The Argentine in the Twentieth Century

A war against Brazil, of which the notable fact was the victory of Ituzaingo (1827), resulted in the recognition of Uruguay as a free state.

The civil war broke out anew several times. The military leader of the Buenos Ayres Federals, General Rosas, seized upon the dictatorship in a time of disorder, exercising it not without intelligence, but with a cruel despotism, and he carried on a long war against Montevideo, which lasted until General Urquiza, of the Union party (with Brazil and Uruguay as allies) delivered his country by the victory of Caseros (1852). The Constitution of the Argentine Republic was voted on 25th May 1853; but the end of the civil war and the definite reunion of Buenos Ayres to the other Provinces did not take place until 1860, the year of the revision of the Constitution.

War and confusion are not usually propitious to progress. However, the population in 1861 was estimated approximately at 1,375,000; it had increased to almost five times what it was at the beginning of the century.

Buenos Ayres became definitely the capital of the Republic in 1882, upon ceasing to be the capital of the State of Buenos Ayres.

The third period is that of economic development. This is the period of which our authors write. We may mention it as beginning with the re-entrance of Buenos Ayres into the Argentine Concert, and the revision of the Constitution of October 1860. If it has not been free from political agitations and international misunderstandings, it has none the less been more pacific than the preceding periods, and industry has enjoyed a security which in former years was only too often disturbed by the regulations of colonial trade, the attacks of the Indians, the civil wars, and the Separatist policy. But there were still for twelve years intestine troubles and dissensions.

It was only in 1882 that the political organisation was completely constituted, when Buenos Ayres became the Federal capital; for from 1865 to 1870 the Argentine was forced to wage war against Paraguay, when it struggled, in concert with Brazil, against the despotism of Lopez. The Treaty of the 3rd of February 1876 gave it the greater Chaco as far as Pilcomayo. The Chaco is pacified; matters are not the same now as when, in 1881, Crevaux was assassinated there by the Tobas. General Riva effected the Argentine conquest of Patagonia (1879-1880), and the Indians, feared so long by the planters, were driven across the Andes.

In 1895 the difference which had arisen between the Argentine and Brazil, with reference to the Misionès frontier, was settled by arbitration. By the Treaty of 23rd July 1881 was terminated a long quarrel with Chili in relation to Patagonia; the Argentine obtained possession of the country as far as the line made by the Cordilleras and a portion of Tierra del Fuego. Arbitration also, in November 1902, settled the difference with Chili, no less irritating and of equally long standing, concerning, the frontiers of the Andes. No more serious causes of quarrel between the Argentine and its neighbours remain.

The period of economic development is as yet of only fifty years’ duration: it is far from having reached the limit of its evolution; but we may judge of the amplitude which that evolution has already attained by means of statistics,[4] and by them we may foretell what the future holds in promise.

The population, estimated in 1861 as being 1,375,000, had by 1907 increased to 6,210,000. Immigration, varying from one period to another according to the economic condition of the European nations and the Argentine Republic, reached an annual average of 13,400 from 1860 to 1869: between 1903 and 1908 it amounted to 211,000 (emigration not being deducted.)[5]

The area cultivated in 1895, the date of the first serious estimate, was 5,256,160 acres, of which 2,013,000 acres were under wheat;[6] in 1909 34·6 million acres were cultivated, of which 14·8 millions were in wheat. These 34·6 millions are only a small fraction of the 256 million acres which the Argentine appears to contain.

The grain harvest, estimated in 1878-1881 at barely 400,000 tons, exceeded a million tons in 1895, and in 1907-1908 amounted to 5,523,900 tons, or 204,384,000 bushels.

Although the bovine and ovine races have not greatly increased in numbers for the last twenty years, on account of the transformations effected by agriculture,[7] the exportation of wool, which was 660,000 quintals in 1869-1870, was nearly 2,000,000 in 1905, and it still amounted to 1¹⁄₂ millions in 1907; the exportation of beef, reckoned in carcasses, was more than 60,000 head in 1900 and 463,000 in 1907.

The first section of railroad was constructed in 1857. In 1865 the Republic possessed only 154 miles of railroad; in 1908 there were 14,643 miles.

In 1865, the first year of which we have commercial statistics, the foreign trade amounted to £11,300,000; in 1907, it reached £113,000,000, and in 1908 £127,600,000. For several years there has been a very large excess of exports over imports; in 1908 it would seem to have exceeded £20,000,000.

These figures, to which our authors have added many others, are eloquent. They tell us that man, whose labour creates wealth, is four and a half times more numerous upon Argentine soil than he was forty-six years ago; that immigration each year increases the number of workers; that cultivated soil, the chief instrument of wealth in an agricultural country, has an area nearly seven times greater than that of fourteen years ago; that wheat, the principal vegetable product of that soil, now yields harvests thirteen times more abundant than those of thirty years ago; that the products of stock-raising have, on the whole, greatly increased, despite the arrested development of certain forms of production; that the railways—the means of transport of man and his produce, which did not exist half a century since—now cover the land with a network of increasing fineness, and are placing the Argentine in the first rank of the nations in respect of the mileage of railroad per inhabitant; that foreign trade, which is one of the most characteristic forms of popular activity, and that commonly mentioned in illustrating a state’s power of expansion, has multiplied itself ten times since 1865.

These figures, taken together, form a picture which is not only encouraging, but extremely flattering to the pride of the Argentine people.

But the picture is not without shadows. The Indians to-day amount only to thirty thousand in numbers; the Guachos are gradually disappearing before the agricultural settler; and the political and moral unity of the country is not yet fully accomplished. The Argentine, like most of the Latin-American republics, has given itself a Constitution based upon that of the United States; but the populations of its Provinces had not the spiritual cohesion exhibited by the British Colonies, and above all by New England, which qualities set the seal on religious faith and the love of liberty. European immigration has brought us composite elements which are not yet amalgamated. Nearly all immigrants have come to make money: the majority are indifferent to public affairs, as we see on election days. Others are only too inclined to attach themselves to coteries, to cliques. In the relations between the local governments and the central Government, the subordination of the former is more remarkable than the harmony of their mutual relations. The planters, intoxicated by their good fortune, are not always so prudent as to regulate their undertakings by their resources.

When in 1890 I wrote an Introduction to M. Latzina’s book, the Argentine was in the full swing of speculation, and apparently saw no limits to its development. “The Argentines,” I said, “resemble an enterprising merchant, who, having opened shop in a well-frequented street, and having borrowed money in order to start with a luxurious establishment, finds himself greatly embarrassed for years, although his business prospers, because his advances and his engagements are larger than his takings. It is desirable that this spirit of enterprise should be fed, so to speak, on diet, or at least, according to regimen; and on such conditions equilibrium would be re-established.” Indeed, it then seemed that a crisis must occur; and it came, a few months later. It was very long and very severe; the Argentine learned what it meant to lose its credit, and for twelve years it suffered the disadvantages of a depreciated paper currency.

The country recovered, and speculation rapidly received fresh impetus. Thanks to the excess of exports, gold became plentiful; it is no longer at a premium; if interest—which has decreased—still maintains itself at about 6 per cent., it is because there is a great demand for capital. The budgets still increase at a pace to alarm a prudent financier, in spite of increased receipts. “If the Argentine does not wish to compromise its lofty destinies,” say the authors of the present volume, “it is essential that it should maintain an economical administration, careful of the public moneys, yet open to all material progress. By so doing, it will inspire confidence in men and in capital: the two elements which it must still increase in order to become a great nation.”

To the population born on Argentine soil were added, between 1857 and 1908, 3,338,000 immigrants of various nationality;[8] 1,706,000 Italians, 670,000 Spaniards, 201,000 French and Belgians, 100,000 Austro-Hungarians or Germans, and 41,000 English. Thus the Latin races are greatly in the ascendant: a fact which facilitates assimilation.

The Government should preoccupy itself largely with this matter of assimilation: for the process is not complete. There are two effectual means which it might employ, among others, in order to assimilate its new recruits: ownership of the soil and education.

These two means have produced marvellous effects in the United States. The Homestead Law of the 20th of May 1862 gave to every American over twenty-one years of age, and to every person having declared, conformably with the law, his intention of becoming a citizen, the right to occupy gratuitously 160 acres of surveyed lands, or 80 acres only in districts more advantageously situated: if the holder, after five years of residence, has cultivated a portion of his holding, the full title is finally granted. For such purpose the public lands have been surveyed and divided into lots by the Government. The Government also sells public lands by auction or treaty. Up to the month of July 1905, it had thus alienated a total of 808,000,000 acres; which explains how millions of families—Irish, German, Scandinavian and others—have been more or less definitely settled on the soil of that which was already or which has since then become their native land. Here is an example the Argentine Government would do well to follow.

Education exercises an influence of another kind, which is no less efficacious. The Americans of the United States are well aware of this, and this is why they attach such importance to the upkeep of the “common schools” and the attendance of the pupils. The children of foreign parents become Americanised in class and during play by contact with young Americans. The English tongue becomes their own language; their manners of thought and their habits are modelled on those of their comrades, whom they are unconsciously proud to imitate. If the immigrant family does not forget the memories of its old home, at least its offspring, from the second generation, are rooted in the American soil and have American minds.

The Argentine Government must endeavour to obtain a like result. For a long period primary instruction was in an extremely neglected state in the Argentine Republic. However, the Constitution obliged the Provinces to secure such instruction, the Federal Government to assist by finding a third of the expense of the first installation of the schools. But in spite of the Constitution, in 1874 there were only 1830 primary schools and 112,000 pupils. Progress has been accomplished: in 1905 there were 5250 schools, 14,118 teachers, male and female, and 544,000 pupils. But as the population between the ages of six and fourteen had increased to 827,000, only 65 per cent. of the children were attending school, and only one child in three was able to read and write. This is a state of things that must be changed.

Secondary education, as far as numbers go, is in no better case; there are sixteen “colleges,” with 4100 pupils. The State Universities of Buenos Ayres and Córdoba and the three provincial Universities of La Plata, Santa Fé and Parana, with 3000 students, are relatively better.[9]

The three orders of instruction ought to work together to form a national spirit and a moral unity; but the Government should not forget that primary instruction is the basis, and that it is the only kind of instruction that can be bestowed upon each generation in its entirety, and that the children of each generation should be taught at an early age not only the ideas necessary to the life of the individual, but also, by means of the elements of national history, ethics, and applied science, the knowledge and love of their native country.

The Argentine Republic as yet counts few men to whom the exigencies of life leave leisure to consecrate themselves entirely to letters or the sciences. It has some distinguished writers, but they usually find a recompense for their talent in the public press; for in Buenos Ayres more than 200 journals are published. Men write as hurriedly as they act. It is to be hoped that before long, with the increase of wealth, there will arise men of science, who will find no lack of material in the country, and men of letters, historians, novelists, sociologists, etc., who will also never lack for matter in this busy, humming hive. Such men are necessary, because their life-work goes far to make up the intellectual capital of a nation, and even to form nationality itself.

In my introduction to M. Latzina’s book, I glanced at the whole continent of South America, and I remarked that civilisation had scarcely penetrated the interior of this vast continent; that the density of its population was extremely low; that the economic, intellectual and political life of the continent was concentrated, if I may so use the word, upon its periphery; that is to say, upon the shores which are in touch, through navigation, with the rest of the world; that the Argentine Republic formed the southern portion of this belt connecting Uruguay and Chili; that this belt is wider where the penetration of the interior is easier and the climate more favourable. This belt has also been widened in Southern Brazil by the construction of railroads. It is still wider in the Argentine, because the network of railways is more widely distributed, the soil is of even quality and cultivable, and the climate temperate and favourable to expansion.

For the purposes of this present Introduction, let us imagine a vaster area—the whole earth, or, at least, the three inhabited zones of the earth.

The torrid zone contains nearly a third of the land surface of the earth, and only a quarter of its population; the density of population is thus below the average. Original civilisations have existed in the torrid zone—for example, Mexico and Peru before the arrival of Europeans—but these existed on higher plateaus where the climate was not tropical. There were civilisations in India and the East Indies, but these were imported from the valley of the Ganges. There are to-day intertropical countries which exhibit an active economic life: India, Mexico, the Antilles and the seaboard of Brazil. Nevertheless, in the greater part of the torrid zone it would seem that the continuous high temperature saps human energy, and also renders it to a great extent unnecessary, by simplifying life, reducing as it does the number of man’s essential needs by facilitating the satisfaction of those which are, like alimentation, strictly necessary.

The temperate zone of the north is the most favoured of all these. It contains nearly half the land surface of the globe. It is also the most populated, and the average density of population is far higher, for it contains about 1,207,000,000 inhabitants, or roughly speaking, three-quarters of the population of the globe. Here it is that we find massed the four great sources of the ancient and modern civilisation of the world, which also correspond to the four great groups of mankind; China with Japan; India, with the Deccan running down to the torrid zone; Europe, and the United States and Eastern Canada. In the three first centres the density of population is far greater than in any other large country. In the fourth, the number of human beings (some 94 millions) and the density are far less; but this centre has become one of the most important, by means of its activity of production.

There remains the temperate zone of the south. In this zone, the ocean occupies relatively the largest space. The land emerges from it only at the termination of three continents—America, Africa, and Australia, terminated by Tasmania and New Zealand. Before the arrival of Europeans, each of these divisions was absolutely isolated, without any relations with the others, and inhabited by races entirely savage. The coming of the Europeans who peopled them, and the maritime commerce which ensued, have awakened them to civilisation. In the case of America, we have seen that free colonisation was not commenced until the nineteenth century. In Africa, at the opening of the nineteenth century, there were only a few ports occupied, and Australia was still practically untouched. To-day, in the temperate zone of the south, which comprises only a twelfth part of the land surface of the globe, there are 24 millions of inhabitants, nearly all civilised and of European descent. This population amounts to 1·5 per cent. of that of the globe; its density, therefore, is below the average.

It is, however, the zone in which the population has relatively increased most rapidly since the beginning of the nineteenth century, for at the outset it certainly did not count a million inhabitants. The Australian and African divisions have owed their good fortune to gold, and in a lesser degree to wool; but gold mines are a source of wealth which is exhausted by exploitation. In Australia, where the extent of arable lands is limited, immigration has at present practically ceased. In Africa the soil is little suited to culture, and immigration to the Transvaal has been recruited rather among Asiatic coolies than among free workers of European race.

In this southern temperate zone, the Argentine Republic is the State which has the most numerous population: that in which the population has known the greatest increase, and in which economic conditions promise the widest development in the near future. The perfecting of refrigerating processes will certainly facilitate the exportation of meats, and it is to be hoped that the interests of trade, under the necessities of the food supply of the labouring classes, will finally overcome the obstacles which the European producers oppose in the way of imports. The demand for wheat, like the demand for meat, may vary according to the year and the protective legislation of the nations; but in general we may say that it will increase rather than decrease, because the population of Europe, and especially of Central and Western Europe, is for ever increasing in numbers and in density, so that already it cannot suffice to itself by producing its alimentary needs from its own soil, and in proportion as it becomes wealthier it will consume more white bread and more butchers’ meat. The United States and Canada continue to export wheat; but the rapid increase of the urban and industrial population of the United States will assuredly limit this exportation to a very great extent in the twentieth century.[10]

The Argentine Republic, where the harvest is due in January, so that its wheat arrives in the European markets by March, is the country destined to profit the most by these advantages. It must learn how to make use of them wisely, practising a policy of peace and concord, increasing its powers of stability by the development of the sentiment of nationality, and by inspiring confidence both in foreign capitalists and in immigrants by accumulating capital of its own, and by learning to retain, in spite of success, the foresight which warns of perils and the prudence which avoids them.

INTRODUCTION

This book, intended to make known in Europe the present situation and the economic future of the Argentine Republic, comes at an opportune moment to fulfil its mission of popularisation.

During the last ten years of the nineteenth century the Argentine has suffered all the misfortunes and known all the disasters that can affect a rural and agricultural people. The locust, coming from the Tropics, devoured the crops; anthrax, imported from Europe, decimated the cattle; the threats of a war with Chili imposed enormous expenses and exhausted the national revenue; finally, a commercial and industrial crisis, and domestic disturbances, consequent upon the general misfortune, completed the tale of calamities which put the vitality of the nation to the test.

But as there is no night so long that it has no dawn, all these shadows fled away. Our quarrel with Chili was submitted to arbitration, and the decision of His Majesty the King of Great Britain not only terminated a cause of difference of fifteen years’ duration, but re-established fraternal relations between the two Republics. The rural plagues were attacked and vanquished by measures which experience indicated as preventive of recurrence; commercial and industrial prosperity returned; the tranquillity of the interior was assured; and the general welfare increased. To accentuate still further this beneficent reaction, the immense and fertile plains of the pampa, open to the activities of the agriculturalists, began to produce abundant harvests, which struck the European markets with amazement, and diverted towards the Argentine a current of gold which was estimated at more than £20,000,000, and a stream of immigration, which, in the year 1904, brought 125,000 workers, and which promises to be even greater in the present year.

The Argentine Republic has issued triumphantly from its lengthy and severe ordeal; it has emerged richer, stronger and more confident of its own destiny than at any other period of its history; and the increase of its revenues and the rapid growth of its prosperity have secured the attention of the great financial centres of Europe.

Public curiosity being thus awakened, many people have inquired: What is the Argentine? How far is the development of its wealth a sound and durable process? What is the probable future of its people? Is it a meteor that flashes brilliantly through space, or a star rising upon the economic and political horizon?

While some content themselves with asking such questions and awaiting their reply, M. Lewandowski, the representative of one of the greatest credit establishments in France, wished to gain some practical experience of the phenomenon. He took the most certain, most practical means; took steamer, crossed the ocean, and landed in the Argentine. With the learned collaboration of Señor Alberto Martinez, one of the most competent of men in matters of statistics and finance, he made a profound study of economic questions, and the present book is the outcome of their common observations.

This book should be read by all those who are not convinced that the word Europe sums up all humanity; but who take the pains, on the contrary, to follow the development of all other nations; understanding how necessary it is for the great nations to observe the progress and evolution of the younger peoples. Thus they avoid the risk of being surprised by the sudden apparition of great economic or political forces which they had not foreseen, or by which they had not known how to profit.

South America suffers from a prejudice that we cannot unhappily disclaim as being unjustified. The directing classes in France, as in all other European nations, with the exception of a small commercial and financial circle, seem to have been kept in intentional ignorance of all things relating to the nations of the new continent. The Argentine, Chili, Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador,—countries separated one from another by enormous distances—are none the less, for the generality of Europeans, more or less one and the same thing; that is, they form a kind of a geographical nebulosity, which is known as South America. The post-office employés of Buenos Ayres have often occasion to smile when they read the addresses inscribed on the envelopes of letters dispatched by the learned and scientific bodies of Europe, and Argentines residing abroad continually find food for reflection in the questions asked them by persons occupying the highest positions.

Yet for the old world there is every incentive to study more closely the development of these new peoples. It is enough to point out that the Argentine to-day occupies as significant a position as that held by the United States at the beginning of the nineteenth century; and that its continued evolution will undoubtedly, before the end of the present century, give it an importance equal to that of the United States at the present time.

In a conversation with Mr Roosevelt and his Secretary of State, Colonel John Hay, I had occasion to make this very remark, and the President replied, with the rapidity of judgment and the affirmative tone which are so characteristic of his mind: “In less time than that; you will find fifty years enough; for you will profit by all our experience and all the human progress effected during the nineteenth century.”

The shadow of discredit which has hitherto lain upon South America is explained by the continual anarchy to which the majority of its peoples have lent themselves since the immense colonial empire of Spain threw off its fetters in the first quarter of the last century, in order to break up into fifteen separate republics. This anarchy and disorganisation, compared with the orderly spirit of progress which has reigned in the great republic of the North, have given rise to the belief, to-day general, that the so different destiny of these States was due to the special qualities and aptitudes of the Anglo-Saxon race, which the Latin races lacked.

This belief results from a superficial and incomplete examination of the facts, and has gained easy acceptance, even in works of a more or less scientific nature, such as The Psychological Laws of the Evolution of Peoples, in which the author cites, with regard to the Latin races and the peoples of South America, a number of inaccurate and prejudiced facts, which have been gathered from the writings of a dyspeptic and ill-tempered journalist. Such data have caused M. Gustave Lebon to deduce psychological laws which are hardly favourable to the South American races.

If we wish to gain some idea of the true causes of this diversity of destiny between the peoples of North and South America, we must study the origin of each and the particular form which colonisation has assumed in each case; forms imposed by the force of historic facts rather than by the will of man.

The Anglo-Saxons arrived in the American coasts and founded, in the first half of the seventeenth century, such cities as Boston, Charleston, Philadelphia, etc., when America had already been discovered and explored by the Spaniards a century and a half before. These colonies were formed of groups of families who had abandoned their mother-country to seek a new one, where they could live and labour free from the persecutions of religious and political intolerance.

When these colonies attained a certain fame, the surplus of the overflowing populations of Europe was naturally attracted by these virgin and fertile lands, relatively near at hand though across the ocean. Thus there formed a current of immigration which rapidly peopled America and utilised the great natural resources of its enormous territory. In this way was gradually formed a new people, which was to a certain extent a development of the various nations from which it originated, and which preserved their customs and their political and social habits.

These colonists began by buying land of the native tribes; but, increasing in numbers and in strength, they found it more convenient to rob them, thus forcing the Red Indians to retreat towards the north and west; and for reasons of self-respect, or on account of religious principles, no deliberate attempt was made to mingle with the indigenous population.

This form of colonisation, whose prime cause was to be found in persecution, not in the execution of a preconceived plan, resulted in the existence, at the end of the eighteenth century, of thirteen colonies peopled exclusively by men of the white races, originally natives of the countries of Northern Europe, who had transported to this new soil their manners and customs, their social and political laws, their liberal traditions and their economic system, so that from the moment they declared themselves independent, they were able immediately to form a single nation, united by all the ties which make for the cohesion of a people.[11]

To attain such progress, to reach the summit on which they rest to-day, the United States had only to persist in the same path, to follow the same groove, and the incontestable merit of this people and of its great statesmen is that they have been faithful to the principles of liberty and equality which they inherited from their ancestors, the venerable “conscript fathers”; principles which they ratified in the admirable Constitution whence this vast political organism has derived its cohesion, its vitality, and its strength.

How different were the origins of the peoples of Latin America! The Spanish sailors did not cross the ocean like the passengers of the Mayflower, or the companions of Penn, seeking solitary shores, known though distant, where they might establish a home, there to live and labour in peace and liberty.

The Spanish navigators, as brave as they were audacious, launched themselves into the unknown, guided only by their own genius, in order to discover a world, to conquer new lands, new subjects, for their country and their king; and in the pursuit of that heroic dream they performed exploits which to this day amaze us by their audacity.

These were the famous conquistadores, whom one of their descendants, José Maria Hérédia, has celebrated in the admirable lines:—

These first colonisers of Spanish America—soldiers, missionaries, officials, adventurers, men without family—seized upon a whole continent, which they discovered and conquered at the price of unheard-of exertions. They parcelled out the land, subjugated the native tribes, reducing them to servitude in their famous encomiendas, or putting into experimental practice, as in the Jesuit missions, theories of collectivism, which is to-day regarded as a modern invention. It was a true feudal system that arose in the new world.[12]

If, on the one hand, the native races were initiated into the doctrines of Catholicism in exchange for their liberty and independence, they did not, on the other hand, receive from their masters any political instruction, but preserved their habits of submission and passive obedience to their chief, which constituted their sole political tradition.

When, therefore, the day of emancipation arrived, and this enormous colony, in arms against its oppressors, declared itself independent, and divided itself into several Republics, the great mass of the population consisted of Indians converted to Christianity, and half-breeds, who preserved their habits unchanged and had no ideas, no traditions, other than that of government by individual might.

Only in the urban centres did the white race, with its conception of political institutions, predominate. And when the new Government wished to organise itself in an independent manner, the two tendencies and traditions, which correspond to two distinct mentalities, violently clashed, and began that long struggle, not wholly terminated even to-day, of which the history is the history of anarchism in America.

Another factor that also procured this conflict was the colonial political economy of Spain, which was not only a mistake, but a mistake of the period; an error which closed the whole continent to commerce, shut it away from the outer world, and maintained these masses of humanity in ignorance and isolation, in order to exploit them simply as a machine, or as an element of wealth for the service of their masters.

The problem which confronted the politicians of South America when they found themselves face to face with this new people, whom they must of necessity organise, was thus very different from, and far more difficult than the problem which the founders of the North American Union had to resolve.

These native masses obeyed with all their might and with the utmost enthusiasm so long as it was a question of fighting against the foreign troops and of winning their independence; but, victory once assured, guided by their leaders, the caudillos, most of whom were white, they revolted against the tendencies which began to show themselves among the Europeans of the cities, and in many places succeeded in dominating over them by force of numbers, thus preventing all political and administrative progress, and maintaining, as their form of government, the personal, arbitrary, and irresponsible power of a leader, that is, of the caudillo.

The written Constitutions which these people had established upon declaring their independence, and which were inspired by the Constitutions of the United States or the Swiss Republic, were thus reduced to a dead letter, as they were in complete contradiction to the political habits of the mass of the populace, and required, for their application, a political education which the peoples of South America did not possess. A whole century had to elapse before immigration, material interest, and the influence of civilisation, were able slowly to modify the political mentality of these peoples, by reinforcing and popularising the principles of government, extirpating the elements and suppressing the causes of the anarchy which had so long disturbed them.

Among the nations which experienced these beneficent influences, the Spanish colony known as the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata, to-day the Argentine Republic, was quite specially favoured. Its territory, composed of immense prairies, the celebrated Argentine “pampas,” stretching from the sea-coast and the river littoral, offered the unique wealth of their fertility and their climate. There were no mines of gold or silver to arouse the greed of adventurers; they came to these regions only to traverse them, and so to proceed immediately to the gold-bearing regions of the distant Cordilleras.

Moreover, the first colonists who established themselves on the banks of the Plata, repulsed and expelled by the natives, were forced to abandon a certain number of cattle and horses, which found in these prairies an admirable opportunity to live and multiply in freedom, until finally they formed the immense herds of wild cattle and horses, whose hides became the principal wealth and the chief article of commerce of these regions.

Although the Rio de la Plata had no commercial relations with the outside world, and was only able to trade with Cadiz, the immensity and the solitude of its shores favoured a contraband trade; to such a degree that English, Dutch, and Portuguese smugglers came from all parts to exchange their manufactured articles for the hides of these wild herds.—This it is that explains how Buenos Ayres was able from the outset to become a great commercial centre, in which the trades dependent upon stock-raising quickly occupied the first place.

Commercial activity, the development of communication by sea, the fertility of the soil, the climate—all contributed from the early days of emancipation to attract European immigration. This immigration, like that which peopled the America of the north, was composed of families who came to settle, to form new homes, to labour. These families, following the example of their predecessors in the United States and for the same causes, did not mingle with the native tribes, but struggled against them, and forced them to abandon their lands and fly to the south, until at last, after a long and cruel struggle, they almost completely disappeared.

This immigration increased year by year, and to-day the great majority of the population of the Argentine Republic—a population now exceeding 5 millions—is of European origin.

That this immigration, which flows from all the nations of Europe, has been the chief agent of the present prosperity of the Argentine, and is the condition of its future greatness, is an incontestable fact. One of our leading statesmen has declared, of America, that “to govern is to people”; and this aphorism has remained a fundamental principle of government. To recognise the full force of this assertion, we must reflect that these unusually fertile prairies, situated in a privileged climate, near the sea-coast or on the banks of enormous rivers, navigable even by transatlantic steamers, need nothing but human labour to transform them, with less effort and at less expense than anywhere else in the world, into immense fields of wheat or maize, or pastures of lucerne, covered with herds, able to produce bread and meat enough to feed all Europe.

Accordingly the agricultural production of the Argentine Republic is limited only by the number of hands which lend themselves to its exploitation; in which we have a repetition of the very phenomenon which has served as the foundation of the development of the United States.

Under these conditions the progress of the Argentine Republic is a necessary and inevitable fact, which extraordinary circumstances might for a time retard, but which nothing could finally arrest; except, indeed, one could restrain the daily exodus of fresh swarms from the human hive, which abandon the old soils, exhausted by production, to seek out the fertile, virgin, and unpeopled areas of the globe.

Hitherto this exodus has been directed principally to the United States; attracted thither by a host of special and favouring circumstances. But the time is rapidly approaching when North America in turn will find herself populated to the saturation point, and will no longer be able to receive the hosts which benefited her formerly. The laws of the United States are already beginning to impose conditions upon immigration which are constantly becoming more severe; and these laws are imposed by the two great political forces—the superior social classes and the lower classes of the people.

The upper classes, Anglo-Saxon in origin, fear that contemporary immigration, coming as it does from peoples of alien race, from the south or east of Europe, may modify or enfeeble those great moral and political qualities to which they attribute the greatness and prosperity of their nation. On the other hand, the federated workers see in these new arrivals, healthy and vigorous, but having fewer needs, a source of dangerous competition, which may have a disastrous influence on conditions of labour and payment.

The stream of irrigation which is now setting in towards the United States, and which amounted in numbers to 800,000 in the year 1904, must necessarily therefore, as time goes on, turn aside in other directions, and as it will nowhere meet with more advantageous circumstances than in the Argentine, it will flow thither as it flows already, but in greater and greater numbers, resulting in a development of wealth and power superior to any hitherto known.

Some persons, however, formulate certain reservations as to the consistency and the political and social value of nations formed by these human inundations, composed as they are of men of different races, having neither the same language, nor the same religion, nor the same customs; they doubt whether this new Babel can give birth to a national spirit sufficiently vigorous to impress a character of political and moral unity upon these new recruits.

In order to prove that these fears are ill-founded, we have only to take the practical example furnished by the United States. Into this vast national crucible there poured, from the outset, the stream of emigration from Great Britain, Holland, France, and Spain; later came Scandinavians, Germans, Lithuanians, Poles, Hungarians, Italians, Syrians and Arabs. From the fusion of all these elements has issued a new race, homogeneous and powerful, with a strong national spirit which is known as “the American spirit,” and under that name has won the respect of the world. This result is neither accidental nor due to special antecedents; it is the consequence of a natural evolution, ably and intelligently directed.

The European law, which attributes to the son the nationality of his father, may have had its justification in the past; to-day it is maintained only by force of tradition.

Nationality and love of country are only an extension of the love of the family and the home; and these sentiments cannot, any more than others, be forced upon one by law. There can exist for a man only the home and the family in which he was born and bred. Doubtless he will feel himself attached to the home of his forbears by ties of sentiment and respect; but all the roots of his intimate feelings bind him to the home and the family into which he was born; they are in his blood, and thence he has received the first impressions which mould his character and imprint those characteristics which form his personality.

It is the same with nationality and the mother-country. It is useless to attempt to persuade either child or man that his country is not that in which he was born, in which he has grown up, but another distant country which he has neither known nor seen.

The difference of origin among the children of immigrants of different nationalities disappears in childhood, through the community of life in school and workshop; through sharing alike in work and play; and it is in the earlier years of life that the mind is moulded by its surroundings; in these years develops that feeling of attachment to the soil, of union, solidarity, and common memories, that shows itself later in an ardent patriotism. Unity of language necessarily favours the process of fusion, and explains the fact that the descendants of immigrants of different race, religion, language, habits and traditions, are able to fuse so completely as to form a perfectly homogeneous population, one in mind and in sentiment, thus constituting a new nationality, young, vigorous and strongly individual.

We have thus under our eyes a practical example of the unity of the human race. The hazards of life, in the course of centuries, having dispersed the primitive race throughout the earth, it has formed, under the influence of circumstances, new types, which in the course of time have met and mingled, to form new crosses in their turn, which as a matter of fact are only the modalities of a common primitive race.

The same phenomenon is being repeated in the Argentine, as in all the American republics, and the spontaneous and vital sentiment of nationality continually strikes the observer, who notes the pride with which a child born in Argentina, whether he be the son of a Spaniard, Frenchman, Italian, or German, affirms, when questioned, that his country is the Argentine.

Thus this Republic possesses all the requisite conditions of becoming, with the passage of time, one of the greatest nations of the earth. Its territory is immense and fertile, its surface being equal to that of all Europe, excepting Russia; it is capable of supporting with care at least 100 millions of human beings; almost every climate is to be found within its limits, and, consequently, it can yield all products, from those of the tropics to those of the polar regions. Its rivers and its mountains are among the greatest of the globe. As its maritime frontier it has the Atlantic, which brings it into contact with the whole world.

It is governed by institutions more liberal than those of any other nation, especially in all that affects the foreigner; it regards the influx of immigration with approval, and seeks to promote it. In proportion as its vast vacant spaces become peopled their value is increased tenfold, and production grows at an enormous pace; for a single family, by the aid of modern machinery, can exploit a larger area of soil, yielding a produce far greater than is required for its own consumption; a fact which explains the surprising rate at which the export trade has increased.

Such are the true causes of the prosperity of this country, as is proved, with abundant detail, by MM. Martinez and Lewandowski; and as these causes are not accidental, but fundamental and permanent, they should produce in South America the same results as in the North.

Granted that wealth and prosperity are essentially conservative elements, we have here a serious guarantee of political stability; the more so as the country has already passed the difficult age and is cured of the malady endemic to South America—anarchy.

It is also to be hoped that our Argentine politicians, taught by experience, and comprehending all the responsibilities imposed upon them by their noble mission—the work of racial regeneration and the betterment of South America—will succeed in making constitutional government an actual fact, by restraining and uprooting the tendency to personal power, which is the lamentable heritage of indigenous tradition.

It is a great nation that is rising on the brink of the twentieth century; the mistress of an enormous inheritance. Immigration and the increase of the birth-rate are furnishing it with the arms it requires; it lacks only those reserves of capital which, like all new peoples, it has not as yet had time to create.

In no country can European capital find a more fertile or advantageous field for its operations: a fact already well known in England; and one the authors of this book have wished to emphasise for the greater benefit of French capital. In this they serve the interests of France and, still more particularly, those of the Argentine Republic; and in the name of my own compatriots, as well as for myself, I take this opportunity of expressing my sincere gratitude.