The Amazing Argentine: A New Land of Enterprise

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.

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.

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.

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