Brazil today and tomorrow

Proceeding northward past the mouth of the São Francisco river no railway is encountered between Aracajú and the coconut-embowered port of Maceió (Jaraguá), capital of the State of Alagôas: construction of such a link would involve engineering difficulties in crossing the wide river delta and, north of it, negotiating the chain of picturesque lagoons (“lagôas”) which give the State its name. Alagôas, wedged under the shoulder of Pernambuco, is a fine sugar country: the lower, business section of Maceió literally runs and drips with sugar; the warehouses along the waterfront are piled with bags from which cane juice leaks, and the heady smell of it permeates the streets. From this busy, hot little city the most southerly arm of the Great Western’s series of linked lines reaches, a branch penetrating sugar lands by way of Atalaia and Viçosa, while a more northerly track connects with Garanhuns, runs thence north-east, and, with a sea-ward branch to Barreiros, connects with the fan-handle of the system at Recife (Pernambuco).

The Great Western of Brazil Railway was formed in London in 1872; the first work done was the construction of one hundred and eighteen kilometers from the port of Recife to the town of Timbauba with an extension to Limoeiro; in 1901 connection was carried on to the Conde d’Eu line in Parahyba, and in the same year the company leased seven other disconnected lines of the north-east promontory, with the object since attained of forming a linked system. Of the seven thus controlled three had been built by, and still belong to, the Government, while four were English built.^[9] As operated today the Great Western line includes more than eleven hundred miles of track, links and penetrates the four States of Alagôas, Pernambuco, Parahyba and Rio Grande do Norte, and serves the ports of Maceió, Recife, Parahyba, Cabedello and Natal, an independent line extending north of this point to the town of Pedra Preta. The system has done excellent work in developing sugar, tobacco and cotton country, but it has suffered from the financial difficulties of the last three years, droughts reducing the agricultural product of northerly regions and adding to troubles consequent upon fallen exchange: the company has asked the Federal Government for relief from the onerous financial obligations of the original contract, and, with this revision accomplished, will be in a better position.

North from Natal, with the land sloping sharply east towards the Amazon delta, no more railroads are encountered until almost midway along the shore-line of the State of Ceará the port of Fortaleza is reached. From this point a line runs south-west into the interior to the town of Iguatú, the track with a couple of little branches including four hundred and twenty-three kilometers. Ceará is unenviably famous for the terrible droughts which from time to time scourge and depopulate it, but when rains visit this territory it is extraordinarily fertile, crops are abundant, the fecund Cearenses return and cattle-raising is resumed. A second strip of line runs inland, almost due south, from sea-margin Camocim to Granja at the head of the bay and thence to Cratheus, three hundred and thirty-five kilometers distant. Exports of carnauba wax, of a special class of rubber (maniçoba = manihot), and of hides, go out from the ports of Ceará, and since the last drought of 1914–15 broke in abundant rainfall there has been unprecedented planting of fine cotton which is said to promise well. The next state northward is Piauhy, with but a span of coast and no railroad as yet, although one is projected to connect with Ceará. Maranhão has two lines: one, planned from São Luis to Caxias, of which some separate sections are already in operation, and the other running from Caxias to Cajazeiras, serving interior country. An important branch, to penetrate the sertão, is projected from a point along the first-named line to Barra do Córdoba.

The last strip of railway which serves the north Brazilian coast extends from Pará city (Belem), which is situated inside the mouth of the Amazon about one hundred and sixty miles from the sea, to the seacoast town Braganza, three hundred kilometers away. The country traversed produces Brazil nuts, tobacco, cotton and sugar, and free grants of land have been given beside the track to settlers.

For the extreme north of Brazil the great fluvial network with the Amazon as the great main channel serves as the only means of communication: it will probably remain the sole highway for a long time to come. There is a total of over forty thousand miles of navigable waterways in the Amazon valley, with service by steamers and small embarcações which suffice for the present needs of this immense but sparsely populated territory. The waterways of Brazil are of such extent and size that it is not possible as yet to foresee the time when they will be superseded either by rail or road.

There are in the Brazilian interior several strips of railroad which serve no other purpose but that of supplementing riverine ways; the most spectacular and important of these is the renowned Madeira-Mamoré, one of the most costly railroads in the world and the imposer of the highest tariffs. Planned for the purpose of passing the dangerous falls blocking the Madeira-Mamoré river, outlet for rubber districts of Peru and Bolivia as well as of the Brazilian State of Matto Grosso, the line was completed in 1912 by the engineers of the Brazil Railways Company. Work was originally started more than forty years ago by the initiative of Colonel Church, two or three attempts ending in failure; when the last relay of American engineers took up the task in 1908 many relics were found of previous effort, one a locomotive imported by the Collins expedition of 1878: it was cleaned up and put into use. The line as completed has a length of two hundred and ninety-two kilometers; the chief enemy to construction was the deadly climate which took a terrible toll of lives both of engineers and labourers until sanitation measures similar to those enforced in Panama were taken.

The line is said to be paying its way, but its success depends very largely upon the fate of Amazonian rubber in world markets. With the price of “hard fine” reduced by the competition of the rubber of Eastern plantations, it is difficult to see how freight rates over the railroad can be maintained at the present very high scale, necessary in order to give a return on cost; and, rich as the tributary country is in drugs, dyes and hardwoods there would have to be a great deal of development in production before the place of rubber could be filled. It will be extremely regrettable if this remarkable line, a band of steel in the middle of a country of deep wild forests cannot succeed financially: it is one of the world lines which are life as well as time savers, for before its inauguration the annual loss in the falls of both freight and men was twenty-six per cent.^[10]

Another line whose raison d’être is the necessity for avoiding falls on a river is the Estrada de Ferro Paulo Affonso, on the S. Francisco river, extending from the port of Piranhas in Alagôas State to Jatobá, in Pernambuco territory; the line is one hundred and fifteen kilometers long, runs on the left bank of the river, and serves as a carrier for the raw material and output of the big cotton-spinning mill (Fabrica da Pedra) recently established. The factory obtains power from the tremendous Paulo Affonso Falls, about thirty miles distant, and several plans have been made to convey force to Bahia city, dependent upon imported fuels for generating motive power.

The third interior, river-serving little strip of railroad is in the State of Maranhão, running from Therezina on the Parnahyba river, boundary with Piauhy State, to Caxias; the fourth is a line in the interior of Pará, and is still under construction although about fifty kilometers are in operation. It runs from Alcobaça on the Tocantins river past a series of troublesome runs and cascades to the Praia da Rainha, near the junction of the Tocantins with the greater Araguaya.

Railways in Brazil have thus chiefly served the settled sea ports, penetrating the producing agricultural areas behind them; coastwise linking from town to town has been an afterthought, and has not been greatly needed with the maintenance of good shipping service. The Brazilian lines have been criticized for lack of coherence, but the fact is that no other plan could have been followed at the time when Brazilian building began; mileage may appear small in relation to the republic’s 3,300,000 square miles of territory, but it is not poor in regard to the great centres of population, all of which are grouped upon sea or river borders and possess ample shipping facilities. At the beginning of 1922, according to the calculations of Brazil-Ferro-Carril, there were twenty-one thousand miles of railways in operation in Brazil, with three thousand under construction and twenty thousand miles projected; as we have seen, today a great deal of interstate linking has been accomplished, as well as junction with sister republics.

Lack of coherence in operation is perhaps more open to criticism than any other point in connection with Brazilian railroads. Certain lines are owned and operated by States; others are owned by States but leased to private foreign or Brazilian companies; again there are groups of lines built, owned and operated by private foreign or Brazilian companies, and there are lines owned by the Federal Government some of which are leased to private operating companies and some operated by the Government itself. The building of the lines was extremely cosmopolitan, lines having been built preponderantly by the British but also by French, Belgian, German and, in the case of the Madeira-Mamoré, American, companies: this entailed remarkable variety in equipment—for instance, when taken over by the Great Western in 1901 the little São Francisco line had a gauge of five feet three inches. As some other strips then acquired were narrow gauge much work had to be done before a uniform width of one meter was created.

At the beginning of the present century the Federal Government determined upon a plan of ownership of lines which has been followed as far as finances would permit; a large sum of money, of which £12,935,480 is outstanding, was borrowed in London at four per cent interest and with the proceeds many railroads were bought up. In most cases the Government decided not to operate the lines acquired, and leased them to foreign companies. As a result of the concession system Brazilian Federal accounts show the curious financial anomaly of the Government paying out sums to railroads because interest had been guaranteed on the foreign capital invested, while the same road is paying rent to the Government.

The lines owned and operated by strong British companies are quite the most prosperous in the country: many of them were fortunate in their choice of locality, each of three climbers of the Serra do Mar for example remaining the only negotiable link of the coast with interior regions: the Brazilian Government, in common with certain of the other countries where Federal control of transportation has been tried, has reaped small financial reward from lines officially operated.

In an exposition of Brazilian railway conditions made before the Rio Legislature in October, 1915, Elpidio de Salles declared that better supervision was badly needed: “deficits constitute the normal state of the Federal services” and it is only from privately owned companies that profits are obtained, he declared, proceeding to show that from systems leased to other companies by the Union an average income of five thousand contos of reis is paid to Brazil, these contributions coming regularly from the Great Western, the Ceará-Piauhy, the Viação Bahiana, Sul-Mineira, Central of Rio Grande do Norte, Madeira-Mamoré, the Auxiliaire and the Santa Catharina lines. On the other hand, Cardoso de Almeida has shown that the Brazilian Government has spent 1,100,000 contos of reis (at normal exchange, about £75,000,000 or $375,000,000) on construction and “rescision” of railroads, bearing the burden of forty thousand contos due annually as interest. Railroad debts are, however, those which a sturdy developing young land can bear better than older countries can hope to do, and Brazil certainly is not over-railroaded: Argentina, next door, with a quarter of Brazil’s population and one-third of her territory, has thirty-five thousand kilometers of line.

Brazilian “estradas de ferro” have nearly all one promising feature in common: they are pioneer paths, with new towns camped beside their tracks, and new industries growing up about them: with the exception of the old mining settlements in the interior of Minas and Bahia, scarcely any development existed in the Brazilian hinterlands until the railroads drove a way; nearly all give access, and as they move farther across sertão and through forest, will give greater access, to virgin lands uncharted and unknown. In the southern states many of the concessions given to railway companies carried colonization clauses as a continuation of the deliberate, thoroughly worked out plan of the authorities by which during the nineteenth century settlements were made of Poles, Russians, Swiss, Germans and other European races, with the object of feeding the lines and stimulating agriculture. The European War has checked these plans: settlers from Europe will in all probability be scarce for many years to come, engaged as the racked countries will be in their own rehabilitation. But to other nations where populations are crowded or conditions no longer offer wide land spaces and large agricultural rewards, the railroads of Brazil open a country of unsurpassed beauty and fertility.

What railway construction is waiting in Brazil for capital, good engineering, and—an urgent necessity in dealing with huge empty spaces—imagination? The great heart of Brazil, which is also the great heart of South America, is only newly entered by little pioneer tracks. What bold projects could open up the interior sertões to the planter?

Frontin’s daring scheme to build a line from Pirapora (due west from Caravellas in Bahia) along the valley of the Tocantins to Pará has already been mentioned: the scheme lags for want of money. Another conception is that of a railroad which would run almost parallel with the Pirapora-Pará line: it would extend from Cuyabá in the middle of the diamond district of Matto Grosso almost due north along the valley of the Tapajoz river to the town of Santarem, a pretty trading point at the junction of the black river with the yellow Amazon. A third ambitious project is a railroad to run from Manáos northwards, along the valleys of the Negro and the Branco into British Guiana.

None of these schemes is less justified than the Transandine line farther south, the transcontinental lines across the United States and Canada or that conception of Cecil Rhodes, the Cape-to-Cairo road of Africa. In no case were those pioneer tracks built to serve an existing population—they brought population and consequent production along their trail over the prairie and the veldt, and these new Brazilian lines would bring people and agriculture into the sertão. The climate is unhealthy only in the swamp regions, and railroad construction with accompanying drainage accomplishment would be the best means of sanitizing the country; it is no worse than many parts of India, East and West Africa, and the low-lying borders of the Caribbean where successful railroads have brought malarial jungle into such a condition that white men dwell there with safety, and a hardy native race can cultivate the rich soil.

Engineering difficulties are probably least in the Cuyabá-Santarem plan. There is less matto (thick woodland) country, no important system of serras to climb; much of the track would run on the high level land of the Matto Grosso interior. The regions served could be expected to produce meat and hides from the enormous pastures of the State; minerals from the mountains of Goyaz; hardwoods from the northerly forests; rubber from the same forestal lands, together with dyes and drugs; the line would greatly encourage cattle-raising and cereal planting. The packing industry is yet in its infancy in Brazil, for the first frigorificos were only opened in the latter part of 1914, and the world has not yet realized the extent to which it may attain. Brazil has more head of cattle than has the Argentine, and almost illimitable space for scientific breeding; she has areas for cereals which could make her a rival granary of the world. She has room and to spare for one hundred million population.

But her two great interior states, Matto Grosso and Goyaz, the heart of Brazil, with their two million, one hundred and twenty-five thousand square kilometers of land, are traversed by less than five hundred kilometers of railroad. Small wonder that their combined population is only about half a million.

A new influx of bandeirantes is needed. They need the same big imagination of their antecessors, the same grit and indomitable will: they should carry gold in their pockets, surveying instruments in their hands, and behind them they should bring an army of workmen, in lieu of the earlier bandeirante’s sword and slaves. Some day the task will be accomplished: it rests with the capitalist of today to say whether he or his successors will take it up.

III. Shipping

The rivers of Brazil, highways of necessity, and a wonderful penetrating system in themselves, are quite well served; the Amazon river with its tributaries comprises a fluvial network of over forty thousand miles, and the producing areas are served partly by steamers and also by small launches and native embarcações which fearlessly traverse narrow water lanes almost closed by verdure, darkened from the sun by walls of tropic green, and negotiate the runs and cascades of the more distant reaches. The excellent steamers of the Amazon Steam Navigation Company are now part of the interests of the Farquhar syndicate, but formerly belonged to a British firm which acquired the rights of the early Brazilian operators. To force the sale of the Amazon company, a few years ago, a number of new steamers were brought from the United States and put into use; when rubber boomed there was freight for most of them. But today, with the object of their introduction attained and at the same time a shrinkage of commerce upon the Amazon, many are idle. In lines outside the Port of Pará these vessels are lying, empty, motionless, just so much good money thrown away for lack of foresight.

Besides the ships of the “Amazon Steam” serving the route between Pará, and intervening ports (Santarem, Itacoatiara, Obidos, etc.) to Manáos, ships run up another thousand miles to Iquitos, and also up the Madeira to the hither side of the Falls, where the railroad ends. The English Booth line and the Lloyd Brasileiro also run up from Pará to Manáos, and there is a service on the Tapajoz and Tocantins by small steamers. The Amazon has all the riverine service that is called for, and chiefly feels the need of more ocean-going steamships.

The São Francisco river is served by a line belonging to the State of Bahia, the Navigação Bahiana, which runs up and down the navigable stretch between the headwaters and the Paulo Affonso Falls, touching one railhead at Pirapora in Minas Geraes and another at Joazeiro in Bahia. The Paraná river is served by the ships of a Paulista company, running up and down from Itapura to the Tibiriça ferry, and up various affluents, while every coastal town traverses its nearby rivers with small steamboats privately owned. One of the most actively traversed water regions of Brazil is the Lagôa dos Patos in southern Rio Grande, where communication between the towns at each end of the lagoon is carried on entirely by boat. The Brazilian has been in the forefront of enterprises helping in the water communication between port and port in Brazil, and, as the thriving condition of the Lloyd Brasileiro demonstrates, is able to go abroad and compete with foreign companies.

The Lloyd had a marked advantage after the War started in being able to offer neutral transportation for passengers and freight, and while as a matter in which all Brazil was interested the charges for coffee carrying were long kept at a low level, there has been during the last year a natural tendency to raise general rates under tempting conditions. When the British Government’s Statutory List went into force in Brazil, about March, 1916, the British boats serving the Amazon were unable to carry rubber shipped by firms of Teutonic ownership; the Lloyd thenceforth remained the sole carrier of German-shipped rubber, and it appears reasonable to suppose that this fact had something to do with the Lloyd’s price of transportation to New York rising to fifty-four cents per cubic foot while Booth’s were charging their British and their neutral customers but thirty-four cents. All South American services made big money while these rates held, and for the Lloyd palmy days were especially opportune after a long season of poor returns. In common with the Central Railroad, it has been in the past an instance of a non-paying governmental company, but with drastic reforms and present good management it is in an enviable position.

Sea communication between Brazil and the rest of the world is carried on mainly by European steamship companies: good work is also done by the fleet of the Lloyd Brasileiro, which in addition to serving most ports of the country maintains a busy tri-monthly passenger and freight service to New York. Japanese vessels call at south Brazilian ports, as also do ships of the Australasian trade; the most conspicuous laggard in the shipping world was formerly the United States. In sailing-ship days American shipping was busy in these waters, but the lines were gradually displaced by more enterprising service from Europe; before the war the harbours of Brazil sheltered fine ships of the Royal Mail, Lamport and Holt, Booth, Harrison, Hamburg-American, Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, Transportes Maritimes, the Sud-Atlantique, of Italian and Austrian lines, Scandinavian, Belgian, Dutch—every flag was common but that of the United States, and when this entered it was at the stern of an oil tanker or a sailing vessel bringing lumber. The lines connecting with Europe were many; sailings to New York were few; service from New York direct to Brazil was still rarer, for the European lines created a dexterous commercial triangle by which merchandise of European origin came across the Atlantic to Brazil in ships which discharged their hardware and textiles, took on a load of coffee and hides for New York, there discharged the Brazilian goods and re-loaded with North American grain or cotton and with this steamed across the Atlantic home again.

The war stimulated direct service between the United States and Brazil, several lines now competing for business formerly held by Europeans; fast steamers offer quick passenger and freight service, following the hasty war revival of the wood-built sailing-ship: during 1915 there was a remarkable increase of activity in these vessels, and the writer has seen ten or more at the same time lying in some bright Brazilian port, their long graceful lines of the schooner taking one back to the days of Midshipman Easy or Tom Cringle of the famous Log. Many shipowners of these sailing craft must have made fortunes, for whereas in normal times they would have gladly carried freight for three dollars a ton, they were able to get four to four dollars and a half and so on in an ever ascending scale until over fourteen dollars was taken, and with a somewhat haughty sniff at that in late 1916.

In 1916 the only steamers under the United States flag operating in Brazilian waters were oil tankers, the coal-carriers of the Berwind company, and the vessels of the United States & Brazil S. S. line, carrying the products of the United States Steel corporation and taking back manganese ores and general cargo. Later, with the creation of a big American mercantile marine by the U. S. Shipping Board, and the allocation of a large number of ex-German steamers to the service of the United States, strongly sustained direct lines between North American and Brazilian ports were created which carry immense quantities of coffee in exchange for manufactured goods. Chilean, Cuban, Peruvian, Argentine and Uruguayan vessels now visit Brazil from sister Republics, and her own mercantile marine has undergone a remarkable development.

Not only did the Cia. Nacional de Navegação Costeira and the Cia. Commercio e Navegação add in a most enterprising manner to their fleets, but the Lage firm created important repairing and ship-building yards upon an island in Rio Bay, which performed great service to the Allies during the war; and the Government-supported Lloyd Brasileiro began to send its steamers far afield to North American and European waters.

The list of the Lloyd’s vessels presently received notable additions. At the outbreak of war a large number of German and Austrian steamers took refuge in Brazilian ports, and there lay for two and a half years, idle and rusting. After Brazil’s entry into the conflict many of these ships were brought into use, seventeen being added to the national fleets, while twenty-eight were chartered to France. By the middle of 1922 France had returned these vessels in first-class condition, and the bulk of them were permanently added to the Brazilian mercantile marine, the Lloyd counting forty ex-German steamers out of her total fleet of one hundred and two. Brazil’s claim for the price of the coffee seized by Germany at the beginning of the war, for the four Brazilian vessels torpedoed, and the maintenance of about seven thousand German sailors, is offset by the value of these merchants ships.

Smaller Brazilian lines are the Amazon River Steam Navigation Co.; the Cia. de Navegação de Maranhão; the Cia. de Navegação Bahiana; the Empreza Brasileira de Navegação; the Lloyd Nacional; and the Lloyd Transatlantico Brasileiro. The service to Brazil performed by the home-registered lines is proved by statistics: for out of 24,736 vessels calling at Brazilian ports during 1920, 19,542 were under the flag of Brazil. It is true that the size of the ships was comparatively small, the tonnage of nearly 25,000,000 being divided between 15,000,000 “Foreign” and 10,000,000 Brazilian, but the low average is due to the small boats employed in various riverine services. The Brazilian merchant service is the largest in South America and performs invaluable interstate transport work.