to be dipped into in the
natural productions of the country. It is scarcity which breeds
timidity; it is the confidence of affluence which occasions waste.
Of course there was much talk about Rio de Janeiro, the city with the
most gorgeous setting in the southern hemisphere.
"Rio harbour is the most beautiful in the world," said the Brazilian.
"It cannot be a patch on Sydney harbour," said the Australian, who had
never seen Rio.
"Tut!" said the Brazilian, who had never seen Sydney.
It was in the fall of an exquisite Sunday afternoon that our glasses
caught sight of the hills around Rio. As we approached and ran past
picturesque islands a wonderful panorama was unfolded. The scenery was
unlike any other scenery in the world. The hills, radiant with
equatorial vegetation, rose like strange humps out of the sea. In the
background giant mountains reared their heads in the crimson-grey clouds
of approaching evening. The picture was not like real scenery. It was
like the realisation of a disordered imagination. I would say it was
like an imitation of Turner, were the illustration not so trite. Then I
thought there was something Chinese about the outreness of the
landscape. Then the sun went down in a hurry, and the background was a
weird purple. The ship dropped anchor, and the front part of Rio town, a
tumble of fantastic red and yellow washed houses, was for all the world
like a drop curtain to a stage. I felt we had slipped into another
world--and I am not given to rhapsody.
A thousand lamps began to blink along the esplanade which curves to the
bend of the bay. A thousand lights pricked the hill sides. There were
two big black Brazilian warships, and somebody had to tell the old story
how two battleships were sent out to visit the Brazilian convict island
in the Atlantic, and how one returned with the awful story that the
island had disappeared, for they sailed straight for it and it had gone,
whilst later on it was learnt that the other vessel had certainly found
the island, for it got piled up on the rocks. Gaily illuminated launches
scurried about whilst our liner was slowly being berthed alongside the
quay.
"Ah!" cried the Brazilian to me, whilst his eyes glowed brightly, "say
that Rio is the most lovely harbour in the world!"
"There's nothing to shout about," interrupted the Australian, "alongside
Sydney harbour; and you've seen Sydney harbour," he added, turning to
me.
As a sort of amateur Solomon, I was turned to for judgment. My first
comment was to laugh. I had seen the two harbours which are each claimed
by their champions to be the grandest thing Nature has ever
accomplished. It was amusing to witness the fervour of the two men, as
though they had a hand in the making of these famous harbours. They were
both of the stuff which leads men to believe that for any other country
to have pretensions to beauty is just dull-witted boastfulness.
"Well," I remarked, "I think Vigo harbour is charming."
"Oh, Vigo!" they both exclaimed in disgust.
"And there is something to be said for the Golden Gate leading to San
Francisco," I added.
"But the Golden Gate and any other place is not in the same street with
Sydney harbour," blurted the Australian rather angrily, though he had
never seen the Golden Gate. "It cannot be," he said decisively.
"But what do you really think of Rio compared with Sydney?" asked the
Brazilian, who saw I was attempting to be funny at the expense of them
both.
"I'll tell you," I said, actually throwing half a cigar overboard, for I
was called upon to give a verdict on one of the most debatable subjects
in the world. "It is like passing judgment on two lovely women. For
grand, impressive spectacular effect, being hit right between the eyes
with stupendous gorgeousness, seeing Rio harbour at the hour of sunset
is the most wonderful sight in the world."
The Brazilian smiled, and the Australian made a contemptuous noise with
his lips.
"But hold," I added. "You see all the beauty of Rio harbour at one view.
It is like suddenly coming face to face with an imperial lady of
dazzling attractions. When you have seen her you have seen everything.
Sydney harbour does not knock you over with bewilderment of beauty like
Rio does. It is more calm, less turbulent; it impresses you. The more
you know it the more it impresses you. And it has lovely arms,
stretching up between soft woodlands, as peaceful as the best bits of
the Thames. Rio has nothing like that. No, no; I'm not competent to pass
judgment. You two gentlemen can go on fighting over the matter, as I
dare say the people of your two countries will continue to do, till the
crack of doom. I admit the unrivalled grandeur of Rio, but personally I
have more affection for the grace and the delights of Sydney."
The Brazilian bowed politely. The Australian wanted to argue I had ceded
too much to Rio. Happily, just then a group of friends came on board to
rush me off to a dinner party on shore.
Rio will always remind me of Imre Kiralfy, the White City, and Earl's
Court. There are some narrow, old European-like streets that recall
places on the other side of the Atlantic: the houses high and sombre and
with a little mystery behind the shutters. But most of Rio is rampantly
new and garish. The people have driven a magnificent Avenida right
through the heart of the city, and hang the expense! The piles of
buildings, hotels, public offices, great stores along this Avenida are
generally eccentric in architecture--and there comes the feeling that
here these transplanted Latins, with a strain of negro in their veins,
are struggling to express themselves as a new people. The wonderful
thing is that five years ago this Avenida was not.
Nothing that the Riviera has can outvie the esplanade, broad, well made,
with miles of bright gardens and statues--and the motor-cars whiz along
at the maddest, breakneck pace. There is one exquisite avenue lined with
nothing but palm trees. Many of the houses, designed surely by someone
who has built palaces for pantomimes, are half buried behind splashes of
prodigal tropical vegetation. Everything is ornate, showy. From the
standpoint of British comfort the buildings are gaudy palaces, lacking
real ease. But always one has to remember one is in the tropics.
I know no place so dazzling as Rio. Behind all the glitter, however,
there is gold. There is commerce, abounding speculation, the
devil-may-care assurance of the gambler. Broad ways, electric car
services, hundreds of expensive motor-cars, extravagant restaurants,
ladies laden with jewels, the men eager, all tell the opening chapter in
the story of Brazil's future. In the cool Strangers' Club I met men of
the Saxon breed, quiet Englishmen, quiet Americans, representatives of
syndicates with millions of money at their backs, negotiating,
wire-pulling, securing concessions for railroads, for developing
stretches of that great back country of Brazil, as little explored as
Central Africa, but the possibilities of which the world is realising
and will scramble hungrily to turn into profit. What Brazil has
accomplished so far is but the turning of the key in the door.
The morning comes with a gasp, and a flavour of old oil is in the air.
The heavy stillness makes one recite the agony of the Ancient Mariner.
We are leaving the ocean, and the steamer is churning a way up an
ochreish river, banked on one side, but with a stretch of malarious
jungle on the other. We are making for Santos, and an old German who
rests his elbows on the rail tells how he has known this coast for
thirty years, and how, in the old days, it reeked with yellow fever;
how whole ships' crews went down before the scourge, and how no
passenger boats dared lie at Santos for the night, but always slipped
down to the mouth of the river in the evening so that fresh air could be
obtained.
Now drainage has done wonders, and Santos, a great export town for
Brazilian coffee, is improving itself. I get into conversation with the
man who has been engaged to settle in Santos and see that the place is
improved. The river is deep, serviceable, and runs far inland. Casting
my eye over the flat lands, matted with vegetation, and dotted with many
a wretched nigger shanty, I have a vision of the time when docks will be
delved and many of the riches of Brazil will find their outlet to the
world by this gateway. Great wharves are on the river front at Santos.
The town, however, is in a hugger-mugger of change. The Brazilians seem
to lounge round, but they are forging for the future. Men who have been
with us for a fortnight hasten ashore. They have eagerness. They are off
by the quaint hill-climbing railway to San Paulo, high perched, healthy,
throbbing with trade. Others are bent for the interior, away from their
kind, to seek their fortunes.
"And that's the end of my six months' leave," says a red-faced
Englishman with a sorrowful smile. "I lived away back there for three
years, and never saw or talked to another Englishman. I've been home for
my holiday, and now it will be another three years before I come back
from the plantations. Good-bye. I'll hunt you up when I'm in London
again." Off he goes--one of the brave men of the world.
A peep at Monte Video, the neat capital of the miniature Republic of
Uruguay, and then the black-green of the ocean we have been travelling
for three weeks is left behind, and we are forcing a way up the yellow
waters of the River Plate. A river; but for hours there is no land in
sight, so wide is the mouth of this great stream. And shallow, for at
intervals the steamer shivers as she bumps on the bottom.
"That is all right," says the captain, "for we do not mind a couple of
feet of mud."
The journey of the new adventurers is nearing its end. Shipboard
friendships are sworn to be eternal. The ship's sports are long over,
and the prizes have been distributed. The fancy dress ball on deck is a
memory. There is the distribution of largesse amongst those who have
made things pleasant. Cabin passengers are light-hearted. The throng of
Spaniards and Italians in the steerage are silent and strangely
impressed. They were sad when they left the old lands; they were happy
during the voyage; now the mystery of the unknown is laying hold of
them. We pass a crowded emigrant ship from Italy, and cheers are
exchanged.
Out of the haze of the hot day rises the low land, Argentina. We see the
buildings of La Plata, once intended to be the capital of the country.
The ship makes strange zigzags, for it is following a channel known
only to the pilot. There rises a bank of smoke. As we get nearer we run
into shipping. From the background emerge tall buildings, white mostly,
and recalling the skyscrapers of the United States. So slowly,
laboriously, the good ship _Avon_, which has behaved so well, is brought
to rest in front of Buenos Aires. It is night, but the wharves are all
commotion. There is the shrieking of tugs. There is the shout of excited
Argentines, but their garb is south European. Beyond the Custom House
can be seen hastening motor-cars and whizzing electric tramcars. And
here is a newspaper man, wanting an interview. We are entering "the
amazing Argentine."
[Illustration:
_Photograph by H. G. Olds, Buenos Aires._
PLAZA DEL CONGRESO, BUENOS AIRES.]
CHAPTER II
SOME ASPECTS OF BUENOS AIRES
The Argentines call their city of Buenos Aires the Paris of the southern
hemisphere. It has a population nearing a million and a half, which is
greater than that of any other town below the line of the Equator. The
people promise that in time it will overtake London.
You insult an Argentine if you mix him up with Chilians, Brazilians, and
other South Americans. He does not thank you for being reminded his
father sailed from Italy, or his grandfather from Spain. He has no
affection for any old land from which his sires came. The beginning of
the world for Argentina was in May, 1810, when the Republic was set up.
He has no pride of historic race. When he makes money and visits Europe
it is not to find the ancestral home in Spain or Italy. It is to have a
good time in Paris. When he takes his family to Paris it is not to spend
three, five, or six months. It is to spend three, five, or six hundred
thousand pesos--and the value of a peso is one shilling and eightpence.
When the pesos have flown he returns to Argentina and makes more.
The Argentines are a dignified people. They accept the English because
in round figures five hundred millions of British capital in gold have
aided in developing the country. They dislike the citizen of the United
States because the big brother Republic of the north patronises them,
and they need nobody's help. They have a contempt for all other Latins
beneath the Isthmus of Panama, particularly the Brazilians. They are
conscious of their own qualities.
And the visitor blinks, and rubs his eyes, and admits the wonders of
Argentina. If his acquaintance with geography is casual he has shrugged
his shoulders at South American Republics, where they have revolutions
every six weeks, and where tawny Spaniards in quaint costumes drive
mules and die from difference of opinion with other Spaniards.
Then he goes to "B.A."--the familiar description of Buenos Aires--and he
finds he has landed in a rampantly modern American-cum-European city.
There is none of the sloth of the Southern, no checking of business
between noon and three to pass in siestas.
It is a busy city. The port is thronged with shipping, mostly British.
High-shouldered elevators stick out long tongues, and streams of wheat,
grown on the plains of the interior, pour food for Europe into the
holds. Trucks of cattle grunt through the noisy railway yards. There are
huge killing establishments, and animals go to their death by the many
thousand every day with a celerity which would awaken a Chicagoan. There
are mighty avenues of chilled and frozen meat. Labour-saving machinery
carries it on board the steamers which hasten across the Atlantic,
carrying cheap beef to the London and Liverpool markets. Commerce is
conducted on the latest scientific lines. The North Americans have
nobbled the meat trade, and the Jews have control of the wheat market.
[Illustration:
_Photograph by H. G. Olds, Buenos Aires._
THE PLAZA HOTEL, BUENOS AIRES.]
Buenos Aires is the mart where the produce of the rich back-lands is
bartered. It levies a heavy toll. The most imposing business buildings
are the banks--national banks, British, German, French, Spanish, and
Italian banks. In and about Reconquista are these banks, ever busy. Near
by are the rival shipping offices, a glut of them. The offices of the
great railway companies are enormous. Wide-spreading premises exhibit
the latest and best agricultural machinery that Lincolnshire and
Illinois can produce. There is the hustle of commerce. The streets are
as narrow and as crowded and as vital as within the City of London.
There is earnestness about the men.
The Argentine is sombre in manner. He dresses in conventional black. A
light waistcoat, a gay tie or fancy socks, is bad form. You cannot tell
the difference between a millionaire and one of his clerks, except that
the former has an expensive motor-car and the latter hires a taxi or a
victoria, or travels by electric tramcar. At every corner you see
evidence of prosperity, of successful money-making. And money speaks in
"B.A." as loudly as it does in New York.
Folk of the Saxon breed tend to scoff at the decadence of the Latin
race. But there is something revivifying in the transplanting of a
people. We have evidence in our own colonies. The man of Spanish descent
in the Argentine is not always the spry fellow he thinks himself; but he
has dropped the cloak of sluggishness which enwraps Spain. He is often
rich; he lives in a gorgeous residence; his extravagances are beyond
those of a Russian archduke. He is polite and hospitable.
But the wealthy Spanish Argentine is not the creator of his own wealth.
I heard of only one case of a Spanish Argentine owing his great fortune
to commercial enterprise. The fortunes of most of these Argentines come
from land. Their grandfathers got immense areas by the easiest means.
Properties were so enormous that extent was not reckoned in acres, or
even square miles, but by leagues. But a hundred leagues, however good
for cattle or sheep, or wheat growing--what was its value a couple of
hundred miles from a port? Then came British railways. They pierced the
prairies. The land bounded in value, tenfold, a thousandfold. Other
people came in; first shrewd Scotsmen; then industrious Italians; then
Englishmen bent on becoming _estancieros_. Their children are
Argentines. But the mighty fortunes are mostly in the possession of the
early Argentines--those who were settled fifty and more years ago. They
have sat still and seen their land blossom in value. They pay no income
tax; there is no tax on unearned increment. Mr. Lloyd George was once
in the Argentine, associated with a land development company. That,
however, is another story.
Hundreds of thousands of immigrants pour into the Republic every year.
They come from every land on earth. Mostly do they come from Spain and
Italy. Italy provides the greatest number, and splendid colonists they
are. Though the language will always be Spanish, the race is rapidly
becoming Italianised. There is a commingling of the sterner stuff from
Europe. So in this rich land--rivalling Canada and Australia in
productiveness--there is being blended a new people, keen, alert,
successful, ostentatious, pagan--a people that has a destiny and knows
it.
The Argentines are town proud. You are not in Buenos Aires a couple of
days before you are bombarded with the inquiry, "Don't you think this is
a beautiful city?" It is not that; but it is an interesting city.
In the oldest quarters the streets are narrow, after the Spanish style.
So narrow are they that, with electric cars jingling along them,
vehicles are allowed to journey only one way. To reach a shop by
carriage it is sometimes necessary to drive along three and a half sides
of a block of buildings. Funny little policemen, brown faced, blue clad,
and with white gaiters and white wands, direct the traffic. In the
Florida--the Bond Street of "B.A."--all wheeled traffic is prohibited
between the hours of four and seven in the afternoon, so that shoppers
may have an easier way.
Most of the streets are called after Argentine provinces, or
neighbouring republics, or national heroes, or some politician or rich
man who can influence the authorities. When a popular man has lost his
popularity the remnant of his fame is obliterated by the street called
after him being named after someone else. It is as though the Government
at home decided to change Victoria Street, Westminster, into the Avenida
Asquith, with the prospect of its being altered later on to the Calle
Bonar Law.
Wide plazas decorate the city. Vegetation is luxuriant, and statues are
numerous. The Plaza Mayo is not called after an Irish peer, but after
the month of May, 1810. The shops are as big as those in London.
Argentina manufactures practically nothing, and all the lovely things
have to be imported from Europe. The hotels are imitations of those in
Paris. The restaurants are on a par with the best we have in London. A
Viennese band plays whilst you have Russian caviare and the waiter is
asking your choice in champagne. But everything is expensive. A man
needs three times the salary in Buenos Aires to live the same way he
would live in London. If you calculate exchange rates you go mad. It is
best to count the peso (1s. 8d.) as a shilling, and then remember that
you are spending your shilling in South America, where things are dear.
You can get a modest luncheon for 10s.; but you will pay 2s. for a
bottle of beer, and 3s. 6d. for a cigar worth smoking.
[Illustration:
_Photograph by A. W. Boote & Co., Buenos Aires._
THE TIGRE, BUENOS AIRES ROWING CLUB.]
Yet nobody minds. Immense sums are being spent on improving
the city. It is built on the American T-square plan. But it is to be
subjected to the plan of Haussmann, with great tree-girt avenues
radiating diagonally from the Plaza Mayo. An underground railway,
honeycombing beneath the town, is in rapid construction. The railways
have a great suburban traffic, and are being electrified. There are
British colonies at Belgrano and Hurlingham, and you have a choice of
three golf courses. In the summer months--December, January, and
February--there is river life on the Tigre, the Thames of the Argentine.
A charming spot is Palermo, a combination of Hyde Park and the Bois de
Boulogne--open sweeps and charming trees, a double boulevard with
statues and commemorative marbles in the middle, well-cared-for gardens,
radiant flowers and the band playing.
A drive through Palermo at the fashionable hour causes one to gasp at
the thought that one is six thousand miles from Europe. Nowhere in the
world have I seen such a display of expensive motor-cars, thousands of
them. Ostentation is one of the stars of life in the Argentine.
Appearances count for everything. You must have a motor-car, even though
you have not the money to pay for it, and you owe the landlord of your
flat a year's rent. The ladies are exquisitely gowned, but they have not
the vivacity of the French women nor their daring in dress. There is a
demureness, a restraint which reminds one that the atmosphere of
far-away Castile is still upon them.
On Sundays and Thursdays there are races at Palermo. The price
Argentines pay for horseflesh has become a proverb. It is a good
race-course. We have nothing in England, neither at Epsom, Ascot, nor
Goodwood, so magnificent as the grand stand. It is a glorified royal
box. The restaurant is like the Ritz dining-room. Everybody dresses as
they would at Ascot. There are no bookmakers. The totalisator is used.
Betting is officially conducted by the Jockey Club, and there is
constant announcement of the amount of money put on the horses. Those
who have backed the winners share the spoil, less ten per cent. As this
ten per cent. is deducted from the total amount put on each race, the
income of the Jockey Club runs into hundreds of thousands of pounds. So
the Club maintains a good race-course, offers capital prizes, has a
house in "B.A."--undoubtedly the most palatial club-house in the
southern world--and distributes the remainder amongst the hospitals.
The income of the Jockey Club is so large it is really embarrassing.
The members are proceeding to build an Aladdin's palace of
super-gorgeousness.
But at the races at Palermo I noticed that no ladies attended, except in
the members' enclosure. Even there they did not mingle with the
men-folk. There was no mirth, such as we are used to in Europe. They
kept themselves to little groups. Moving from wonder to wonder, I was
present at a gala performance at the Colon Theatre. I have seen all the
great theatres in the world, and this is the loveliest--a harmony of
rose and gold. The audience was as fashionably dressed as at the opera
in London, though I missed the dazzling display of diamonds which had
been promised. Most of the audience were ladies; there were boxes of
them, and most of the men were in the stalls. There was one gallery
reserved for women.
I began to discern a strange Orientalism in the relations between the
sexes. The Argentine women are amongst the best mothers in the world.
But there is practically none of the good fellowship between young
fellows and young girls which is so happy a feature of our English life.
For a man and a woman to take a walk together would shock the
proprieties. There are brilliant receptions, but dinner parties, as we
know them, are rare. An Argentine seldom introduces a friend to his
wife. Except amongst the poorest a woman scarcely ever goes into the
streets alone. If she does she runs risk of being insulted. There are
Argentines, who would be offended if refused the name of gentlemen, who
think it excellent sport to walk in the Florida in the evening and
mutter obscenities to every unprotected woman who passes. Buenos Aires
is the most immoral city in the world. So the Argentine guards his
women-folk from contact with other men. His attitude is a relic of the
days when the Moors had possession of Spain.
I have called Buenos Aires a pagan city. So it is. The men are frankly
irreligious. In conversation I have been told of the tolerance to all
religions. What is really meant is indifference to any religion.
Money-making and flamboyant display--these are the gods which are
worshipped. The houses in the wealthier districts are exotic in
architecture. I remember driving along the Avenida Alvear, a street of
palaces, reminiscent of the Grand Canal at Venice if it were a roadway.
But the fine stone blocks are nothing but stucco. The ornamentation, the
floral decorations, are not carved stone; they are stucco. Imitation,
pretence, showiness, the flaunting of wealth, are everywhere.
Yet this city, which has grown in a generation on the muddy flats by the
side of the muddy Parana River, has something that is weird in its
fascination.
CHAPTER III
ROUND AND ABOUT THE CAPITAL
The way not to see a city is to be trotted round and shown all the
"sights." I have an idea I may have missed some of the "sights" of
Buenos Aires. I did not "do" the churches. Acquaintances who knew I went
to South America to pursue my trade of writer sometimes asked me what I
was going to write about, and the reply was, "I do not know." But I was
not believed.
Anyway, I may say that I drifted about "B.A." I presented my letters of
introduction, made friends, lunched out and dined out, had motor trips,
went here and there as suggestion provided the inclination; maybe to a
theatre, or to smoke a cigar in one of the clubs with men who are of
account in Argentina or no account at all, or to spend a Sunday with an
Argentine family; maybe to idle an hour in one of the cafés; maybe to
have a serious talk with a Minister; maybe do nothing but idle round.
That is no scientific way to study a city. But it just happens to be my
way.
The conclusions I draw may be wrong, for I may have met the wrong people
and seen the wrong things, especially as I had no system. Yet out of the
confused jumble of impressions and experiences something coherent
evolves, and that is the substance of my remarks when I am asked, "Well,
what do you think about Buenos Aires?"
It is not my wish to accentuate the point, but open-handed extravagance
is one of the traits of the people. It is a fault of democratic
countries that, having no aristocracy of birth, they proceed to create
one of wealth. Argentina has fine old Spanish families; but, though
esteemed, they are in the background. In the wrangle-jangle of frenzied
progress they are not to be counted amongst the moderns. So garish is
the display of money that the idea left is that you have had your
attention called to it by the constant blaring of a bugle.
But I would shrink from saying the display is vulgar. Keeping in mind
that the people are Latins, and are fonder of colour than we of the cold
and moral north, I would write there is a sort of ostentatious
restraint. Argentines glory in spending money, but amongst the older
settled people other things besides money have their place. They are
fond of music, and pride themselves that they discovered Tetrazzini and
Kubelik long before London. Here, as in Paris, London, and New York,
there is the mob which goes to the opera because it is "the thing" to
have an expensive box, and to wear lovely gowns and loads of diamonds.
The prices paid make the charges for a gala night at Covent Garden seem
like those of a twopenny show. It may be said that a well-known artiste
is sure of a kindly reception. Yet Buenos Aires has its moods; it has
its vagaries, and is petulant. For some undefinable reason it will take
a dislike to some performer who arrives with a European reputation.
Perhaps half a dozen ladies who lead the fashionable world will say the
artiste is overrated. "She may be all right for Paris, but she does not
come up to Buenos Aires standard"--that is the attitude. For anybody to
praise the poor singer after that is to advertise their inartistic
taste. There is a boycott. So a European singer or instrumentalist who
goes to the Argentine aglow with the prospect of a dazzling success
sometimes returns with the saddest of experiences--neglect.
[Illustration: LOLA MORA FOUNTAIN, BUENOS AIRES.]
With such a people, Latin in race and living in the sunshine, life is
something of a holiday. One hears stories of the looseness of life
amongst the men--on the boats running between France and Argentina can
be seen the girls going out to meet the requirements of the hundreds of
houses of ill-fame--but the Argentine women themselves are beyond
reproach. Indeed, their regard for correctness is often amusingly
prudish. Public opinion is so strong that no lady, if she wants the
esteem of her neighbours, dare show the slightest originality in costume
or conduct. Plays with the faintest hint of suggestiveness about them
are barred. Performances which would pass muster in a London West-end
theatre are shunned; plays to which the most innocent of girls cannot go
are taboo. The consequence of this is that there are other places of
amusement especially catering for men, which no respectable woman can
enter. Just outside the boundaries there are cinematograph shows "for
men only," which for indecency cannot be outdone in Port Said or Havana.
I have mentioned how the visitor to Argentina soon begins to be aware of
the low position of women in the minds of men, the way in which there is
no real friendship between the sexes outside the family circle, and how
no Argentine will trust another Argentine in regard to his ladies. With
all their finery and jewellery and expensive motor-cars and boxes at the
Colon Theatre, you are prone to remark, "How un-European!" when you see
the segregation of the women.
Yet with all their frivolity, dress, bridge, amusements, you make a
mistake if you fancy the Argentine lady a guarded, slothful doll--though
the description applies in thousands of cases. I had the opportunity of
seeing the other side of the picture. On two days, under the guidance of
ladies themselves, I visited the establishments of Las Damas da
Beneficencia and several Government hospitals. A noble work is being
done. I saw how the poor are cared for. There was the nurturing of the
old. There was tending the sick in buildings worthy of any city in the
world. There were the homes where the wives of poor folk could come to
bring their babies into the world. There is much illegitimacy, and
formerly there was much infanticide. So there was a kind of casement
where, at dusk, mothers could bring their unwanted offspring and deliver
them. No questions were asked, but the infant, because it was a
helpless little child, was cared for. The same work is done to-day, but
without the mystery of the casement. Foster-mothers are engaged to nurse
the children. As one went through the rooms, and saw the tiny morsels of
humanity, many of them feeble, with a shape of head which roused wonder
as to the future, it was hard to keep the tears away.
Poverty, as we understand it in Europe, does not exist in Argentina. But
there are men who are stricken down in early manhood, unable to earn
anything, and who need help. There are widows and the fatherless to be
cared for. There are poor folk, but their trouble is due to misfortune
and not to economic causes. Charity, however, is great, and funds are
numerous and the Government provides handsomely, and there is no
distress such as we know it. But all this good work, hospitals, looking
after the aged, providing for the fatherless, is carried on by the women
of Argentina. Except to serve as doctors, no men have any voice in the
control or management. Ladies, with their presidents and boards of
management and committees, have the work placed entirely in their hands.
It is set apart for them, and no man interferes. Yet the suffrage
question has not extended to Argentina.
Life is taken lightly and showily by this new nation. But when anybody
dies all the relatives go into mourning, to the fourteenth cousin. And
in death the display is just as rampant as in life. The Recoleta is a
strange cemetery, bizarre, ghoulish, tawdry. To own a tomb in Recoleta
is one of the necessities if a family wants to be in the swim. These
tombs are like chalets, occasionally of Italian marble, generally of the
Buenos Aires stucco--the capital surpasses all other cities in the world
in the amount of stucco--and they are ornate. There are streets upon
streets of them, and you take a walk through a town of the dead. The
doors are open, and you can step in and see half a dozen coffins ranged
round the shelves. Occasionally there are photographs of the dear
departed. On All Saints' Day it is usual for the living family to gather
in the tomb, have tea, and munch cakes. After a number of years the
coffins have to be removed, or a heavy sum paid, and the tomb is "to
let." The whole thing is repulsive to the Englishman, but the Argentine
loves it.
The capital of Buenos Aires province is La Plata, about fifty miles
away. I went down one day by the luncheon train, which runs out of the
Plaza Constitution just after midday and does the journey in an hour. It
was a fine train, and the luncheon car was bigger, and the food better
than we have on English lines. The car was crowded with a
sallow-skinned, black-moustached, black-garbed lot of gentlemen, and I
gathered they were all Government officials. Nobody in Government employ
thinks of doing any work in the morning. The men go to the office late
and leave early. It was almost like home.
La Plata is a town that has missed its way. Full of grandiose ideas, and
taking the United States as a model, it was decided to build La Plata
as the federal capital on the Washington plan. Gorgeous buildings were
erected; magnificent avenues were constructed; the loveliest of public
gardens were laid out; a fine museum was founded; a great municipal
theatre was piled up. In the public square bandstands were provided and
statues to national heroes hoisted. It was to be the flower of Argentine
towns. And every Argentine town, when it sets out to beautify itself,
must have an avenida and a plaza and an equestrian statue of San Martin;
the matters of water supply and drainage come later.
[Illustration: LA RECOLETA.]
But the federal capital absolutely refused to settle at La Plata. It was
too near Buenos Aires, where society lived, and where there was a whirl
of excitement. So, perforce, the capital had to be at Buenos Aires, and
a Government House for the residence of the President of the Republic
was built, and is known as the "Palace o Gold," because of the money
consumed in its construction.
Argentina is ever willing to vote vast sums for town adornment; but the
money has a habit of evaporating before half the work is done, and then
more is needed.
However, La Plata is the capital of the province of Buenos Aires; but
the majority of officials refuse to live there. They prefer to come down
from Buenos Aires at a quarter past one, and catch the quarter to five
train back. The Governor has made appeals; he has even threatened what
he will do if the officials do not live in La Plata. They take no
notice. The consequence is that this beautiful city--and without doubt
it is majestic in its spaciousness--is deserted, and a saunter through
it is like a walk through an old cathedral town on a drowsy afternoon.
As a companion and a host no one could be more charming than the
Argentine. He loves his country, but is willing to hear praise about
other countries without thinking you wish to depreciate Argentina. He
will go to infinite trouble to secure some particular information you
are anxious to possess. Men on whom I had no personal claim whatever
laid aside their work and devoted a couple of days in my behalf. As the
men are courteous so the women are graceful, until lack of exercise and
over-eating makes them stout. The girls are modest, but, I am afraid,
centre their thoughts on dress. It rather shocked one to see that it is
a habit for quite young girls of thirteen or fourteen years to daub
their faces with powder. As for the young gentleman, he begins when
twelve years of age to smoke and to tell lewd stories. He is impudent to
the servants and to his parents, and I have known fathers smile when
told their sons of fifteen have taken to visiting houses of ill-fame.
Some Argentines are taking to healthy sport; but it would be better if
all of them took to outdoor exercises, cricket, football, baseball,
tennis, and golf. The Argentine young gentleman is bright but
superficial, and is too fond of the clothes of the dandy
and jewellery and perfumes to excite any admiration amongst men who
dislike effeminacy in their own sex.
[Illustration: THE GOVERNMENT BUILDING, LA PLATA.]
It was my good fortune to receive nothing but kindness from every class
of Argentine that I met. But I am not going to hide I met Englishmen,
who knew more about the Argentines and who had few generous things to
say. "There is no morality, unless the young women are guarded; the
Argentine is egotistic beyond words; domestic habits are dirty, and
taking a bath is rare; the men chatter, and, whilst voluble with
friendship, are suspicious; they are bombastic about patriotism, but are
not above receiving bribes; all the advantages the Argentine has he owes
to foreigners; he produces nothing himself; he is shallow and shiftless;
the only business instinct he has is cunning, and the old Spanish
_mañana_ spirit--always putting off till to-morrow the performance of a
business duty--is deep seated." All of which shows how impossible it is
to draw a composite picture of an individual to represent a nation. Just
as there are nice Englishmen and vulgar fellows, cultured Americans and
bounders, delightful Germans and hoggish sots, so in Argentina it takes
all sorts to make a people. The growing practice of well-to-do
Argentines of sending their children to be educated in Europe has its
advantages, though there is another side of the picture. They certainly
acquire better manners than they pick up at home; they learn that
Argentina is not the centre of the world. When they return to Argentina
and display the consequences of foreign travel they are not popular.
As far as I could discern the Argentine, though still infused with Latin
traits, still showy and talkative, more inclined to gamble than to do
hard work, is breaking through and away from the old Spanish habits.
European business men told me they were keen witted, but incompetent in
practical affairs. But there is too much business now going on in
Argentina, too much development of industries in which foreigners have
little hand, too thorough a grasp of some of the problems which face all
new lands, for the Argentines to be dismissed with a phrase.
I could see they were inexact, that they were fond of showing off, that
knowledge of the world was thin; but I did understand their genuine
ambition to lift Argentina into the first rank among nations; that where
they lacked technical and mechanical knowledge themselves they were
willing to let others come in; that they were quite alive to what
progress means in the modern sense. The conservatism of the old Spaniard
has completely disappeared. The Argentine wants the latest and the best.
If one goes forth to gather faults it is easy enough to get a basketful.
What drew me, however, was not so much listening to a catalogue of
things he is not, but to mark down what he is, what he has done and is
doing, and what he intends to do. As a small instance, in Buenos Aires
the habit of the Spanish siesta is abandoned. There is no pulling down
of business shutters between noon and three o'clock. The climate is
enervating, but be the day never so steamy, with hot gusts panting from
the north, the city is early alive with commerce, the suburban trains
are packed, the Stock Exchange is a babble of excitement--and there
never seems to be any drawing of rein till five or six in the afternoon.
There is hustle.
[Illustration: THE SOUTHERN STATION AT LA PLATA.]
[Illustration: IN THE GREAT SQUARE AT LA PLATA.]
The way the population jumps up is phenomenal. It signifies much that an
eighth of a million is added to the population of a capital in a single
year. Skyscrapers now tower over the buildings which were thought
enormous a dozen years ago. Notwithstanding the services of the
policemen directing the traffic, there is often a tangle of motor-cars,
electric tramcars, private carriages and carts. New broadways are
being driven through the city, and up go palatial stores. Most English
newspapers are modest in _locale_. But the Argentine newspapers keep in
the sun. _La Prensa_ is one of the best-informed journals in the world.
It has a noble exterior to its offices. Inside are luxurious suites of
rooms, lecture halls, libraries, and the public are invited to enter.
Every public building, all the clubs, even the churches, seem to be tied
up with long ropes of different coloured electric lamps, so that on
nights of festival the switch is jerked and the whole place is radiantly
illuminated.
It is all very wonderful. The confusion, the barbarism, the love of
beauty and the display of dollars, the inflow of invested gold, the
coming of the immigrant, the whirl of business, the big deals, the
gambling, the making of fortunes and the losing of fortunes, dazzle the
mind. But you feel the fascination of Buenos Aires. It has grown so
astonishingly in so short a time that you gasp when you contemplate how
much more it is likely to grow.
[Illustration: STATUE PRESENTED TO ARGENTINA BY THE FRENCH COMMUNITY ON
THE OCCASION OF THE CENTENARY OF INDEPENDENCE.]
CHAPTER IV
RAILWAY DEVELOPMENT IN THE REPUBLIC
The place Argentina holds in the world is due to the meat and wheat it
sends to other lands. But having recognised its fecundity as a good
food-producing area, it is well to start at the beginning. Argentina may
have had fine grazing tracks capable of rearing untold millions of
cattle and arable land that had only to be scratched to yield excellent
crops of cereals; but without transport values are at a minimum.
Accordingly, the development and prosperity of the Argentine is mainly
due to railways. The sum of £300,000,000 British capital is invested in
Argentine railways and electric tramways.
I travelled a good deal in the Republic, from Buenos Aires to Inca in
the Andes, and from Tucuman in the north to Bahia Blanca in the south. I
journeyed over hundreds of miles of flat, featureless, dreary country
that grew nothing but wild grasses until a few years ago. And there are
plenty of sandy, bush-studded, alkali-stricken acres--just as you find
barren patches in the United States, Canada, Siberia, and Australia--but
there are thousands of leagues awakened into life, _estancias_ with
great herds of cattle munching at the alfalfa, stretches of wheat and
maize, on and on, as though without end, the only break on the horizon
being the colonist's mud hut, a clump of trees--and it always seems the
same clump of trees--which indicates a ranch, and the ever-whirring
American water-wheel. As you travel through England it is the spires of
churches that pierce the sky. The only thing that ever pierces the sky
on the Argentine pampas is the zinc American water-wheel. The Argentine
_estanciero_ thinks a water-wheel is of more use to him than a church.
All over this land, zigzagging, curving, intersecting, sometimes running
in an absolutely straight line for a hundred and fifty miles, is the
greatest length of railway lines in the world for a population of seven
millions. The towns are far apart; villages are few. You journey half a
day, and, except at the little wayside stations, do not see more than
half a dozen folk on the land. Yet it is a smiling land, and greets the
sunshine with abundance. The railways in the Argentine are to garner
this wealth. Freight trains, with cars of the colossal American pattern,
trundle their long length across the plains.
I recall one night when, at a forgotten siding, the engine drew out to
get water, taking a saunter along the train side. It was brilliantly lit
with electricity, and the restaurant car, with the usual little
red-shaded lamps on the tables, was busy; crowds of passengers were
dining, and the usual waiters were scurrying, and there was the usual
Continental fare, and champagne and Moselle wines, and the usual mineral
waters you get on the Nord express. That gleaming train in central
South America was the symbol of what railway enterprise has done in
Argentina.
There are 20,000 miles of railroads in the Republic. The British showed
the way in the initial building, and their lines pass through some of
the fattest territory. The French have been tardy followers, but have
constructed useful minor lines. The Argentine Government has built State
lines through country that was suitable for colonisation, but which did
not appeal to the outside investor. These State railways are financially
a failure. One reason is that the territory through which they run is
not of the best. The principal reason is that they are the prey of the
politicians. Constituencies have to be considered, and innumerable jobs
found for the hangers-on of political parties. Business conditions are
the last to be thought of, and, though the Government has done well in
throwing these lines into distant regions needing development, they are
not likely to succeed until placed under different control.
Not only have the Argentines themselves not started railway companies,
but they have no money invested in the foreign companies. One cause is
that, though the Government insists on a local board of directors, the
real board of directors is abroad, chiefly in London. Another cause is
that dividends are limited by law to 7 per cent., and that is not a
sufficient return for the Argentine. He does not care to touch
investments that do not yield 12 per cent., and when he gets 30 per
cent. he thinks that about fair--and the country is so prosperous it can
afford it.
Although within the last fifteen years millions of British money have
poured into Argentina for railway construction, the investor in the old
days cast a hesitating eye on South America as a place to sink his
capital. In the 'fifties a railway a few miles long was all that
Argentina could boast, and ten years later, when 7 per cent. was
guaranteed, money was not forthcoming. As an inducement to construct a
line between Rosario and Cordoba the absolute ownership of three miles
on either side of the line was offered. Even with such an attraction the
British investor was shy.
Gradually, however, money was forthcoming, and lines were laid. In the
'eighties there came a spurt. It was not till the years following 1900
that money could be had for the asking. Lines cobwebbed the profitable
country; distant points were linked up; land which previously had little
beyond prairie value bounced up in price.
[Illustration: CENTRAL ARGENTINE RAILWAY COMPANY'S GRAIN ELEVATORS AT
BUENOS AIRES.]
Though to-day there is a thought in the public mind that a little too
much money has been thrown into Argentina, that land prices are too
inflated--which they are--I have traversed districts which three years
ago were wilderness; but a spur of railway has been driven into them,
and instantly farming has been started. I saw hundreds of freshly-built
homesteads--crude, and the life harsh, but it was the beginning of
great things--and alfalfa had been laid down, and cattle were feeding,
and wide spaces which previously were sandy and apparently inhospitable
were carpeted with the bright green of new wheat. Just as in Canada
there is a belief that the breaking up of the land had decreased the
severity of the frost, so there is a belief in Argentina that rains
follow the plough. Places which formerly had little rainfall, and which
had a doubtful agricultural future, are proving successful. Yet without
the advance of railways the country would have been as forlorn as when
the Indians roved the pampas.
Railway companies in England have had to fight landowners to make
headway. In Argentina landowners welcome the coming of a railway, for
obvious reasons. Most of the wealthy Argentines owe their fortunes to
their land being benefited by the railways. As a rule, out in the far
districts, a railway company can get the necessary land for nothing.
Owners are willing to make financial contributions. The general managers
of the big British railways in Argentina get large salaries--£7,000 a
year. This is partly to remove them from the range of temptation of
being bribed by owners, syndicates, or land companies to authorise the
making of railways where they would not be economically advisable. Of
course, extensions near the big towns cost the railways as much as they
would in England. I know a man who thirty years ago bought a piece of
land for £1,600. He sold it to a railway company for over £200,000.
Though foreign capital is having so extensive a run in networking the
country with railways, the Argentine Government has a much closer grip
on the working of the lines than the Board of Trade has on English
companies. It is therefore no misrepresentation to say that, whilst
private owners are glad to have their property enhanced in value by the
juxtaposition of a railway, the Government puts obstacles in the way for
what are ostensibly public reasons. Accordingly, expensive "diplomacy"
has sometimes to be used. The Government is sufficiently aware of the
return the foreign investor gets--and when fresh extensions are sought
it invariably withholds its consent until some concession has been wrung
out of the company, such as an undertaking to construct a line through a
district that cannot, for some time at any rate, be a success. There is
never any guarantee that another company will not be formed to work the
same district. The Government smiles at the fight between the two lines
for traffic--to the public benefit. When companies propose to amalgamate
the Government either makes such demands in regard to uneconomic lines
that the thing falls through or a veto is put upon the amalgamation
altogether.
Perhaps it is due to the excellence of the railways that the Argentine
high roads are so bad. And frankly, though I know most of the new lands
of the world, I know of no region where the country roads are so
villainous as in this Republic. Rarely are they anything beyond mother
earth. In wet weather they are quagmires, and I have seen vehicles
stranded, unable to be hauled by a team of five horses. In summer, when
rain is absent, they are foot-deep furrows of dust. I shall never forget
a motor excursion through the sugar plantations round about Tucuman. The
way was like a magnified ploughed field, and all the ridges were of
dust. We drove through it as an engine drives through snow.
All railway material comes in duty free, but one of the conditions is
that 3 per cent. of the profits shall be used for the making of roads
leading to railway stations. The companies do not object, because the
call is not large, and it is to their interest that agriculturists
should be able to get their produce to the railway station to be
transported over the lines.
The Direccion-General de Ferrocarriles is the authority over the
railways in Argentina. It decides the number of trains which shall be
run, and it insists on the number of coaches. There must be a certain
number of dormitory cars on all-night trains, and restaurant cars are
obligatory over certain distances. Every train carries a letter-box, and
recently the companies have been squeezed into carrying the mails for
nothing. A medicine chest, a stretcher, a bicycle--so that quick
communication can be made with the nearest station in case of
accident--and all sorts of necessities in case of a breakdown are
compulsory. Every carriage is thoroughly disinfected every month, and
there is always a card to be initialled by an inspector. All bedding and
mattresses are subject to scientific disinfection such as I have seen
nowhere in Europe.
No time-tables can be altered without the sanction of the National
Railway Board at least two months before coming into operation. If
trains stop at stations for which they are not scheduled a heavy fine is
imposed; and all late trains, and the reason, have to be reported to the
Government authority. No alteration, however small, to a station
building or to the design of rolling stock is permissible without the
sanction of the Government representatives. A complaint book is at every
station, open to anyone to complain on any subject. Guards also keep a
book. Many of the complaints are amusing. I heard of one man who
insisted on writing in the complaint book that "everything was in
perfect order and the staff faultless." Occasionally passengers will
have a dispute, and whilst one will find fault in the complaint book
with the manners of the train attendants, another will write beneath
that the attendants are all right, and it is the complainant's manners
which are at fault.
There are the usual buffers in front of an engine; but they are all
hinged, and have to be hoisted backwards when a train is travelling,
because if an animal were run into, the cow-catcher might not be able to
throw the beast aside, for it could be caught between the catcher and
the protruding buffer. Though, on the face of it, the Government
subjects the companies to innumerable restrictions, and frequently
imposes vexatious regulations, it must be recognised that public safety
is the thought behind them all.
[Illustration: LATEST TYPE OF PASSENGER LOCOMOTIVE.]
[Illustration: LATEST TYPE OF DINING CAR.]
The Republic lives by its exports of meat and agricultural produce.
Ninety-five per cent. of this trade is carried to the ports by the
railways. From the railroad cars one beholds productiveness; yet fifteen
or twenty miles away lies land just as productive but as yet untouched
by the plough, because there is neither sufficient population to
cultivate nor railways to carry. Within the next dozen years there must
inevitably be a further spurt in the making of feeding or auxiliary
lines. Something like £20,000,000 a year is crossing the ocean for fresh
railway enterprises in Argentina. Nearly 40,000,000 tons of goods are
carried over the lines each year, and the receipts are something like
£25,000,000 annually. And yet but a fragment of the harvest of this new
land is being garnered. Its untrodden millions of acres await new
railways to open up the country.
CHAPTER V
SETTLEMENT ON THE LAND
Prolific though Argentina is, and though its agricultural wealth has
only been scratched, it cannot be described as an ideal country for the
poor immigrant. The eyes of the land have been well picked, and there
are rich personal estates covering one hundred and fifty square miles.
There is little disposition to voluntary splitting up of estates, but
rather to hold whilst annually the value increases with the coming of
people and the advancement of railways. The Government is doing
something to assist the small man with limited capital to settle on
distant Government lands. But the poor immigrant, with nothing but his
muscle and his industry, has a long and rough road to travel before he
reaches independence as a landed proprietor. It is a hard land in which
to start making a fortune; but the man of money who can step into the
Republic, say, with £25,000 to play with, and who invests judiciously,
can double his capital in three years.
Whilst the old Argentines, those of Spanish descent, have waxed wealthy
simply by sitting still and letting the foreigner develop their
property, there are British Argentine families whose estates, if
realised, would produce double-figured millions, and whose proprietors
landed as labourers less than fifty years ago. Money has come to lots of
these people, shrewd and lucky, as though they held the key to a cave of
jewels. Some have remained modest in spite of possessions; others look
upon gold as the only god, and their blatant display at Mar del Plata,
and on the steamers of the Royal Mail Company, is something which would
make the conduct of the new rich of Chicago Quakerish by comparison.
The cry of Argentina, like that of all new lands, is for population.
Over 300,000 fresh arrivals land annually from all corners of the earth,
Russia, Syria, France, Germany, and England, but mainly from Spain and
Italy. Whilst the Spaniard comes to stay, there is a considerable ebb
and flow amongst the Italians, thousands coming out for the harvest when
wages are high, and making sufficient to return for the rest of the
year; then they return for the next harvest. Allowing for the ebb,
Argentina gets a solid increase in population by immigration of over
250,000 persons a year, and there are no assisted passages and no offers
of free land.
At each of the ports are Government hotels for immigrants. That at
Buenos Aires accommodates a thousand people. The new arrival, instead of
being distraught at landing in a strange country, or possibly falling a
prey to its sharks, is housed and fed for five days as the guest of his
new country. Careful inquiry is made as to capabilities, and, as there
is a never-satisfied demand from the interior for labourers, work is
certain, and officials see him and his baggage on the train, and an
official meets him at his destination and sees him firmly settled in his
fresh life. As work is assured, Argentina is a land where there are no
unemployed--except amongst the dissolute, who are to be found in all
countries. I saw these immigrants on the _Avon_ gathered at Vigo, and I
saw them in distant provinces, and I was struck with their sturdiness
and health. I place on record that I never saw a drunken man during all
my wanderings in the Republic. Blessed with a fine climate, and the
winter so temperate that fires are not necessary, life is easy, and
there is no crushing into towns for work, as is usual in Canada during
the frozen months.
[Illustration: VIEW OF GRAZING LANDS.]
[Illustration: A DRINKING PLACE ON AN ESTANCIA.]
Owing to such immense tracts being held by individual owners--many of
whom prefer the pleasures of Paris and Buenos Aires to living on the
land where the cereals are grown--most of the cultivation is done by
"colonists." The system varies in different parts of the country, but
the general procedure is much on these lines. In a little centre of
population, maybe a village, but important because those who live many
miles round are dependent upon it for supplies, is to be found a store
where most things can be bought, from a plough to a tin kettle. The
storekeeper enters into a contract with the owner of vast lands to
cultivate it, either on rent or on shares of the value of the produce.
This storekeeper is a middleman, often a sweater. Though I have no
doubt there are honourable exceptions, he is often a thief into the
bargain. He gets a "colonist" to take over a certain area and to
cultivate it on shares. The "colonist" has to build a mud house, and
sink a well, and he has to buy his plough and hire his horses, and
obtain all necessaries from the middleman, who can fix his own price.
When the wheat or the maize is gathered the only man to whom the
"colonist" can sell is the middleman, who has it very much in his own
hands to say what the price shall be, and he frequently furnishes the
ignorant "colonist" with false returns as to quantity. But even then he
keeps back what is owing on agricultural implements and loaned horses,
with the consequence that the poor fellow has very little--if
any--margin. It is not too much to say that the "colonists" are in the
grip of the middlemen, and it is with difficulty they are ever able to
break free.
Of course, the middleman runs risk of little return if there is drought
and a bad harvest, and, on the other hand, when he proceeds to sell the
wheat he finds himself encompassed by a ring of four Jewish firms, who
control the wheat market of the Argentine. The whole practice is
vicious, and I cannot but think that before long the Government will
have to take the matter in hand.
Admitting the exquisite climate, and the fertility of the soil, and
Nature's quick response to light work, the lives of these "colonists" in
the distant camp is sad. Men of the Basque country, the north of Spain,
the north of Italy, they come from the homeland, where means of
livelihood were sparse, to this new land, where, although the chances
are rather against them to secure independence, their material
well-being is certainly better than in the Old Country. But they are
ignorant people; they know nothing of, and so care nothing for, the
refinements of life; their houses are not much better than kraals. They
are removed by long distances from neighbours; they live on a
featureless plain, and have no communication with the outer world; they
cannot read, and books and newspapers are foreign to them. Their world
is fringed by the horizon. A visit to the wayside station, where, maybe,
one train a day passes, is their excitement. There are no schools and no
religious instruction. Their moral standard is low.
Many of these "colonists" take to farming with a minimum of practical
knowledge. Yet, though I have just drawn a rueful picture, I would not
have it thought there are no illuminating spots. A valuable work is
being carried on in agricultural instruction. On several occasions I
came across specially-built railway cars in which lecturers travel all
over the Republic and freely give advice to the peons how to get most
out of the soil. During the last seven years (since 1907) the Government
has zealously appreciated the need for organising the agricultural
and live-stock instruction. The work is not to be compared with the
splendid agricultural colleges to be found all over the United
States. The significant thing, however, is that the people of the
Argentine--perfectly conscious of all the advantages of science, and
with most of its best sons educated in Europe--have taken hold of this
problem of how to train its population to get the best out of the soil.
So schools are being formed over the country where information can be
obtained about the special productivity of particular districts, about
the growing of grasses, the feeding and care of beasts, milk production,
sugar-growing, cheese-making, market-gardening, fruit-rearing, and in
far western Mendoza I came across a college that is making instructive
experiments in viticulture.
Besides agricultural courses at the Universities, there is much done by
way of University extension lectures; but instead of lectures about
sea-power in the sixteenth century, or the relationship of Henry VIII.
to Rome, the lectures are on the breeding of cattle, the raising of
maize, the sowing of alfalfa.
It was my fortune to meet many cultured and travelled Argentines, but,
summing the people in a lump, and excluding the viciousness which trails
behind the wealth of Buenos Aires, and also making allowance for the
lack of that virility and perseverance of those strong men who are
fighting the big battle in Canada, the thing which constantly confronted
me was the fact that here in South America was a nation, born yesterday,
thoroughly alive to the worth of its possessions, brusquely modern,
content with nothing but the latest appliances and machinery and
thoroughly determined that, in the contest amongst the widespread
agricultural lands to supply food to the millions in crowded Europe,
Argentina will not be satisfied with an inferior position.
In a subsequent chapter I will deal with what has already been
accomplished in this field. Here, however, I limit myself to pointing
out that Argentina is increasing her capabilities with a purely
practical education. Men who can neither read nor write, but have come
under the influence of these itinerant schools, can talk with scientific
knowledge about their trade of food producing, be it meat or cereals.
Now another step is being made, and I trust with happy results in view
of the unfortunate position of the "colonists." So successful has been
the agricultural instruction during the past half dozen years, that the
next thing is to develop the commercial spirit so that the farmer may
have some chance of getting a fair return for his labour. Free lectures
are given on the business side of agriculture. Then, attached to the
schools are special buildings for experiments; and boarded pupils, the
sons of men who understand the money value of knowledge, are given a
thorough training. So that all may benefit there are free scholarships,
and I found that preference is given to competitors who come from
districts, suitable for a special industry, where schools have not yet
been established.
Anyone who visits the school for viticulture in Mendoza, for agriculture
and live stock in Cordoba, and for arboriculture and sugar-making in
Tucuman--and I saw all three--comes away nothing less than amazed at the
way these transplanted Latins, away south of the Equator and across six
thousand miles of ocean, are making headway--and the start only begun a
few years ago. There is the real spirit of enthusiasm combined with an
optimism which to a man from a staid old country seems exaggerated
until, seeing what has been done, imagination is allowed to jump freely
into the future. At Mendoza, nestling at the foot of the Andes and
reminiscent of a town in Tuscany, where the whole countryside is covered
with vineyards and wine is being made to supply millions of wine
drinkers in the country--for the Argentine peasant takes wine with his
breakfast--experiments are made with the best known vines from Europe on
a farm of sixty-seven acres, so that grapes suitable to the soil may be
matured. At Cordoba the school has 445 acres, and investigation is made
to secure earlier and higher yields, and with special attention to
obtaining varieties which have powers of resisting drought. The same
sort of thing goes on at Tucuman. The sugar industry is increasing at
astonishing speed. Many men with scant practical knowledge are attracted
to it. The school gives them instruction and will send members of the
technical staff to the sugar factories and distilleries to give
assistance. Facts like these argue that Argentina is a country really to
be reckoned with, and is not to be dismissed--as I have heard it
dismissed in England, even amongst those who consider themselves
educated--as a rubbishy South American Republic, whose only crop is
revolutions.
All over the Republic "regional schools" are being set up to provide
instruction, not in general agricultural subjects, but in regard to the
special requirements of the locality--for Argentina varies in climate
from tropical in the north to stern cold in the south; dairying, with a
model dairy, at Belle Ville; fruit culture at San Juan; forestry in the
Benitz colony. A scheme has been devised to equip Argentina with
agricultural knowledge by means of courses for children and adults,
travelling lecturers, information bureaus, co-operative experiments,
regional shows, encouragement of agricultural societies, organisation of
regional agricultural experts and military farms. Further, the National
Government have done an enormous service in providing irrigation works
in regions where the rainfall is uncertain.
It has to be admitted that some areas are subject to drought, and this
and other evils have to be taken into consideration when reviewing the
agricultural growth of a country like Argentina, which lives by its
produce, and which in 1912 exported £36,000,000 worth of live-stock
products and £53,000,000 worth of agricultural products. Given good
years, the _estanciero_ in average country makes 30 per cent. on the
year. He can afford to have one bad year in three and yet be prosperous.
But although districts suffer, the area of the country is so vast that
losses are swamped in general prosperity.
[Illustration: The irons are heated by fire made of bones of dead
cattle.]
[Illustration:
Putting cattle through the chute.
BRANDING CALVES ON AN ESTANCIA.]
As the older countries of the world concern themselves with national
defence, Argentina has established a Department of Agricultural Defence,
chiefly to fight the plague of locusts, which can eat out a whole
district in a single night. I recall in Cordoba Province seeing in the
distance what looked like a cloud of smoke. It was a storm of locusts,
so dense as it passed that midday was reduced to twilight. The locust
blights the land--it is the enemy. The locust is the thing which makes
the farmer shudder. When it comes it not only devours every blade of
grass within miles, but it lays its eggs in untold millions. The pest
has to be destroyed. The Government readily assists localities to
destroy the ova. The route of the swarms from the tropical north is
known. The telegraph tells of the progress. When they land, the
countryside turns out and catches them by the cartload. Sometimes the
district in which they have settled is fired. The whole zone where eggs
have been planted is ploughed. Animals are driven forth to trample the
pest. The Government has in its possession over 20,000,000 yards of
metallic barriers to make a line of defence, and when a swarm is penned
it is suffocated, burnt, or trampled. The Government not only has its
inspectors out, is ever ready to meet and repel the locust invasion from
Brazil and Bolivia with suitable appliances, but gives financial
assistance to those who help in the extermination. The Argentines are
determined to stop this pest. The way they are setting about the work
is evidence of their earnestness.
The point I specially desire to make, however, is that farming in
Argentina is not all casual, but is becoming a developed national
industry. There are many things to criticise about the Government; there
is maladministration and there is peculation. But that so much has been
accomplished, notwithstanding these drawbacks, accentuates the wonders
of progress.
CHAPTER VI
ARGENTINA'S PART IN FEEDING THE WORLD
It is well to mark that of the British food supply from overseas
Argentina provides one quarter. Each person in the Republic, after
providing enough food to supply himself, sends at least £8 worth of food
to other countries.
Argentina covers 776 million acres. Eighty million acres are suitable
for wheat, but only one-fourth of this area is cultivated. The
population is growing rapidly; it is now over seven millions, and is
being increased by about a quarter of a million immigrants every year;
but still the cry is for more inhabitants.
At present there are six persons to the square mile; but when you
remember that the province of Buenos Aires has a population of two and a
half millions, you find the population for the outside areas is just
under two per square mile.
Three-quarters of the population are Argentines; everyone born in the
country, no matter from what land the parents come, is reckoned an
Argentine. Of the new-comers half a million are Italian, a quarter
million Spanish, a tenth of a million French; then come the British,
numbering 25,000; Germans 18,000; Swiss 15,000; Austrians 13,000, and
so on, decreasingly. North Americans are few, though within recent
years much United States capital has quietly taken hold of certain
industries. Argentina is capable of carrying a population of fifty
millions, and it will secure them within the next half-century. In race,
language, customs, religion, it is especially favourable to folk from
the thronged Latin countries of Europe.
Every settler becomes a violent Argentine. The emphatic patriotism of
the American is tepid alongside the hot-blooded nationality of
Argentina. It is daily inculcated in the schools. The blue and white
striped flag is honoured on every occasion. You are poetically reminded
it is of the blue of the sky. When the Argentines were in revolution
against Spain in 1810, and needed a banner to flaunt against the red and
orange of the enemy, they got pieces of blue and white cloth (intended
for garments) from an English warship lying at Montevideo, and made a
flag of it. So the Argentine flag, like much of Argentine prosperity, is
due to Britain.
In proportion to the population there are as many millionaires in
Argentina as in the United States. There are sturdy old fellows, who can
hardly write their names, who scarcely know the extent of their wealth.
Fifty years ago an Irish labourer landed in the country. He died the
other day worth over £4,000,000.
[Illustration:
_Photograph by A. W. Boote & Co., Buenos Aires._
A GROUP OF GAUCHOS. ]
It is none of my business to boom land values in Argentina. Though the
tendency of late has been a little too buoyant, I know of no land where
there have been such enormous heaves in values, not fictitiously
hoisted, but legitimate on development of commerce, as in this Republic.
In 1885 you could buy land in the centre of Buenos Aires at 2s. 6d. a
square yard. Now you must pay £200 a yard. A suburban plot of 60 by 20
yards, which you could have got twelve years ago for £5, will cost £150.
Fine camp land--the "camp" is the Argentine name for farming
districts--which could be got for a song a quarter of a century ago will
now fetch £100,000 the square league (three miles). I know a plot of
land at Rosario which has jumped in value from £2,000 to £40,000 in
twenty years.
It is easy to understand how Argentine millionaires are made. In the
wars with neighbouring Republics Argentine officers were given tracts of
country in lieu of pay: of small value then, but their descendants are
fabulously wealthy. The careful Briton who came out when railways were
beginning to speed through the country, and acted shrewdly, got land for
next to nothing which will bring a better price per acre than land in
the home counties. I am writing this in mid-Atlantic on my way home, and
each morning on deck I exchange a bow with an old lady who owns 180
square miles of the finest agricultural land in the province of Buenos
Aires.
In a previous chapter my pen was somewhat free about the ostentation of
the Argentine. But the display of wealth is frequently put to a good
purpose. When a fabulous price is paid for a Derby winner it is an
Argentine who has found the money. Argentina has a fine breed of
horses. As the cattle industry is so important, the best stock is
purchased at home. I went to the agricultural show in September, 1913.
All the judges had been brought out from England, partly because good
judging was needed, but chiefly, I fear, because the Argentines cannot
trust each other to give unbiassed decisions. The show was finer housed
than any royal show in England, and the quality of the exhibits was
quite on a level with anything we can produce. The prize bull, Argentine
bred, was sold by auction for over £7,000. Admitted this was a fancy
price due to the rivalry of breeders to have the best and to boast about
it. A thousand pounds has been paid by a meat company for a Hereford
bull to kill; but this may be ascribed to advertisement.
The _estancias_--ranches or stations--are frequently enormous in extent,
as wide as an English county, and are managed as well as any great
estates in Australia, Canada, or New Zealand. There are the usual show
places, maintained by Anglo-Argentines, where the immediate grounds are
laid out like an English park, the farm buildings all on the model plan,
and the animals of the best stock, whilst a successful endeavour is made
toward converting the house into something palatial. Though some
_estancias_ are far inland, and distant from a railway line, life is far
more enjoyable than might be thought. The rich _estanciero_, however,
spends little of his time on his land. He is too often an absentee
landlord. He has tasted the joys of Europe; besides, his wife and
daughters are inclined to prefer Buenos Aires to life in the camp,
however healthy. The place is usually run by a manager. Then there are
sub-managers, often young Englishmen who have heard of the fortunes to
be made; next there are the peons, Spaniards and Italians, who do the
meaner work. Life in the camp is arduous. Men are out at dawn, rounding
up cattle, giving an eye to the "colonists," attending to fencing,
driving beasts to the railway station to be transferred to the
"freezers," and it is sundown when the work is over and men go to their
quarters. It is a strenuous life, and the employees have little of the
pleasures of civilisation.
Within the last ten years the export value of live stock products has
increased from £23,000,000 to £36,000,000, and agricultural products
from £21,000,000 to £53,000,000. Since 1896 the area under cultivation
has grown from 13 million acres to nearly 50 million acres. Of Argentine
cereals the United Kingdom imported 1,654,000 tons. There are 30 million
cattle in the Republic and 80 million sheep. The breeding of sheep is
not what it was, because the Argentine finds he can get a better return
from cattle and cereals. So, whilst the value of exported mutton remains
very much what it was ten years ago (about £1,250,000), the value of the
exported chilled and frozen beef has risen from £1,500,000 to over
£6,000,000 a year.
At the ports are big slaughtering establishments, some belonging to
Argentine companies, and others to American companies. A bitter feud is
being waged to capture the chilled and frozen meat trade, especially in
the English market. As England is only three weeks' distance, meat that
is only chilled has an enormous advantage over meat from more distant
countries which must be frozen. The fact is denied, but it may be taken
as certain that there is a big combination of Chicago houses
endeavouring to squeeze their competitors out of business--and they seem
in a fair way to succeed. The Argentine public are showing fright, and
there have been frantic appeals to Congress that steps be taken to check
the creation of a trust. Also it is hoped that England may take action.
But the authorities in both countries decline to do anything. The
Chicago firms have a long purse and are damaging their rivals at both
ends, first by paying Argentine cattle breeders unprecedented prices for
beasts, and then by selling the meat below cost price in the Smithfield
market. Of course, in reply to what is happening, one hears the
statement, "Why grumble, when the Argentine cattle dealer gets a high
price for his beasts, the London consumer gets cheap meat, and the
Chicago firms pay the difference?" That is true. But it does not need
much business foresight to understand that when the Anglo-Argentine
companies are bankrupt the Chicago trust, having the game in their own
hands, will pay their own price for cattle and lift the price of meat in
London. Meanwhile, the Argentine _estanciero_ is quite happy, and is
willing to let the future take care of itself. One thing, however, may
safely be prophesied. The Argentine Government has a drastic way of
doing things. If the expected happens, and the Chicago houses secure the
meat industry and begin to force down prices for cattle, there will not
be the slightest hesitation in passing a law which will make things
uncomfortable for the trust.
With the care taken in breeding, always striving after improving the
strain of the stock, Argentina, with its millions of acres of pasturage,
is determined not to slacken the stride of its improving meat trade. The
best lands are given to wheat, maize, oats; but the use of alfalfa has
meant an amazing expansion of productivity, for this nutritious plant, a
kind of sanfoil, will grow abundantly on land that is little good for
other purposes. Areas at which the agriculturist was inclined to shrug
his shoulders as barren prosper under alfalfa, the best of feeding
stuffs, and several crops can be got in a year. Two acres will carry a
beast. Alfalfa grown for fodder gives a hundred per cent. profit.
Alfalfa, whilst drawing nitrogen from the ground, attracts nitrogen from
the air. One ton of alfalfa contains 50 lb. of nitrogen. Three tons of
alfalfa has as much nitrogen as two tons of wheat. It is easy to grow,
and cattle fatten on it abundantly. The alfalfa of Argentina means more
to the prosperity of the country than rich gold mines. As there is no
winter, as we understand it, the cattle are left out all the year, and
there is no stalling or hand feeding.
Cattle disease is more prevalent than with us. This is partly due to
carelessness, but chiefly to the herds being so large that the scourge
becomes virulent before it is noticed. Then, as I have indicated, there
is the danger of drought and the dread of locusts. Further, so much of
the cereal growing being in the hands of "colonists," too often anything
but expert farmers, the yield is by no means what it would be if the
farming were in more skilled hands. So, whilst the average yield of
wheat in Great Britain is thirty-one bushels to the acre; in Argentina
it is only eleven bushels. But manuring is unknown in the Republic.
Yet, keeping one's eyes open to all the disadvantages, one cannot go
through the country and see its fecundity, go into the killing houses at
La Plata and Buenos Aires, watch the ocean liners, with the Union Jack
dangling over their stern, being loaded with many sides of beef, visit
the grain elevators at the ports of Bahia Blanca and Rosario pouring
streams of wheat destined for European consumption into the holds of
liners, without the imagination being stimulated when standing on the
threshold of this new land's possibilities.
Already Argentina holds first place in the quantity of exported frozen
meat. It was in 1877 that the Republic led the way in exporting such
meat to Europe. It was not till 1885, however, that the business of
freezing was definitely established. To-day £11,000,000 is invested in
"freezing works." And millions of cattle and sheep are slaughtered for
foreign consumption. There seems to be something of a race at present
between live stock products and agricultural products which shall hold
first place in value of exports. The ports of Argentina, with a capacity
for 45 million tons, are ever busy. Yet they are only in infancy.
Like all new lands, where enterprise and optimism frequently leap beyond
rigid economies, Argentina has its heaves and falls. We know of the
hundreds of millions of foreign capital invested. People do not go to
Argentina for the beauty of the scenery. They go for money-making. Often
when I came across some evidence of Latin sluggishness, saw what had not
been done, what might have been done, and then remembered what,
nevertheless, had been done, I found myself exclaiming: "Oh, that this
land were a British colony!"
CHAPTER VII
THE CONSTITUTION AND GOVERNMENT
New countries, in planning their system of government, have advantages
over old lands steeped in tradition and hampered by precedent. They can
profit by the mistakes of the older countries, and can, more or less,
start with a clean slate. As men past middle age are disposed to think
the young fellows of the present day headstrong, lacking in ballast, it
is all in the nature of things that the older countries should look with
a somewhat critical eye upon the experiments in government made by
youngsters amongst the nations. So it is instructive to look at the
system of law and administration in the Republic.
The head of authority, in which the executive power of the nation is
vested, is the President. He must be an Argentine, a Roman Catholic, and
being elected for six years can never be elected again. This is a
provision to prevent a Dictatorship. The President for the time being is
head of the Army and Navy; he nominates the judges, selects bishops,
appoints diplomatic representatives to other nations, and all the
secretaries of State are chosen by him. There are two Houses, the Senate
and the Chamber of Deputies; but a Minister can be neither a senator
nor a deputy. He can attend debates, speak and defend himself from
criticism, but he is beyond the power of either House. If he likes, he
need appear only once a year in Congress to make an annual report about
the working of his Department. So he is removed from the constant
cross-examination which is the fate of Ministers in the British Houses
of Parliament.
The Senate consists of thirty members, two from the capital and two from
each province. Those sent from Buenos Aires are elected by certain high
franchised electors, and those from outside are nominated by the
provincial legislatures. A senator must be thirty years of age, must
have been a citizen of the Republic for at least six years, and have a
personal income of £160 a year. A senator is elected for nine years, and
can offer himself for re-election. But every three years ten senators of
the thirty, decided by ballot, must retire, though they can be
re-chosen. No "carpet-bagging" is allowed. A senator must either be a
native of his province or have lived in it for at least two years before
his election. The provinces vary considerably in population, but they
have equal voice in the Senate. Thus it is a body which may be said to
represent localities rather than individuals.
The Chamber of Deputies, however, is chosen direct by the people. There
is one deputy for every thirty-three thousand inhabitants. No man can
become a candidate unless he is twenty-five years of age, has been a
citizen at least four years, born in the province, or lived in it for
two years. Thus there is never anything in the nature of a general
election, but there is a constant movement going on to secure the proper
representation of the people.
Both senators and deputies receive a salary of £1,500 a year, so they
are the best-paid legislators in the world. Both Chambers meet on May
1st and adjourn on September 30th. Only the Chamber of Deputies can have
a voice in taxation. As I have shown in the preceding chapter, the
Argentine Government--which, like all Governments, is open to
criticism--has done a great deal in advancing legislation for the solid
benefit of the country. There cannot be said to be government on party
principles, but the Government is maintained by the followers of
particular men. Politicians in Argentina, as elsewhere, have their
enemies, and when a man has been elected to Congress he sometimes dare
not attend, for that would mean leaving the constituency, and there
would always be some rival busy sapping his influence. I was in Buenos
Aires toward the close of the session. Day after day the House met, but
nothing could be done, for no quorum could be obtained. Public business
was at a standstill. It was proposed the President should employ the
police to search Buenos Aires, arrest legislators, haul them along, and
thus "make a House" with locked doors, so that business could be
proceeded with. Everybody was crying out against the scandal of
Congressmen drawing such large salaries and doing nothing to earn them.
But nothing was done.
[Illustration:
_Photograph by H. G. Olds, Buenos Aires._
THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES. ]
Besides the excellent remuneration for not attending to business, the
Argentine politician has the advantage of getting jobs for all his
relatives. The majority of Government employees are the relatives of
politicians. There are true and honourable men in political life, but,
so far as I could gather, most men take to politics in Argentina because
they can do their families a good turn. The only group that is cohesive
is that of the Socialists. Socialist deputies are on the increase.
Nearly all the freshly arrived immigrants, Spanish and Italian, when
they get their naturalisation papers after a residence of two years,
vote Socialist.
Now, whilst everything which affects the Republic as a whole is decided
upon by the central Government, each province has its local government,
with governor, two Houses, and considerable power, quite independent of
the central executive. This is following the United States plan. The
principle of devolution is a good one, that districts should administer
their own affairs without interference by those who cannot know local
circumstances. But Argentina has frequently the same trouble that the
United States has, and similarly would like to get rid of. There are
differences in the provincial laws, so that what is allowed in one
province is prohibited in another, with the consequence that, though the
process of trade is not hampered, it is often irritated.
Then the provincial Governments, sovereign in their own realm, sometimes
enact laws which the federal Government declares affect general
conditions in the Republic. They infringe the prerogative of the
central executive. Accordingly, the relationship between the central
Government and the local Governments is frequently strained. It is the
smaller provinces which cause the most trouble. Some of them have a
population that, all told, would not stock a fair-sized town. That,
however, does not diminish their sense of importance. They are
cock-a-hoop. They know what is for their good; they will pass what laws
they like; they are not going to be dictated to by those overpaid
fellows who go to Buenos Aires. The federal Government cannot use force,
and the provincial Governments snap their fingers. For instance, Mendoza
insists on printing her own paper money. It is quite clear, if serious
trouble is to be avoided, that the federal and provincial Governments
must meet in conference and draw up hard-and-fast rules dealing with
their respective powers and limitations.
So far as the individual is concerned, the theory is liberty and
equality. The stranger has the same rights before the law as the
citizen. The State, however, interferes in the matter of property. A man
is not allowed, as in England, to leave his possessions to whom he
likes. A father must leave his wife and children four-fifths of his
property; a husband, if there are no children, must let half his
belongings go to his wife; an unmarried son is obliged to leave his
parents two-thirds of his property. Only the man without parents, wife,
or children can dispose of his property by testament.
There is no obligation upon a foreigner resident in the country to
become a citizen before he can start a trade or own estate. Two years'
residence is the qualifying period to become a citizen of the Republic.
If you enter the public service you can become a citizen earlier. If you
marry an Argentine woman you can become a citizen right away. Every
child born in Argentina, even though its parents be British and on a
fortnight's visit, and have no desire to change their nationality, is
counted an Argentine. Thus there are lots of residents with a dual
nationality, Argentine in the Republic, but British in any other part of
the world.
Though the Roman Catholic faith is that of the State, and other faiths
are not restricted, the average Argentine pays little attention to
religion. He likes his wife to go to church because it does her good.
Education comprises three divisions: primary, secondary, and higher. The
former is free, secular, and compulsory for children between six and
fourteen years. If religious instruction is to be given it is only for
those children who voluntarily remain after school hours on certain
days. Public schools are scattered all over the Republic--though there
are extensive districts where the population is thin where there is no
instruction, and thousands of children grow up illiterate--and are
subsidised by both the national and provincial Governments. Also there
are primary schools for grown-ups, men whose education has been
neglected, and who want to learn reading, writing, arithmetic, and
elementary history and geography. This teaching is given during the day
or evening, and is free.
Secondary education for pupils over fourteen years is neither compulsory
nor free, though the fees only amount to 8s. 9d. a year. This secondary
instruction, quite as wide in range as elsewhere, is given in national
schools, of which there are five in Buenos Aires and one in each of the
capitals of the provinces, and normal schools, which are twenty-eight in
number, three in Buenos Aires and the remainder in the provinces. Five
years is about the length of tuition at these schools. Then the students
can enter one or other of the faculties which form the university. There
are three universities in Argentina; the oldest is in Cordoba, and the
others are in Buenos Aires and La Plata. To qualify in either of these
universities for the practice of medicine, law, or engineering, a
seven-years' course is required for the former and a six-years' course
for the two latter. Minor terms of special study are required for
qualification as a chemist, accoucheur, dental surgeon, surveyor, or
architect. In order to obtain the degree of doctor in physical sciences
further studies are required outside those of the faculties. The
university council cannot grant a qualification for a notary public,
which must be acquired before the Supreme Court of the particular
province in which the applicant seeks permission to practise.
[Illustration: THE KINDERGARTEN AT MENDOZA.]
Primary education in the capital and national territories is under the
National Ministry of Education. In the provinces it is under the control
of the Provincial Council of Education, who receive subventions from the
national exchequer as occasion may require. The intuitive method is
employed exclusively, and the whole system is modelled on that of the
United States. As a rule, Spanish children learn Italian from their
classmates, and vice versa. In the elementary higher standards, boys
learn manual labour and French, and girls learn French and domestic
duties. The schools are well built, well ventilated, the rooms are airy,
each child has a separate desk, there is a medical visit every day, and
where schools are within reach they are fairly well attended. But only
42 per cent. of the children in the Republic who ought to go to school
do so. The low attendance may be put down to the great distances which
separate the children's homes from the schools in the country districts.
Very general complaints are heard in the villages of the manner in which
the schools are conducted, and the small amount of knowledge acquired in
spite of the flattering picture presented by the education authorities.
Considerable attention is paid to technical education, which is largely
encouraged throughout the country by means of schools and training
colleges maintained at the expense of the nation. Prominent among these
institutions stands the National School of Commerce, which trains and
prepares mercantile experts, public accountants, and sworn translators.
There are also commercial schools in Cordoba and Bahia Blanca. These
schools are attended by about a thousand pupils, who receive instruction
in commercial arithmetic, account and book-keeping, French, German,
etc. The schools are open to both sexes, and in them the pupils can
qualify for employment as book-keepers, accountants, clerks, etc. The
Industrial School has its own workshops for the teaching of trades. The
entrance conditions are similar to those for the national schools.
Thorough practical instruction is given to about four hundred pupils in
a number of subjects, including chemistry, mechanics, physics, optics,
electricity, architecture, practical carpentry, mechanical and
electrical engineering. The complete course lasts about six years, and
the school is said to have given very good results. There is a School of
Mines at San Juan, to which was added, by a decree dated April 20th,
1906, a section of chemical industry. There is an important agricultural
college known as the Agrarian and Veterinary School at Santa Catalina in
the immediate neighbourhood of Buenos Aires, and at Mendoza there is a
viticultural training school where the practical cultivation of the vine
is taught. Various other agricultural and horticultural schools are
being established by the Government, which also supports the National
School of Pilots, several conservatories of music, and a drawing school.
There is a naval and military college, from which officers are chosen
for the navy and army, but they do not come under the Ministry of
Education. By order of the Ministry of War physical drill and rifle
shooting are taught in the two highest classes of all secondary schools,
these exercises being subject to the supervision of a military officer.
The Argentine Government has founded numerous scholarships, and sends
students to England, the United States, Italy, France, and Germany. It
will be seen that the plan of education is very complete; but it would
not appear to give such good results as might be anticipated, for it is
a very general complaint that there are no good schools in the country
districts.
The attention of the public is frequently called in the newspapers to
the unsatisfactory condition of education, in spite of the large sums of
money spent upon it annually. It is shown how small is the attendance at
the primary schools compared with what it should be if the law was
properly obeyed, as would be the case were the results more
satisfactory. It is also asserted that the education in the secondary
schools is especially defective, and that certificates are issued to
university candidates without previous examination, and after merely
nominal questioning by inspectors. There are numerous foreign private
schools in the country, which all have to submit by law to Government
supervision.[A]
[A] This information respecting education in Argentina is
extracted from a British Foreign Office memorandum.
There is compulsory military service. The period of continuous training
does not exceed one year, and this only in the case of a proportion of
the annual contingent. The others are released after three months'
drill. With varying periods of training every Argentine from the age of
twenty to forty-five is liable to be called upon to defend his country.
Though years may pass without any call to attend military drill, every
man in the country must learn to shoot.
Heavy duties are imposed on most manufactured articles imported, except
in the case of material directly beneficial to the development of the
country, such as machinery. Anything which helps in the progress of the
Republic has easy entry. So, though it means two years' residence to
become a naturalised citizen, anyone who establishes a new industry, or
introduces a useful invention, who has contracted to build railways or
establish a colony, or who is going to be a teacher in any branch of
education or industry, is admitted at once. All these regulations go to
show that, despite the perfectly legitimate criticisms which can be
made, there is sound common-sense and foresight in the minds of the
governing classes.
Everyone in any business or profession must pay an annual licence, and
these vary from five to sixty thousand dollars. The latter sum is paid
by banks. Money-lenders have to pay from five to seven thousand dollars,
whilst in some provinces the _patente_ varies from three to six hundred
dollars a year. The postal and telegraph services are under the control
of the Ministry of the Interior. Most of the taxation is indirect.
Though the tariffs imposed on manufactured articles coming into the
country are high--except in the case of specified articles, which are
counted as beneficial for the development of the country--and
consequently one is disposed to gasp at the price of things compared
with Europe, it is not to be forgotten that the direct taxation is not
so high as in Europe. I heard it asserted that the reason there are high
tariffs is to stimulate manufacture in Argentina. If so, the result has
not been markedly apparent. The effect might have been so if the mass of
the immigrants into Argentina came from manufacturing countries, like
Germany, Belgium, France, Great Britain, or the United States. That is
not so, and one of the hindering checks has been the language. The crowd
has come from Italy and Spain, mostly unskilled labourers or men whose
knowledge is limited to the land.
Argentina has no coal--and that will always handicap her if she enters
the field as a manufacturing nation. The climate being what it is, there
is no need of coal for heating purposes. A fire-place is a rare sight.
But the importation of coal is a heavy charge on the working of railways
and on shipping. Syndicates are now endeavouring to introduce oil as
fuel. Oil has been found in the country, but as yet not in sufficient
quantity to make it an important addition to the products of the
Republic. So I see small prospect of Argentina's ever becoming a
manufacturing country in the modern meaning of the phrase. Blest as she
is in innumerable respects, she could not be worse placed if she had any
such desire. She cannot produce cheaper, because most of her raw
material, including coal, must be imported, and heavy freights would
handicap economic production. Take the case of two raw materials
which she has in abundance, leather and wool. There are shoe factories,
but the quality can in no way compete with that of the importations.
Only the rougher kind of boots are made. There is some woollen
manufacturing, but the material produced is crude, except in a few
cases. Besides, the rush of immigrants is to the land, and not into
workshops. The men who are skilled artizans are few. Therefore, although
here and there you get local manufacturers who can hold their own in the
markets, it may be said that in general the articles imported are better
and cheaper, notwithstanding the tariff. However, as I will show in a
later chapter, there is room for industrial development within a defined
range.
Then there are the constant labour disputes in the towns. Running along
with the prosperity of the country is the trouble of repeated strikes
amongst the workers. It is not my province to go into the merits of the
respective disputes. But they have been so recurrent, and have so much
hampered trade, that the Government has taken the most drastic measures
by laying hands on the chiefs of trade unions when grievances are
fomented and strikes threatened.
Although the number of the strings of commerce which are in the hands of
Englishmen is gratifying, it would have been strange if I had not heard
the usual complaint that the Germans are edging in, and that, if care is
not taken, the British will be ousted from their pre-eminence. It was
the old story that British merchants are too conservative, and do not
pay sufficient heed to the personal likings of Argentine customers. It
is true I saw lots of German goods. They were cheaper and not of the
same quality as those of British make. Further, German houses give much
longer credit than do their British rivals. Another cause of complaint
is that in business disputes the long-drawn-out law's delay, and the
obstacles in the path of the foreigner seeking redress, mean that
justice is not always secured.
It is not to be denied that, although the returns are excellent, Britain
does not retain the same proportion of the import trade which she had a
few years ago. There is no disputing the superiority of the British
article; but German and French merchants having a market to secure are
more accommodating to their customers, whilst in regard to agricultural
implements the United States makers are pushing their hardest. Their
machines are more showy than the English. It seems a small point, and
yet I have thought it would be well if our British manufacturers would
not only turn out a serviceable tool, but bear in mind the temperament
of the people who are to be the buyers. Put two threshing machines in a
Buenos Aires warehouse, that from Britain painted grey, and that from
the United States painted red; the Latin Argentine is naturally
attracted to the red, even though its merits be inferior. Hundreds of
millions sterling are to be expended in public works during the ensuing
few years, and British contractors should be awake to the
possibilities. Belgian contractors have already been in the field, but
their work has not always been "up to sample," so that the present
opportunity is considerable.
Old residents directed my attention to a great change which is taking
place in the import houses of Buenos Aires. Until a few years back it
could be said that the British were first and the rest nowhere. British
capital has flowed abundantly into the country, but toward developing
its natural resources rather than in trade. Now German houses have a
strong footing in "B.A.," and, naturally enough, they are encouraging
the products of their own land. Go into a German house, and it is German
wares that are for sale. Go into a British house, and you find United
States and German wares as well as English being offered. I was
seriously convinced, whilst studying the trend of trade in Argentina,
that it is absolutely necessary that the managing heads of English firms
who have dealings with South America, and find they are not getting that
share of the increased trade which the growth of the country warrants,
should make periodic visits to Argentina to learn for themselves what is
the matter.
If there is one complaint to be made against the Englishman trading with
a foreign land, it is his lack of adaptability. So long as he had the
manufacturing of the world in his own hands, he could do as he liked.
The thing he made was good, and it was the only thing. Now he has keen
competitors, and the customer has a varied choice. The Englishman
has to consider whether it is worth his while to give the exaggerated
credit which manufacturers elsewhere are prepared to give if they can
secure the orders. The Argentine likes long credit. Then, is he prepared
to make an inferior, showy article at a cheap price? These are two
considerations which count enormously with the Argentine. You can
purchase the best Sheffield cutlery in the best shops, for it is what
the better-to-do people insist on having. But there are millions of
people in the Republic who have never heard of Sheffield, and,
therefore, know nothing about its reputation. What they want is cheap
knives. Sheffield firms do not make these, and the consequence is the
majority of the people have rubbish from elsewhere. I am not advocating
that the British manufacturer should drop making the things which have
won for him and his country a worthy reputation. I am pointing out some
of the things which must be well thought about if Britain is going to
keep its pre-eminence in the financial value of the goods imported into
Argentine.
Further, an Argentine when he orders anything wants it at once. Quick
delivery is an essential. Finally, all catalogues should be in Spanish,
and all prices in Argentine currency. No man who goes out to "chase up
business" in securing orders should be without a knowledge of Spanish.
Talking through an interpreter is no good. The personal touch is lost.
Spanish is a language much neglected in England. I can think of no more
profitable investment for a young fellow of parts, wanting to enter
commercial life, and without means to go into business as a principal,
than thoroughly to master Spanish.
CHAPTER VIII
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE COUNTRY
It is well to get a bold, broad idea of the country. It covers 2,000,000
square miles. England is just about one-tenth that size. It is double
the size of Mexico.
In the far north you are in the torrid tropics. In the far south you
need a heavy coat, even in high summer-time. Its conditions may,
therefore, be described as variable. No other country can give you such
change.
The 20,000 miles of railway run through most of the flat fertile areas,
and the ordinary traveller comes away with the idea it is one of the
most level, featureless countries he has ever been in. The old settlers
had the same idea, for their description _pampa_ applied to a boundless
stretch. You can journey for hundreds of miles and never see a tree. But
up in the north, under the shadow of Brazil, are great forests which
will be made useful to the world one of these days. Then you get the
backbone of the continent in the west, the Andes with Aconcagua rising
to 23,000 feet above sea level. In the middle land is the fruitful
Argentine Mesapotamia. In the far south is the last word of desolation,
the Patagonian wilderness.
Argentina has several navigable rivers, and two, the Plate and the
Parana, up which it is possible, for light draft steamers, at any rate,
to go hundreds of miles. If one pretends there is no Amazon in existence
the Plate discharges more water into the ocean than any river from
Hudson's Bay to the Magellan Straits. A learned book informs me that the
volume of water rolled into the ocean is 2,150,000 cubic feet per
second, which seems "prodigious." At Monte Video the width of the river
is sixty-two miles; so it is no trifling creek. The Plate is the
muddiest stream I have ever come across. This is not to be wondered at,
considering that it and its tributaries scour many thousands of miles.
As a matter of fact, the estuary is being filled up. Within knowledge,
the depth opposite Monte Video has lessened by fifteen feet, and though
dredgers are constantly at work, big liners moving up to Buenos Aires
have sometimes to force a way through two feet of mud. It is quite
likely that in the fullness of time Buenos Aires will not be a port, but
an inland town.
Sometimes Argentina has floods which ruin the crops, drown thousands of
cattle, break the railway banks, and reduce strong men, who thought they
were rich, to tears at the prospect of poverty. Or there are droughts
which shrivel everything up. Away back in the 'thirties, Buenos Aires
Province had a drought which lasted for five years. Scientists, who know
all about these things, say that the rainless zones are extending, and
that in the far future the whole Republic will be a rainless zone, and
umbrella sellers will go into the bankruptcy court. The prospect is not
immediate, and if we are wise we shall not worry over a trouble which
may have to be faced five hundred years hence.
[Illustration:
_Photograph by J. W. Boote & Co., Buenos Aires._
OX-CARTS IN THE ARGENTINE.
The long pole in the man's hand is an ox-goad.]
Considering you can get a sweep of level country for 2,000 miles, with
scarcely a hill that would make a decent bunker, when a gale gets on the
rampage it runs away with itself. There is the _zonda_, which so
disturbs the elements that the thermometer jumps fifty degrees in about
as many minutes. Then, although there are those millions of cubic feet
of water emptying itself out of the Plate, there comes the _suestadas_,
which blows so hard that the water cannot get into the ocean, and, as a
result, the upper streams rise and tumble over their banks. Next there
are the _pamperos_ on the plains, which either grill you with their heat
or give you a chill from their rawness. I did not suffer myself; but
these hateful _pamperos_ are so charged with electricity that they give
you a shock which produces a sort of paralysis, "perhaps twisting up a
corner of the mouth, or half closing one eye, or causing a sudden
swelling of the neck," as one authority records.
Parts of the Republic are yet to be explored. Persistent man is having a
rough time in the Chaco region. When our ancestors invented hell they
had no knowledge of the Chaco. It is all swamp and forest, and mammoth
mosquitoes and fever, and pestiferous Indians who do not like the white
man, and put a spear into his back whenever they get the chance. The
Chaco Indians are amongst the few of their race who have not been
subjugated. There are rivers which come trailing from goodness knows
where; but when they reach the Chaco they are evidently so disgusted
that they burrow underground. When it rains, fish several inches long
drop from the clouds. Under a torrent a dip in the ground will become a
pool, and in it will be found fish a foot long. They do not drop from
the clouds. There are no little streams by which they can have arrived.
Where do they come from? The easiest explanation offered is that they
were formerly much smaller, did arrive on a storm cloud, and have been
lying in the mud since the last storm.
I heard yarns, vouched for, but which seem like travellers' tales. There
is a little bird which sits on a branch and twitters. Others come round,
and are apparently mesmerised. Then the little bird attacks one, maybe
much bigger than itself, and kills it without any resistance being
offered. There is another bird which lives on friendly terms with the
Indians, hops in and out of their mud huts, and is known as the "watch
bird," because it always raises a peculiar cry when a stranger
approaches.
In its physical aspects the Chaco is strange, with swamps, arid plains,
and mighty clumps of forest. Here grows the quebracho, which means the
break-axe; so it is a very hard wood. It is to get this wood that
companies have men working in the Chaco, hundreds of miles from even a
vestige of civilisation. Bullocks are employed to drag the trunks, and
the poor beasts have a bad time of it. Then there are light railways to
carry the trunks to the mills. Originally the quebracho was sought
because it made serviceable and long lasting "sleepers" for railroads.
Now it is chiefly wanted for the tannin in it; it is said to contain 50
per cent. of tannin.
Mention has been made of singular birds in the Chaco. But there are
others to be found elsewhere in Argentina. W. H. Hudson, in his
instructive book "The Naturalist in La Plata," describes the ypecaha,
which holds public meetings and has dancing performances. "A number of
ypecahas," he says, "have their assembling places on a small area of
smooth, level ground, just above the water and hemmed in by dense rush
beds. First one bird among the rushes emits a powerful cry, thrice
repeated, and this is a note of invitation quickly responded to by other
birds from all sides as they hurriedly repair to the usual place. In a
few moments they appear to the number of a dozen or twenty, bursting
from the rushes and rushing into the open space and instantly beginning
the performance. There is a screaming concert. The screams they utter
have a certain resemblance to the human voice, exerted to its utmost
pitch and expressive of extreme terror, frenzy and despair. A long,
piercing shriek is succeeded by a lower note as if in the first the
creature had wellnigh exhausted itself. Whilst screaming, the birds rush
from side to side, as if possessed by madness, the wings spread and
vibrating, the long beak wide open and raised vertically. This
exhibition lasts three or four minutes, after which the assembly
peaceably breaks up." Quite like a political meeting at home.
European domestic animals have thrived since their introduction, though
there is a tendency, checked by the constant introduction of breeding
stock, to develop local characteristics. This has been particularly
remarked in sheep which have strayed and have been left to themselves
for several generations. They grow bigger and bonier, and with their
leanness comes the power of rapid movement, so that their flesh is scant
and their wool has an inclination toward growing straight and stiff like
the hair of a goat. In the outlands of Argentina ostriches, jaguars, and
deer may be seen; but you can live for years on the prairies--and that
is where most of the colonisation is going on--and never catch a glimpse
of one of these.
The thing which lays hold of the seeing man, after he has remembered the
ages during which the country, suitable for maintaining innumerable
millions of men and beasts, lay dormant, is the way the land has been
completely transformed in its inhabitants, human and animal, and how
alien vegetation has found a thriving home. The early Spanish
adventurers, as has already been told, had to start their settlement by
bringing animals from Spain, and it was chance, the extraordinary
reproductiveness of herds which strayed or were abandoned, which taught
them they had come into possession of something more valuable than gold
mines. Books of history chiefly deal with the lust and the cruelty of
the early Spaniards. I have nothing to do here with the story of the way
in which Spain conquered the land. We have not to lose sight of the
fact, however, they began settling in these parts nearly four hundred
years ago, when a voyage to the Americas was like a journey to another
planet, when the ships were small and incommodious and dangers were
great, and the world had no experience in the science of colonisation.
The authorities freely gave tracts of land, but in their wisdom they
always stipulated that European domestic animals should be introduced. A
settler got land for wheat and maize and an orchard, and then more land,
just in proportion to how many horses, cows, sheep, pigs, and goats he
would introduce. The land could be obtained for nothing, but always on
condition that it was put to its full use in the maintenance of stock.
That was a rough and ready, and yet very statesmanlike procedure. The
best incentive was given to the agriculturist and breeder. The more
cattle he introduced the more land he put to the plough, the bigger was
the grant given to him by the authorities. Thus possession and
prosperity advanced hand in hand. Here is a lesson which might be learnt
to-day and copied by such countries as Australia, where there are
millions of acres of undeveloped territory.
Time came when the wild herds waxed so numerous that the local councils
proclaimed that all such cattle were the public property of their own
people. To prevent those who lived under another local council taking
possession, the system of branding these cattle, when they could be
caught, was introduced. When the cattle thief came on the scene, and he
was got hold of, he was first branded on the shoulder and for subsequent
offences branded in the hand, flogged and hanged. The straying cattle in
a district belonging to the public, the public soon began to appreciate
that here were cheap meat and cheap hides. They were hunted as the
buffalo were subsequently hunted in North America, and it really seemed
as though they were going to be exterminated. Regulations had to be made
limiting the number of animals to be killed every year. Though there was
still great slaughter, the herds continued to multiply amazingly, and,
of course, wandered hundreds of miles away from any settlements. So the
tide rolled on until two hundred years ago the number of cattle had
increased to many millions. Carlos Gervasini, a Jesuit missionary,
writing from Buenos Aires in 1729, says, "So numerous are the cattle in
the neighbouring _campo_ here that any landlord may take from ten to
twelve thousand to breed from, merely for the trouble of lassoing them
and driving them home. In order to take more than this number a special
licence is required from the governor. The ships returning to Spain are
filled with the hides, and none but good specimens of these are troubled
about. As to the flesh, each man takes what he requires and leaves the
rest to the jaguars and dogs." Some years later a visitor to Argentina
said there were so many cattle that the plains were covered; and had it
not been for the number of dogs which devoured the young the country
would have been devastated by them. There were so many cattle that when
the Spaniards were at war, and invading boats appeared, their custom was
to drive vast herds pell-mell down the river bank and so prevent a
landing.
See the extraordinary whirligig. First no cattle. Then land granted to
settlers who would introduce cattle. Then so many cattle they could be
had by anyone for the asking, and this followed by wholesale slaughter,
the extermination so thorough that a halt had to be called. Then further
amazing multiplication, till the increasing wild dogs played havoc with
the young animals. Then the dogs got so numerous, and their ravages so
extensive, that soldiers were sent out to wage war on the canine pests.
They killed untold thousands, but the people, instead of being grateful,
chaffed the soldiers and dubbed them the "dog killers." The dogs started
to increase again, faster than the cattle, but men refused to go out and
kill the dogs when the only reward was to be nicknamed "dog killer." So
the dogs were left alone, and they kept down the number of cattle. It
was not till fifty years ago that a systematic massacre of the wild dogs
took place, because just then the Argentines were beginning to settle
down to scientific breeding.
It is astonishing how few dogs there are in Argentina. The dog may be
the friend of man in other parts of the world, but not in Argentina.
The Argentine hates the dog. In Buenos Aires the police have order to
arrest every dog, whether it is with anyone or not. During the time I
was in "B.A." I saw only one dog, and that was the property of Sir
Reginald Tower at the British Legation.
That is not all the story. Not only did the wild dogs develop a taste
for young calves, but the native Indians began to show a fondness for
horseflesh. For centuries, although he could have had any number of
cattle and nobody would have objected, the Indian maintained a
preference for horseflesh. Then, suddenly, his fancy extended to cattle.
When he started rounding up the cattle of the Spaniards there was
trouble. Sheep were prolific, but mutton was contemptible food. None was
so poor as to be obliged to eat mutton. The Spaniards regarded mutton
much as Englishmen now regard horseflesh. The only use of a sheep was
for its wool and fat. But the prejudice against mutton, after lasting
for nearly three hundred years, finally disappeared.
Whilst there was an increasing carrying trade from Buenos Aires to Spain
of skins, wool, and tallow--very profitable merchandise--Spain
officially was not enthusiastic over this mean trading. What she wanted
was gold and silver. As these came from Peru and Chili those countries
were favoured whilst Argentina was the Cinderella of the family. What
good was a country that had no mines but only grass to feed horses and
cattle and sheep?
We think differently in these days, but in those far-off times Spain
scarcely condescended to recognise Argentina. It was darling Peru that
was always favoured. All regulations in regard to trade were made
favourable to Peru. Spain accepted what she fancied from Argentina, and
hampered her in seeking other markets.
Nothing, however, could stop the advance of Argentina. It was with
reluctance that Argentina was raised to the first rank as a province,
and was given liberty to export where she liked. Her trade jumped ahead.
Then Argentina not only killed to get hides and wool and fat, but she
had to begin breeding in order to supply the European demand. She began
to dream dreams. There was little immigration; the people were the
descendants of the old settlers. They knew nothing of Spain. They had no
recollection of ancestors who did know anything of Spain. Spain meant
nothing to them but a distant country which once lorded them and
presumed to dictate to them. It was resentment at the relationship,
combined with a desire to fulfil an independent destiny, that brought
about the revolution and the declaration of a republic in 1810.
Since then Argentina has had many internal political troubles. She has
had her set-backs. But the ebb has always been succeeded by a tumbling
flow of fortune. The breed of cattle has been marvellously improved. The
number of animals now runs into hundreds of millions. Vast areas now
wave with wheat and maize. As you journey through Argentina, and see
the land smiling with success, you know that beyond your gaze are
thousands of square miles of soil as virgin as in the days when the
Indians roamed free.
[Illustration: A TYPICAL ARGENTINE PUBLIC PARK.]
CHAPTER IX
"CABBAGES AND KINGS"
One of the failings of new countries, like that of youth generally, is
conceit. Yet, on second thought, it is a useful offence, for it carries
a people light-heartedly over rough ground which older nations dare not
face and so turn aside.
In the new lands the settlers have the constant panorama of achievement
before their eyes. They remember things as they were ten years ago, see
them now, and are convinced that nowhere in the world has such progress
been made as they are making. Anybody who hints a doubt is scowled upon.
And the buoyancy of spirit, a sort of rampant optimism about themselves,
is fostered by a bent of mind to read about what goes on in "rotten old
Europe." A gracious Providence helps them to take notice only of the
good things in their own country, and to have a quick eye for the bad
things in other countries. Further, as all new lands need settlers, the
official flag-waving and trumpet-blowing to attract immigrants is
garish. You can, as a rule, reduce the value of the advertisements by
half, and still be quite sure that more than justice remains.
I have been induced to write the preceding paragraph because, as I
am not a hired agent to proclaim the wonders of Argentina, but merely a
man who has studied some of its capabilities on the spot, I have no
desire, in my endeavour to give a true portrait, to ignore the warts and
occasional blemishes. Of course, the Argentine thinks his land the most
remarkable in the world. In many respects I am disposed to agree with
him. But it is not without spot. For instance, the first thing he is
enthusiastic about is the climate. The freedom from severe winters, with
the possibility for cattle to remain in the open all the year round, is
an advantage. But in the Argentine winter (our summer) there are cold,
wretched, rainy days which are depressing. In their summer (our winter)
the heat is sometimes intense, especially in the northern region. I know
of the fine, clear, bracing climate of the plains, filling one's veins
with energy and the joy of living. I have enjoyed the charm of Mendoza,
the healthiest of all the towns in the Republic. Where I am inclined to
part company with the Argentine is when he wants to argue that the
climate of the whole country is adorable.
Take Buenos Aires. The new arrival is not only entranced with the
development and the encircling beauty of the city, but, with continuous
blue skies and glorious sunshine, he is prone to underline the usual
nice things about the climate. Then, one day, he feels uncomfortable,
limp, saggy in body and mind. The slight breeze is from the north, and
it seems to bring heavy inertia from the Brazilian forests. The old
inhabitants have probably got used to the "norther"--they show no
diminution in vigour--but the muscle-slackening and wearying effect on
the new-comer is undoubted. Most of Buenos Aires is built on low-lying
ground, much of it reclaimed from the shallow Plate, and the air is
relaxing. Though the sun is delightful, it is anything but invigorating.
So you reach the conclusion that, whilst Buenos Aires has usually most
delightful weather, it has an indifferent climate.
There are striking changes in temperature in Argentina. Within half an
hour of being broiled you may feel as though you had passed into a
refrigerator. Hurricanes sometimes sweep vast areas, and
everything--trees, buildings, crops--are mown down by the blasts. In the
sandy stretches the sand is swept up like a thick cloud, and, though
_estancieros_ shut every door and fasten every window, it is not long
before every room has an inch depth of sand. I have travelled all night
in a sleeping car with double windows to resist the sand, but it
filtered through nevertheless, and in the morning I found the only white
spot in the compartment was where my cheek had rested on the pillow.
Life on a ranch has the glamour of romance about it. The town-bred
Englishman, dissatisfied with his lot, lets his fancy roam to the
prairies of North America or the pampas of South America, and his
imagination glows with the conjured picture of cowboy life--quaintly
dressed, always well-mounted, and with nothing to do but ride over the
plains rounding up wandering cattle. As I have explained in an earlier
chapter, many of the large _estancias_ are not occupied by their owners;
a manager with a salary is put in charge, and he usually has several
young Englishmen as assistants. There are a number of peons. The
manager, usually married, has a decent house. The assistants have a
plain, bachelor establishment, and live in common. The peons rarely have
anything better than ramshackle quarters. Distances are enormous.
Frequently, outside the little clump of trees which is the
distinguishing feature of all _estancias_, there is nothing to be seen
as far as the eye can range but featureless prairie. The railways may be
many miles away. The country has comparatively few towns--really a good
point about an agricultural land--and though they are all attractive,
only Spanish is spoken. Months may elapse between the visits of an
Englishman to a town. He has to rise early; he has to work hard; the
glamour of cowboy life soon goes; he and his mates have told each other
all their stories; visitors are rare; there is practically no women's
society. At first the tendency is to be homesick. But in time the man
gets used to the life; possibly he may be happy. He, however, is far
removed from refining influences. He may have a fondness for reading,
but life in the saddle is so hard that at night, after supper and
receiving instructions from the "boss" for the next day, and having a
chat over work, there is little disposition to do anything except have a
game of cards, and then turn in.
It is no unusual thing for an _estancia_ to be fifty miles square. If
so, it is divided into three or four sections, with a manager over each.
Even then the property to be looked after is extensive. Though for food
there is plenty of beef and mutton, there is little variety. The men are
out by four in the morning, and breakfast is often no more than
biscuits, washed down with maté (native tea). There is a solid meal
about eleven o'clock, generally boiled meat, by no means always
attractively served. After dark, between seven and eight o'clock, there
is supper: meat, coffee, and biscuits. The surroundings are coarse and
dirty, and sometimes disgusting. Of course, conditions are occasionally
much better than these; but I think I am fairly describing the average
quarters of the young Englishman who goes out to Argentina to be
assistant on an _estancia_. What gave me frequent surprise was not that
the life roughened them, but that so many retained the kindly courtesies
of their homes in England.
The great thing is that the life is healthy. As years pass it gets a
grip of a man, so that even if he has the chance to return to
civilisation he generally prefers the camp. There is the driving of
cattle to the railway and loading them--often difficult work--into the
trucks to take them to the freezing factories. There is the cutting of
alfalfa and the shearing of sheep. There is breaking-in of colts and
looking after the stock.
A neighbouring _estancia_ may be twenty miles away. But Sunday is a
holiday, except for absolutely necessary work, and men will start off at
two o'clock in the morning to have a jollification with friends,
generally to witness some horse-racing, about which all the _estancias_
for fifty miles round are excited, and with a bottle of beer as first
prize. Maybe once or twice a year a wandering parson drops into an
_estancia_. Whatever be the religious views of the hands--supposing they
have any--the visitor is well received, and, be he Roman Catholic or
Protestant, he proceeds to "fill them up." He brings them something they
do not often think about. At the least he is a diversion. Undoubtedly
his praying and preaching have an effect, because for several days after
he has gone the men are serious, and language is not quite so ruddy as
formerly. Then arises the question of the rival merits of horses over a
level two miles, and the trend of thought changes.
The rural roads, as I have said, are shocking, especially after wet
weather, for they are no more than tracks across mother earth. But man
is an adaptable creature, and the Englishman gets used to the bad roads.
The very discomforts facilitate companionship. No man out on the road
and needing a meal has the slightest hesitation about dropping into an
_estancia_ and making himself at home. Young fellows will spend their
money; and, as they cannot get rid of it after the way of the towns, it
goes in buying horses to race or ponies for polo; because if there are a
dozen youngsters within hail they invariably form a polo club. Folk
think nothing of travelling across country many miles to witness a polo
match on the Sunday. Usually the matches take place at different
_estancias_ on successive Sundays, and if there should be a homely
English girl about--well, she receives as much attention as a real
beauty would get in Mayfair.
Where two or three men are gathered together in England the odds are
that conversation will turn to golf. Wherever men living in Argentina
meet, be they Spanish, Italian, or English, they talk about
horse-racing. I cannot recall that I ever met a man in the Republic who
was not interested in horse-racing. I have already described what goes
on at Palermo. But besides the swagger races at Palermo, and the races
amongst the natives, the English like to have their camp races every few
months. Not only is there the excitement of the contests, but there is
real warmth in the hearts of men meeting old friends. Everybody knows
what every horse has done; everybody is acquainted with the riders.
There is betting, but nothing like to the same extent as amongst the
born Argentines, who are gamblers, every mother's son, and will bet on
anything and everything.
Sometimes one reads in English newspapers and telegrams how, on the
arrival of emigrant ships in Australia and New Zealand, there is
hustling amongst the ladies of those countries to get hold of the girls
who are arriving as domestic servants. Every new country has its
domestic servant problem, and Argentina is no exception. Unless
wealthy, most people in the towns live in small flats, which is partly
due to the excessive house rent, but also because servants are scarce
and dear. The foreigner who has to make shift with an Argentine servant
is either driven mad or deserves a medal for an angelic temper. I
confess that at Cordoba I did meet with an English family who had
nothing but praise for their native servants. But mostly I had to listen
to tragic stories of dirtiness, theft, and unblushing lying. The trouble
with so many of these Latins is that, even when willing, they seem quite
incapable of learning. Of course, this applies to the lowest classes.
When you get amongst the business folk you find they are quite as cute
as North Americans--as the Argentines always speak of the people of the
United States. After having a dozen incompetent servants in twelve
unhappy months, many an English housewife ceases her search for a decent
servant and does the work herself.
There may be a Merchandise Marks Act in Argentina. What I am quite sure
about is, that it is the very paradise of the faked imitation article.
There are certain things in Europe, be they mineral waters, or
field-glasses, or razors, which are well known. It is possible to get
the real thing in Buenos Aires, but it is six to one you get a faked
article. The Argentines fake French wines of well known _châteaux_. You
pay a big price expecting to get a good cigar, and more likely than not
you get a brand with a well-imitated band. All the well-known Scotch
whiskies are imitated, and there are half a hundred "famous" whiskies
that are never heard of outside the Republic. I searched the whole of
Buenos Aires to get some briarwood pipes made by well-known
manufacturers. I was offered pipes bearing their names, but they were
all fakes. "Sheffield" cutlery is often the shoddiest product of
Germany. England has still a reputation for turning out a first-class
article, but my experience was corroborated by men I consulted in Buenos
Aires; it was impossible, or exceedingly difficult, to get the genuine
thing. I am not going to write that Argentina is responsible for the
shiploads of imitation muck which is dumped upon her shores. But there
are certainly some manufacturers in some parts of the world who make
cheap and nasty things, affix well-known English names, and do an
enormous business in exporting them to the Republic.
The "fool" Englishman is to be encountered on the boats sailing to the
Argentine. He does not read the newspapers, except the sporting columns,
and "books are so dull"; but somebody has told him Argentina is a
wonderful place with no end of "stuff" to be picked up. So with a
first-class ticket to "B.A.," and enough cash in his pocket to keep him
at the Plaza Hotel for a fortnight, he hopes to make his fortune.
"No end of Johnnies make lots of money," he explains as a preliminary to
proceeding to do the same himself.
"What do you intend to do?" is quietly asked.
"Oh, anything. I think I'd like to go on one of those _estancia_ things;
awfully jolly riding about all day rounding up beastly bullocks."
"Got any letters of introduction?"
"Yes; I've got two from a fellow at my club, awfully decent sort, who
met a couple of ripping Argentines in the Riviera summer before last,
but smelling with gold. They ought to put a chap in for something worth
having; what?"
That is not a fancy picture. I have met two of that type in one voyage,
and the above is a fairly good example of their hopes and credentials.
Without any qualification they land in Buenos Aires and have the haziest
knowledge what they propose to do next. Possibly they have some vague
ideas that wealthy Argentines will be down at the wharf eager to help
good-looking young Englishmen. The young Englishman proceeds to use his
letters of introduction, and finds that one of the men is in Europe and
nobody ever heard of the other. What next? The Englishman does not know.
He cannot speak a word of Spanish. He hangs round the hotel lounge, and
spends a lot of time in the American bar downstairs. At the end of four
days he confides to you he is "fed up with the stinking hole," and has
wired to the "old man" to send him enough "stuff" to take him home. Then
at the end of a week he returns to England in the same boat as that by
which he arrived, quite convinced Argentina is a place which he was
jolly lucky to get out of.
[Illustration: A REGATTA NEAR BUENOS AIRES.]
There was another young fellow, somewhat more spry than the example I
have given. I met him in the street one morning, and he was furious. He
had been in the running for the secretaryship of an English company that
had some big contracts in Argentina, and he had been ruled out at last
because he did not speak Spanish. That was his grievance. He knew he
could mess along somehow, and could always get somebody to explain if he
had to talk business with an Argentine who did not speak English; so
what was the good of having to swat to learn the lingo?
One of the biggest financiers in Argentina told me one day that whilst
plenty of young Englishmen made their way--indeed, if competent, they
were preferred to other foreigners--he was astonished at the way others
missed their opportunities. My friend, an Englishman himself, but who
has lived all his life in the country, and speaks Spanish more fluently
than he does English, has his finger in many concerns. Young men who
have come out to posts, and are not making the progress they hoped, go
to him to see if he can give them a helping hand.
"Delighted," he says; "I want to help my own countrymen as much as
possible. How long have you been in 'B.A.'?"
"Eight years."
"Then you speak Spanish like an Argentine, eh?"
"Well--er--no; but I've picked up enough to scrape along on."
"Could you take charge of a hundred Argentines and talk business to them
as well as an Argentine?"
"No; I wouldn't like to say that."
"Could you write a technical business letter in Spanish?"
"I'm afraid not."
"Good day, my young friend. I should have been glad to have helped you,
but I want a man who would not be sure to make mistakes."
There is a number of that pattern of Englishman in Buenos Aires. There
are excuses for them. They go out under a three- or a five-years'
contract to some post. A lad is a stranger in a strange land, and has
yet to pick up Spanish. He naturally consorts with his own countrymen.
They dine together; they meet in the same café; they belong to the same
club; they seek their pleasures together. It is very hard for a fellow
under such circumstances to become quick with the language, or extend
his knowledge to any great extent as to the Argentine way of doing
things. He can get all his requirements with a sort of pidgin-Spanish.
So at last he does not bother. That is the kind of man who sticks in the
same position all his life, and occasionally rails at his luck in not
getting a big post.
That is one side of the picture. There is the other. I have in my mind a
man who holds a high position in Argentina. When he went out twenty
years ago he saw that the first essential was to know the language. At
the risk of being thought unsociable, he lived with Spanish Argentines
for two years, and made friends with young Argentines rather than with
Englishmen. He made it a habit to read the Buenos Aires Spanish morning
papers. He has gone ahead and done exceedingly well, although I would
not describe him as a brilliant business man. Then there was a youth
with whom I made acquaintance on the boat. I noticed he was spending a
good deal of his time with a Spanish grammar. He told me he was going
out under a five-years' contract to be a clerk in one of the banks. "But
I am not going to stop a bank clerk," he confided to me, "though that
will be all right for five years. By then I hope to have got a good grip
of the language and picked up something about Argentina, and if then I'm
not able to go to some boss and get one of the good jobs, well, it will
be my own fault." With that spirit he would be a success. All over the
country I was meeting Englishmen of that standard, and, because they can
be relied upon, they are esteemed and trusted.
But I am not going to sing the praises of Argentina from a British
immigrant's point of view. First of all, take the case of the unskilled
labourer, the artisan, and the agriculturist. There is no man so
conservative in this world as the British working man. He has an
inherent contempt for all foreigners when he gets close to them, chiefly
because their ways are not his ways. So the working man who went out to
Argentina would be handicapped by not knowing the language; he would be
confused with the money; he would dislike the food; the way in which
the working class lives out there would disgust him. At the other end of
the string is the great capitalist. Capital knows no language, and owes
allegiance to no country. The capitalist with shrewdness, intelligent
anticipation, can make money quickly; in no country can a man get so
quick a turnover of his capital as in this Republic.
Between these two classes is an army of men who go into the railway
service, into the offices of great English firms, into banks. They get
better paid in Argentina, but living is three times as heavy as at home.
Take the case of a young friend of mine. He had a situation in England
at £200, and, with his amusements, he had but little left over. He got a
situation in Argentina at £700 a year. Living, more or less in similar
style to the way he did at home, cost him £400 a year. But he had £300 a
year over, and that was not £300 a year in Argentine value, but £300 a
year in English value, because he was investing it for the time when he
would return to his native land.
Of course there are promotions and superior posts to be obtained.
Occasionally a man will break away and get hold of something which will
lead to fortune. These cases, however, are the exceptions. The great
fortunes do not grow out of business, as they do in the United States,
for up to the present Argentina is not to be reckoned with as a
manufacturing country. They come to men who have colossal finance to
manipulate. To the great financier Argentina can give untold wealth.
There are, of course, cases of men who started with nothing, and can
now give their wives a £20,000 necklace. But to the man who lands in
Argentina with nothing but his muscle, or a salaried job, although his
position will be improved, and he can save more than ever he made in the
Old Country, the chances are against his ever joining the ranks of the
nabobs.
[Illustration: A FINE ARGENTINE BRIDGE.]
CHAPTER X
LIVE STOCK IN THE REPUBLIC
The constant wonder to me, as I traversed the fruitful prairies, was why
Nature had not supplied the country with indigenous live stock.
One would have thought that the forces of evolution would have provided
animals to benefit and multiply. Man, of course, has done much to
improve the land. By the laying down of alfalfa he has turned sandy
regions into rich pasturage. By irrigation he has converted wastes into
prosperous stretches. Still, there were thousands of square miles,
capable of maintaining great herds, for ages before the coming of the
Europeans. But Nature was niggardly in raising animals which the
adventures of man subsequently proved suitable to the soil.
The principal original animals were the alpaca, which provided meat and
wool, and the llama, used as a beast of burden by the natives, though
the loads it could carry were slight. Spain, when she took possession of
the country, saw its disadvantages. Though the Spanish Court was
prodigal in giving tracts of the new land to grandees and others, it is
significant that in practically all the concessions was the provision
that the grant failed unless horses, cattle, sheep, and goats were
introduced. They were for purely domestic uses.
A couple of centuries ago a bull and ten cows were abandoned. What
became of them troubled no one. Long afterwards their descendants were
found grazing, and they had increased to many thousand; now they have
increased to many millions. They were sturdy cattle, but too numerous
for the then exceedingly sparse population. Their hides, however, were
profitable for sending to Europe; and many thousands of beasts were
slain, and their carcases left to rot, in order that their skins might
be sent across the seas. In 1794 merino sheep were imported from Spain.
In 1824 Southdowns were imported from England. They made an excellent
cross, and that was the start Argentina got in the growing of wool.
There was no discovery that this part of South America was peculiarly
suitable for European stock. There was just a slow but increasing
consciousness of the fact that European animals were easily
acclimatised, and had a greater breeding capacity than at home. The
first European cattle did not come direct, but dribbled in by way of
Brazil from Peru--a roundabout route. Indeed, for several centuries
Spain, which was mistress of that part of the world, rigorously excluded
all other countries from assisting in its development or having any
share in its trade. Further, Peru, which was the most important of the
Spanish settlements, had sufficient power at the Court of Spain to
secure an insistence that all goods entering South America should do so
by the door of Peru. You have only to glance at a map to see how absurd
it was that articles intended for Buenos Aires or the east coast had to
be shipped to the Isthmus of Panama, taken across to the Pacific side by
mule caravan, shipped again down the coast to Peru, and then sent
thousands of miles over mountains, through jungle and across uninhabited
plains, to their destination. This intolerable condition of things,
which Spain refused to change, had much to do with Argentina's casting
off the yoke, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, and declaring
itself as a republic.
Though one hears much about the way Argentina has gone ahead as a
cattle-raising country during the last decade, one must not lose sight
of the fact that the Spaniards have been rearing cattle there for over
three hundred years. Even when the possibilities began to be realised
there were no means of land transport except by driving the beasts, and,
except for the hides and tallow and subsequently the wool, there was
little that could be sent to Europe.
In the first half of the nineteenth century, however, Argentina was
beginning to find herself. The Argentines were not content with the
quality of the animals which were bred haphazard. They took to importing
better strains from Europe, grasped what pedigree meant, began to demand
the best the world could produce, and were willing to pay for it, until
the call of Argentina for pedigree stock has almost become a mania, and
other countries have little chance when Argentina enters the market with
her bags of gold.
Not only was there a wonderful increase in cattle and sheep, but horses
multiplied. The Spanish contempt for females extends to mares, and no
self-respecting Argentine, who was not seeking the sneers of his
countrymen, would think of riding a mare. A hundred years ago European
nations had not thought of purchasing South American mares; and it has
been computed that in the first quarter of the last century over 500,000
mares were mercilessly slaughtered in Argentina. It has been said that
an enormous number of wild horses were at large, and their continued
incursions amongst the general stock caused great loss to the breeders.
But that Argentina is one of the most productive lands in the world for
horses is undoubted. They seem to have something approaching the
fertility of the Australian rabbit. Historians disagree as to whether
the first importation of horses to Argentina in the sixteenth century
were seventy-two horses and mares, or forty-four horses and mares, or
seven horses and five mares. Anyway, whilst Ruy Diaz de Guzman, who
vouched for the latter figures, wrote they had "attained such a
multiplication in less than sixty years that they cannot be counted,
because the horses and mares are so many that they appear like great
woods and occupy (the country) from Cape Blanco to the fort of Gabato,
rather more than eighty leagues, and reach inland to the Cordillera,"
the monk Fray Juan de Rivadancira, who declared for forty-four horses
and mares, states that "the coast is inhabited by a great many people,
and there is an immense number of horses that remained there from the
time of Don Pedro de Mendoza, that is forty-five years ago, forty-four
horses and mares that have multiplied themselves, but, strange to say,
in all this time they have not been seen by the Spaniards, who only know
of them from the reports of the Indians, who say that they cover the
plains to an astonishing extent." Allowing for these tales being
exaggerated, the very fact they should be recorded some fifty years or
so after the first importation of horses shows there must have been an
astonishing increase.
Argentine breeders of cattle, knowing of the care taken in Europe to
improve quality, realised that quantity was not sufficient. There would
be little merit in having millions of animals on the rich grassed plains
if commercially they were unable to compete with other countries with
their produce. So between fifty and sixty years ago they began
methodically and scientifically to improve their herds. The result was
so satisfactory that owners of herds conceived it to be their patriotic
duty--and Argentina is noisily patriotic--to raise the standard of
quality. The Argentine Agricultural Society was established. It has
increased in size and importance. Its offices at Buenos Aires have the
marks of energetic distinction, whilst its permanent show grounds in the
suburbs of the city are the finest buildings for such a purpose in
the world. I will not say, as is often said, that the display is the
finest in the world. Now and then it tops any other show in a particular
class. But it is a great show, provided by a country with only seven
million inhabitants; and, speaking generally, it is not a bad second to
any other, no matter where it is held.
[Illustration:
_Photograph by Moody, Buenos Aires._
BREAKING-IN HORSES IN THE ARGENTINE.]
There is tremendous rivalry amongst breeders, and the ambition to secure
the blue ribbons is so great that the Argentines, as I have mentioned in
a previous chapter, will not trust people of their own race to act as
judges. The judges all come from Britain, and are men of recognised
competence and integrity. They are the guests of the Society. They are
provided with first class return tickets, are entertained at the best
hotel for three weeks, have many courtesies piled on them, and each
receives £30 as out-of-pocket expenses. So keen are some Argentine
breeders to gain the coveted ribbon that I have heard of their sending
special representatives to travel on the boat from Southampton to Buenos
Aires so that an amiable judge may be "nobbled." Fortunately, British
judges are not made that way; and although stories of attempts are
common, there is no recorded instance of success.
I was present at the official opening of the show in 1913 by the
Minister of Agriculture. It was not an enthusiastic occasion. The
weather was bad and cold, and there was the reading of two interminable
speeches from manuscript--read to about a score of top-hatted and
frock-coated gentlemen standing round, looking insufferably bored and
never raising the equivalent of a single "hear, hear," whilst the crowds
in the stands heard not a word but waited patiently for the parade of
prize winners to begin.
But it was a show of cattle of which Argentina had a right to be proud.
It was another post along the road of evolution. The time is yet far off
when Argentina can rightly claim first position amongst the live-stock
nations; but it is a goal which the Argentines steadily keep in sight.
Stud farms are to be found all over the country. Prices which formerly
would have been thought reckless are now willingly paid for stallions,
bulls, and rams. Yet, though the Argentine is pleased with himself, he
does not so much boast of what he has accomplished as rhapsodise about
the future. To-day (1914) there are 8,000,000 horses in the country,
30,000,000 cattle, and over 80,000,000 sheep. Yet only a portion of the
country suitable for stock is utilised. Everything indicates that within
the next ten years 200,000,000 animals of all classes will be grazing on
the pastures of Argentina.
The love of horse-racing is bred in the bone of every man in the
country. All the big towns have their race-courses. Out on the prairies,
if there is no race-course, the men at the _estancias_ mark out a track
and race against each other's horses on Sunday afternoons. An eye is
kept on the famous European race-horses, and as much as £40,000 has been
paid for a great winner, so that he may be used for stud purposes. The
breeding of thoroughbreds has become part of the national life of the
Republic. The Jockey Club at Buenos Aires, possessed of an enormous
income, has by the offering of handsome prizes encouraged the breeding
of race-horses. The Argentine stud farms are, in excellence of stabling
and general surroundings, lavish in luxury. So successful has been the
breeding from expensive European sires that European breeders are now
looking to Argentina to purchase some of the sons.
But always, one must remember, the prosperity of Argentina rests with
her commercial cattle. As England prohibits the landing of live cattle
for fear of foot-and-mouth disease, increasing attention has been given
to the business of exporting chilled and frozen meat. The closing of
British ports and consequent slump in Argentine cattle gave a colossal
impetus to the frozen meat industry, so that at the present time the
Republic is the greatest exporter of frozen meat in the world. That,
perhaps, is the reward for Argentina's being the first country to export
chilled and frozen meat to Europe. This was as far back as 1877, though
it was not until 1885 that the first freezing works were established.
To-day something like £11,000,000, mostly English and United States
capital, is sunk in Argentine freezing houses. England is the largest
consumer. But though the quantity imported is enormous, it is a mistake
to suppose that frozen meat is yet ahead of English home-killed meat. As
a nation we are increasing meat eaters. We are now consuming something
approaching two million quarters a year. Only about a third of this is
chilled and frozen meat, and the consumption of home meat is increasing,
not decreasing.
That there is foot-and-mouth disease in Argentina is undoubted. Though
the Argentines protest we continue the cry as an excuse for keeping out
their stock from our meadows and from competing with our own fresh meat,
I was quite convinced that the disease does seriously exist in
Argentina, and that, whilst not so prevalent as occasionally alleged, it
is sufficiently bad to justify the British Board of Agriculture in
maintaining the prohibition. With care, however, I am sure the
Argentines could stamp out the evil. Its persistence is due to
carelessness. The natural conditions of the cattle, being out on the
pastures all the year round, count for healthiness. I have visited the
great canned meat establishments in Chicago, and when in Buenos Aires
and La Plata I inspected some of the biggest of the Argentine freezing
places. Though the latter lacked the magnitude of the Chicago houses, I
admit my complete satisfaction with the sanitary conditions surrounding
what, to me, is always a sickening business.
When a mob of cattle has been purchased the seller gives a guarantee of
the soundness of the animals. When they reach the stock-yard the
veterinary surgeon of the company makes inspection of each beast before
it goes to the slaughter-house. The operation is the usual one: the
animal is pole-axed, then the carcase is conveyed on a truck to a shed,
where it is hung up, bled, disembowelled, and skinned. The veterinary
surgeon makes an examination to see if he can detect disease. But this
is not enough; a piece of the meat, a few ounces, is cut off, labelled,
and sent to a laboratory, where further experiments are made. There is
much greater care taken in these slaughter-houses of Argentina in the
case of chilled and frozen meat than is usually taken at home in
providing the "roast beef of old England." The carcases are placed in a
chilling chamber, 34° Fahr., for twenty-four hours. Then they are cut in
two, each side wrapped in a cloth, and taken into the refrigerator
compartments on board a steamer. Should the investigation in the
laboratory reveal disease the carcase is burnt.
To the layman inclined to be confused between the terms "chilled" and
"frozen," it is well to explain the difference. Frozen meat is that
which has been kept well below freezing point, and can be kept for an
indefinite time. Chilled meat is not frozen, but it can be kept
wholesome for some weeks when in a low temperature. Chilled meat is of
better quality than frozen meat, and, as the Argentine ports are within
three weeks of Smithfield, her produce has a distinct advantage over
that of countries farther away, where the journey takes six weeks, and
the meat cannot be kept chilled, but must be frozen.
I am aware of the prejudice against chilled meat. Yet I suspect that
occasionally some of us, when paying for the home article, are really
receiving the foreign meat, but we do not know the difference. The
chilled meat trade--a later development than the frozen trade--has
sprung into existence in Argentina mainly during the last dozen years.
That which we get in London, whether from La Plata, Buenos Aires, or
Chicago, is of better quality than the meat the Argentine or the
American gets. The explanation is that the best meat is exported because
it has to come into competition with British beef, which admittedly is
the best in the world. The question, however, arises, what real
detriment is there to meat as the result of freezing? Professor Rideal,
of London University, who has made various experiments, has gone so far
as to declare that the nutritive and digestive qualities of Argentine
frozen meat are superior to those of the best freshly killed English
meats, and that Argentine chilled meats possess the same qualities as
English meat.
It was in 1880 that we began to receive frozen meat in any quantity from
the Argentine, and year by year the quantity has increased. Other
European countries are in need of cheap meat, and yet it is a singular
fact that nine-tenths of the cold storage meat of the world comes to
England. Just upon two hundred and fifty steamers are now engaged in
bringing chilled or frozen meat to England from Argentina, Australia,
and New Zealand. London alone has thirty cold stores with a capacity
for storing 3,000,000 carcases of mutton. South America, Australia, and
New Zealand have seventy freezing establishments, chiefly for the
purpose of supplying the British market. Satisfactory though that market
is, Argentina is not content. She is beginning to import her chilled
meat into the United States. She is making a bid for the French market.
Professor Armand Gautier, of the Academy of Science, of Paris, has
stated that the French people ought to eat a third more meat than they
do. As the French production is insufficient, he has urged the
importation of meat preserved by cold, because it can be kept almost
indefinitely, and because in times of epidemic disease in live stock, or
lack of forage, and above all in time of war, it would lend most
important service.
For a long time, however, Continental countries have been shy about
foreign meat, chiefly, I believe, because they were thinking of the
interests of the breeders at home. Frozen meat has, however, been
received in limited quantities in Italy, Switzerland, and Portugal. The
Austrian Government at first restricted the importation to 10,000 tons,
but as the meat was popular the restriction was removed. So, gradually,
frozen meat of good quality, and cheaper than native meat, is finding a
way into other European markets besides our own. The German-Argentine
Society, recently formed, has been petitioning the German Parliament for
the admission of Argentine frozen meat. The considerable
consumption of frozen meat in England is encouraging Argentina in her
ambition to contribute to the feeding of the immense artisan populations
in the industrial centres of the continent.
Now anyone who has been much at sea knows about jerked beef. The
preparation of salt beef in the old sailing days was a great business,
and Argentina's first endeavour in the meat business was the preparation
of jerked beef, as it is called. It is not going too far to say that it
was this business which opened the eyes of South Americans to the
potentialities of their country. But gradually the trade got shifted to
the neighbouring little Republic of Uruguay, with Monte Video as the
chief place of export. A great many of the cattle killed in Uruguay are
bred in Argentina. The trade has extended to Brazil. Brazil, however,
still calls for Argentine cattle. So although this dry-salting was first
practised in Argentina in South America, and the trade has to a great
extent been removed, Argentina is getting benefit because she sells
hundreds of thousands of steers to the neighbouring republics. During
the last year or two there has been a distinct movement in Argentina to
recapture the trade. There is a huge demand for jerked meat in Cuba--and
Argentina is after the business. Argentina has both eyes on the whole of
the West Indies, where there are great negro populations who, it is
supposed, would welcome this cheap kind of meat. It can be used in
tropical regions where expensive cold storage would be an impossibility.
Besides, an inferior standard of animal, scarcely suitable for
freezing, can be jerked.
The gigantic business in meat extracts carried on by such firms as
Bovril and Liebig has given a cue to the wide-awake Argentine for
another outlet to his enterprise. Indeed, the preparation of meat
extract in Argentina to-day needs the killing of 200,000 head of cattle
a year, whilst those killed for jerked beef are about three-quarters of
that number. Anyway, Argentines, whilst glad enough to have foreign
capital brought to develop their resources, are now constantly asking
themselves, "Why do not we do all this?"
The fact is not to be overlooked that Argentina has a population of
7,000,000 to feed as well as to contribute to the feeding of the outer
world. The population of the city of Buenos Aires is a million and a
half. So, whilst it needs the killing of 4,000 head of cattle every day
to keep the Republic supplied with meat, 1,800 of these are needed in
the capital.
England clings to old and sometimes unsatisfactory ways. When I visited
the abattoirs at Liniers I thought it would be no bad thing if a number
of British municipalities sent a shipload of representatives to
Argentina to study up-to-date slaughter-houses. One of the most important
features of Liniers is the veterinary pavilion, with rooms for
bacteriological and microscopical observations. There are twenty
veterinary surgeons who make it their business to examine every carcase
and stamp it before it is permitted to be sold as food. The annual
entry at the abattoir is, in round numbers, 750,000 sheep, 100,000 pigs,
and 1,250,000 cattle. Yet the animals slaughtered for local consumption
represent only three-fifths of the beasts sold in Buenos Aires, the rest
going to the slaughter-yards attached to the freezing houses. These
animals are not reared only in the province of Buenos Aires. Other
provinces supply cattle, Cordoba, Santa Fé, Entre Rios, Corrientes, and
further afield.
One of the most instructive places is the sheep market, covering 500
acres. Not only are there pens innumerable, but there are two galleries
set apart for sales so that buyers may obtain a quick bird's-eye view of
the stock offered. A police representative is constantly on duty,
keeping a lookout that the marks are all right and preventing sheep
stealing. Ten sanitary inspectors make inspection of sheep as they go
along the gangway or race. Any sheep showing signs of disease is sent to
the necropolis--supervised by the cattle division of the Ministry of
Agriculture--is killed and examined. Over 4,000,000 sheep are inspected
every year. Of these nearly 3,000,000 go to the freezing establishments
and the others are either for local consumption or are bought to be
fattened. On an average 4,000 railway wagons a month come in to Buenos
Aires filled with sheep.
More than once I was made conscious of the deep disappointment amongst
Argentine breeders that there is an embargo in Britain against the
importation of live stock. They insisted that if there were disease it
would show itself during the three weeks' sea journey, so that British
herd owners should have no fear of their own cattle being contaminated.
The Argentines cannot get it out of their minds that it is not fear of
disease, but protection for the British farmer which really actuates the
British Board of Agriculture. Notwithstanding the increase in the sale
of chilled and frozen meat, the Argentines, of course, recognise that
the Englishman would prefer fresh killed meat if he could get it at a
sufficiently cheap price. The steady increase in the price of home-grown
meat in English shops is noted, and all the strings possible are being
tugged in order to induce the British Government to relax. Besides,
there is a considerable body of opinion in Great Britain itself,
occasionally voiced in Parliament by the representatives of industrial
constituencies, favourable to the importation of foreign animals, of
course under proper inspection. Were admission granted, there would
undoubtedly be a fall in the price of meat. But, even eliminating the
natural antagonism of the British farmer, there is the consumer to be
considered. Without joining in the combat whether Argentine meat is as
good as British meat, there can be no doubt that the home buyer prefers
the home article, and in innumerable cases he is prepared to pay more
for it. There is the possibility, the danger if you like, if live stock
from Argentina were admitted, for certain graziers to buy them, give
them a week or two on English meadows, and for the retail butchers,
either in ignorance or with the intention to mislead the purchaser, to
ticket the sides as "English fed."
Though Argentines grumble at the British ports being closed to them,
causing a slump in their export of live stock, they acknowledge that the
effect has been counterbalanced by the increase in the export of frozen
meat. "Therefore why should they make such a fuss?" may be asked. Simply
because the Argentines are eager to find an outlet for the productive
capacity of their country. They do not rest on their oars. They are
looking to the future. There is no question in their minds what
Argentina can do. They do not want to be baulked by restrictions. It may
be argued that, whilst they are zealous to secure freedom for their
goods in oversea markets, they do not show any inclination to give an
equally wide freedom to the goods of other countries in their own
markets. That, however, just shows that considerations which often
influence individual traders do not disappear when the nation acts
collectively.
The point to be marked--and it is the significance of much in this
chapter--is, that although other new nations provide increasing amounts
of meat, Argentina is as alive as any of them to the growing necessity
for the industrial communities of Europe--constantly increasing whilst
agriculture stands still or slides back--to look across the oceans for
their meat supply. The meat will be wanted. Competition to supply it
will be keen. In some European countries the live stock is diminishing.
Countries which formerly did much business in supplying neighbours have
now enough to do to supply themselves. Even Switzerland, unable to
provide for her own needs, and no longer able to get what she requires
from France and Italy, has turned to Argentina. The doors are closed by
some European Powers, including Spain. But Argentina is keeping a watch
on the artisan classes in commercial Europe. She expects the day will
soon come when they will clamour for cheaper meat, and break down the
doors. When that time does come, Argentina is determined to be ready
with a full basket.
CHAPTER XI
THE STORY OF THE RAILWAYS
I think I have made it clear that, accepting Argentina as an amazingly
fertile country, it is the railways that have chiefly been instrumental
in making it one of the most prosperous lands, with a big part to play
in providing food for the world. To-day 95 per cent. of its stock and
produce is carried over some part of the 20,000 miles of line
representing nearly £200,000,000 of British capital.
I remember riding in a coach attached to a freight train across some
hundreds of miles of sand and sage bush, an impossible region from an
agriculturist's point of view.
"This is an unprofitable stretch," I remarked to the railway official
who was my companion.
"Not at all," was the reply; "you see, we have a full load, and we get
paid mileage, whether we run through good or bad land."
That is one of the causes of railway profits in Argentina: the enormous
distances freight often has to be carried.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF DINING CAR, CENTRAL ARGENTINE RAILWAY.]
It was not my lot to travel over all the railway systems in the
Argentine, but I travelled over the most important of them, and from
first to last I was enthusiastic. The rolling stock is excellent; the
permanent way is better than over similar country elsewhere, and as for
the comfort of the passengers it is certainly unsurpassed. Frankly, I
often felt like rubbing my eyes in order to make sure I was "roughing
it" in Southern America.
Nowhere, out of Russia, have I seen the coaches so admirably adapted for
small or large parties. You can have a section of a coach
self-contained, dining-room, bedrooms and bathroom, suitable for
families; and meals can be supplied from the buffet. If you travel over
a certain distance you cannot miss having a buffet car; the law insists.
Also the law insists on dormitory coaches on the all-night journeys.
They are more commodious, because on most of the lines the gauge is
wider than in England. There is none of the uncomfortable sleeping
behind curtains, with, maybe, a stranger in the bunk overhead, and then
having to wash in the smoking-room, which the long-suffering men of the
United States put up with under the notion they possess the most
luxurious travelling in the world. When you come to "special cars," a
thing we know nothing about in England except for royalty, the United
States comes first, but I would say Argentina is a close second.
Nothing could be jollier--when a sand storm is not on the wing--than
travelling with pleasant friends in a reserved coach. It is like a flat.
There is a sitting-room, and on a chill evening the fire burns brightly
in an open grate. On a hot afternoon you have your easy chairs out on
the platform at the rear and, with legs cocked up on the rail, you can
smoke your cigar. You press a button, and when the attendant has brought
you an iced cocktail you agree that "roughing it" in Argentina is a
delightful experience. If your car is properly equipped with a good
kitchen and a good cook, and there is a decent "cellar"--hospitality is
one of the legitimate boasts of the people--you fare as well as you
would do in a first-class hotel. Were it not that I might be thought a
sybarite, I could write like a chef about the menus I experienced and
enjoyed in my long excursions throughout the land.
"This is a nice chicken," I said to my host one night. "Yes, we have a
chicken run under the car," he answered. I laughed, for I imagined the
innocent stranger was having his leg pulled; but the next morning
personal inspection assured me there was a "run," in the shape of a long
galvanised screened box beneath the car.
It was pleasant to have a bedroom four times the size of a crib on an
English "sleeper," to have a writing-table with electric light, and a
bathroom adjoining. But the chief joy of a special car was that there
was no changing to catch trains. Instructions were given that we would
stop at a certain place at nine o'clock in the morning. The car was
detached and shunted into a siding. We lived on the car and slept on it.
Orders were given that we were to be picked up by the 3.15 local train
in the morning, taken down a branch line forty miles, attached to the
express which would be coming along at seven o'clock, and were to be
released somewhere else at 10.15 and put into a siding. I lived this
sort of life for nearly a month. It was the best possible way of seeing
the country.
Sometimes we travelled from point to point during the night; sometimes
we campe
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