Before commencing a study of the financial and economic situation in the Argentine Republic, it is important to decide at the outset as to the spirit in which this examination should be pursued, and the method most proper to such an inquiry. We tread upon a novel and peculiar field, and any too rigid comparison with the events of other countries might easily lead us to errors of appreciation.
Above all we must practise the philosophical principle nil admirari; we must be astonished at nothing, and abstain from all too absolute judgments. Although, as the figures of foreign trade will show, the progress of the country has surpassed all expectation, it is, on the other hand, almost impossible to foretell how far the results of one year will be ratified by the year following.
Like all young nations, the Argentine progresses on its path to the unknown by leaps and bounds; it is as yet in an unstable condition, in which the oscillations of prosperity are still of great amplitude and exceedingly sudden.
It is easy to discern the cause of this essentially unstable condition.
The Argentine, in its present phase, is an agricultural country, whose principal sources of wealth are cereals and stock-raising; the result is that each year the whole life of the country is affected by the harvest.[13] On the harvest depends, in a great degree, the movements of external commerce; it produces those sudden changes which occur from year to year, and which result occasionally in a variation of £8,000,000 to £12,000,000 above or below the average.
[13] We use the word harvest here in its widest sense, but we must ultimately distinguish the results of stock-raising from those of agriculture, since they do not necessarily vary in the same direction.
The harvest influences not only the exports, more than half of which consist of agricultural products, but has no less an influence on the value of importations.[14]
[14] The value of the exports in 1907 was £59,240,874, and according to the official figures the products of agriculture amounted to £32,818,324.
The national powers of consumption are, in fact, very intimately connected with the measure of the agricultural output; as the latter is bad or good, the home consumption absorbs more or fewer imported products. Thus the poor harvests of 1901 and 1902, which resulted in a fall of nearly £1,800,000 in the cereal exports, produced in 1902 a fall of £800,000 in the imports of iron and materials used for construction. The same depression was visible in the imports of textiles and beverages, and still more so in those of articles de luxe. The spending powers of the country being closely dependent on the facility of realising the products of the soil, it is easy to understand that in the case of a bad harvest or a poor market the consumers have no longer the same powers of purchase.
We find the same ups and downs in the figures of the Budget, the contributive powers of the country being influenced by the same causes as its consumption. If the crops are poor, the Budget of the following year shows immediate traces of the fact. Thus in 1902, the year of the bad harvest, the total receipts were estimated at £5,534,000 in paper, and £9,486,669 in gold; but the actual receipts were only £5,221,000 in paper, and £8,047,755 in gold; a deficit of £1,438,913 in gold.
At the same time the Customs receipts, which are the most variable item of the revenue, on account of their direct relation to consumption, have fallen from one year to another (as in 1903 compared with 1902), as much as £1,200,000 in consequence of the agricultural crisis.
There is an equally direct relation between the financial situation and the results of the harvest. If the commercial balance is favourable, the Argentine becomes a creditor of foreign countries by the excess of its exportations, and the resulting payments in gold, after the deductions of the interest on the foreign debt, increase the proportion between the metallic currency and the monetary circulation in general.
As these few examples prove, the prosperity of the country is subordinated to the result of the harvest; the latter gives the measure of all improvement, all progress of a financial and economic order. Unlike the ancient European nations, the Argentine Republic has no reserves of accumulated capital behind it, so that it can live on its own savings in times of crisis. Its commerce and its industries depend almost exclusively upon its agricultural yield, and share all the latter’s vicissitudes.
All depends on the value of the soil, the basis of public and private wealth. The power of expenditure which follows a good harvest may contribute towards proving personal property, but the latter remains always strictly related to the agricultural yield and general produce of the soil, and does not constitute an easily-realised reserve.
For the rest, we must recognise that, as a rule, this capital does not remain inactive, and is as little as possible sterilised by investment in the public funds. Those who possess available cash, in the shape of revenue from a large estate, usually employ it by increasing their stock of cattle, or in reclaiming more land, or by investing it in other estates; so that all that comes from the earth returns to the earth, and goes to increase its yield.
The peculiar situation of this great agricultural country, which constitutes at once the strength and the instability of the Republic, shows us in what spirit and by what method it should be studied. All depends upon the yield of the soil, for this is the great dispenser of the national wealth; it is therefore the agricultural system that we must examine first of all, if we wish to arrive at a solution of the problems arising from the present condition of the Argentine or predict its future.
To follow out this general plan, we must consider the country first of all from two standpoints: we must examine into its production and its markets or outlets, in order to learn the true conditions of its existence, the value of its soil, and its sources of revenue.
We shall then proceed to examine its administrative machinery, showing how the Argentine lives and progresses as a nation, and to analyse its financial and monetary organisation with reference to the economic situation.
The two portions of this scheme are closely connected, and their study must lead us to the same conclusion, that the Argentine is a nation in a state of growth, and, like all young nations, still uncertain of its first steps; but it is animated by a spirit of initiative, and urged by the breath of progress, which may lead it to a high destiny among the great productive countries of the earth.
Is there an Argentine nationality, and what is its significance in respect of the territory it occupies?—The formation of this nationality.
An examination of the qualities of the Argentine people.—Sense of progress; remarkable faculty of assimilation: character essentially practical.—The fusion of the Latin genius with Anglo-Saxon energy.
The contrast between the political world, with its instability and lack of organisation, and the economic world, which manifests intense vitality and national progress.—The necessity of developing the national idea, and of raising it above material questions.—The slow elaboration of a new race born of the various elements of immigration.
[15] We must here explain that the Argentine possesses two currencies: the piastre or dollar, whose value is 5 francs, and the paper piastre, which by the law of conversion is equivalent to 2 francs 20, or 1s. 7·2d.
As for weights and measures, the decimal metric system has been adopted. In surveying large areas, the square league is occasionally employed as unit, which contains 2500 hectares, or 5628 acres = about 91⁄2 square miles.
We should also explain that the Argentine Republic, of which the Federal capital is Buenos Ayres, is divided into fourteen autonomous Provinces and ten national Territories. The Provinces, in the order of population, are as follows: Buenos Ayres, Santa Fé, Córdoba, Entre Rios, Corrientès, Tucuman, Santiago de l’Estero, Mendoza, Salta, Catamarca, San Juan, San Luis, La Rioja, and Jujuy.
The national Territories are: La Pampa, Misionès, Nequen, Rio Negro, Chaco, Formosa, Chubut, Santa Cruz, the Andes, and Tierra del Fuego.
To present a complete picture of the Argentine, it is not enough to describe its configuration, its great rivers, its climate, its population, its forms of agriculture, and the value of its soil; all this is a dead letter, and will by no means yield us the secret of the country’s future, unless we first resolve one question of a sociological character: Is there an Argentine nationality, and what does it signify in respect of the territory which it occupies? Could one, for instance, estimate the importance of the United States merely from the point of view of their agricultural and mineral wealth, without taking into account the work and the character of the admirable Anglo-Saxon race, which has adapted itself to American soil, and has succeeded in obtaining from it its full value?
And could we explain the fact that certain countries of South America, which also, thanks to their natural wealth, have all the elements of rapid development, have remained stationary, and hardly count as nations, if the question of race did not throw light on the mystery, showing us that with the most favourable factors of the soil, a ferment is essential to start the growth of the seed?
Concerning the Argentine, this then is the problem which we have to consider, if we wish to see further than the present moment, and to judge in what measure its progress may be consolidated and even accelerated. In other terms, we must understand whether the Argentine must depend upon a fortuitous grouping of individuals brought together by the various streams of immigration, and having no common tie but the desire to enrich themselves, or whether these various elements are destined to become fused, and in time to form a true nationality, with its own traditions, its own ideal.
This latter is naturally the end to be pursued by the Argentine Government, if it wishes to prepare for the future by making moral and material progress go hand in hand. Its role is not to manage the country like a directing syndicate, but to direct all individual efforts, all initiative, and all other available forces, to the same national and patriotic end.
It was this idea that a President of the Republic, Señor Quintana, felt it his duty to enunciate, when, upon assuming the Presidential authority, he stated, in his inaugural message: “I am the head of a nation which has in America an ideal”; and he added: “There is one common characteristic among us that was discovered as early as the colonial period, in the magnitude of plans of campaign, in the clamour of intestine conflict, in the government of the constitutional period; it is, that we all bear in our hearts the sense of our future greatness.”
How far can these aspirations be translated into facts? That is a question we must examine seriously and with an absolutely unbiassed judgment.
We cannot study this question of the Argentine nationality in books; for a country which has been so rapidly carried away on the tide of material progress has but little time to examine itself. Neither has it been able to form a literature or a sociology which might reflect the dominant characteristics of the generation; it is only by an inquiry and an analysis of the facts that we can isolate this element of nationality from the various foreign elements which have contributed to its formation.
One factor that facilitates our task is the clear-sightedness of the Argentines themselves, who are the first to recognise, with abundant good-temper, their own shortcomings. They are almost exaggerated in their self-criticisms when depicting themselves; and our work has been cut out for us in avoiding too hasty generalisations and in softening certain too rigorous judgments, although these emanated from men who were certainly in a position to understand the tendencies of their generation.
One principle dominates the whole question: it is that which a contemporary historian expresses in these terms: “When peoples come into contact they begin by an exchange of their faults.” Such an observation might well apply to a people like the Argentines, who are not yet settled on their own foundations, and are constantly increased by immigration.
All the varieties of the Latin race have contributed to form this people: Spain and Italy have made the largest contributions, and France has also in her time contributed her share. The Argentine has even assimilated a Basque population, of especial interest on account of its aptitude for agricultural work, and its adaptability to its new surroundings.
Finally, the Anglo-Saxons have also entered the Argentine, to mingle with the Latin element, and have given great assistance in opening up the country, by setting an influential example of initiative, progress, and energy. This penetration of the Latin race, a little indolent and inactive as it is, by the energetic and progressive Anglo-Saxons, enables us the better to understand the good and bad qualities of the Argentine nationality.
In short, if we are to obtain an unbiassed view of the national physiognomy of this adolescent people, we must remember that its good qualities, like its faults, are the result of the commingling of the varied elements which have entered the country by immigration; elements that have mixed and reacted upon each other, so that their dominant characteristics have finally appeared in the Argentine character.
There is one gift which we cannot deny this people: intelligence, joined to a remarkable power of assimilation. It also has that gift of enterprise, that sense of progress, which are found in the Anglo-Saxon races, and which have found such magnificent scope in the United States.
A young nation, without a past, the Argentine is not impeded, like most of the Latin nations, by a load of custom, prejudice, and routine, hampering its motions and impeding its progress. Profiting by the experience of others, it knows how to adapt itself to the best; taking its good wherever it finds it. It creates nothing, invents nothing, but appropriates all new ideas, which find upon its soil the conditions favourable to a rapid expansion. It is, indeed, formed after the likeness of its own soil, which produces without effort and lends itself admirably to every kind of culture.
This sense of progress is certainly the most characteristic trait of the Argentine, and the one by which it is distinguished among the other Latin nations of South America. Uruguay, for example, which possesses a soil as rich, and offers the same facility of transport, has given no proofs of initiative and vitality to lead one to hope that she has really entered upon the path of progress. It is the same with Paraguay and many other States, which have not succeeded in accomplishing any of the changes demanded by modern civilisation.
The Argentine, on the contrary, has always known how to derive benefit from whatever source was available, thanks to the current of immigration which keeps it in permanent touch with foreign countries. It has also assimilated the inventions and the methods of more civilised nations, and has attracted men capable of applying them. At the head of the great administrations of the State, one often finds specialists from Europe or the United States, who bring the fruits of their experience, and increase the intellectual possessions of the nation. The departments of railroads, navigation, public works, and hygiene, thanks to these happy selections, offer every security of efficiency in operation.
One may say, it is true, that this is the result of foreign influence; but what does the origin of all these improvements signify in respect of the future, so long as they become incorporated in the life of the Argentine and contribute to its evolution? One thing which proves that the instinct for progress is at the heart of the national temperament is that it is found in the lower strata of certain public services in which the foreign element plays no part. The administration of the police, for instance, and that of the posts and telegraphs, to cite no other examples, are conducted with as great a regularity as in any European country.
Thus, while allowing that the initiative of all improvements comes from abroad, we must not overlook the fact that the Argentine has assimilated them with the utmost facility, and that this gift of assimilation forms to-day a valuable portion of the national patrimony.
Despite its eminently cosmopolitan character, which is a peculiarity of its development, the Argentine Republic has succeeded in retaining its own personality among so many diverse elements. It is the type of the modern nation, whose ideal is that of the United States—business. A man is zonzo or vivo—a fool or more than capable—there is no medium.
From this point of view the Argentine is at the apex of its period; it has no use for abstract ideas or immortal principles; its ambition being above all to sell its corn and cattle and to enrich itself. Behind the agitation of the political parties there is no other object than this: to share in the exploitation of the country and to enjoy its wealth. The heroic period is over for the Argentine; its independence is to-day definitely assured; it pursues no dreams of conquest now, but seeks only pacific victories for its products in the great international markets.
Prosaic as the present generation is, it is not, from our point of view, completely without nobility; it loves its native soil and glorifies it; not, assuredly, after the fashion of Virgil saluting the Latin soil, fertile of heroes, but as a land productive of rich harvests, and the source of material prosperity. This it is that explains the powerful attraction which the Argentine exercises upon all those who have trodden its soil. The country progresses with such rapidity, the value of the soil increases in such proportions, that the most indifferent end by being drawn into the stream. Those who come to live here without any idea of final residence make up their minds to settle as soon as they hold the smallest parcel of property. When a man has lived some little time in the Argentine, and has watched the spectacle of its rapid development, he is quickly seized by the business vitality which forces him to take part in the great movement.
This love of the Argentine for his land may certainly have its noble side, but he knows nothing of the moving spirit of poetry which clothes that love in the old countries of Europe, where man becomes attached not only to the cultivable land, but to all the memories of the native village; the familiar hills and meadows, the old church, and all that puts us into communication with the soul of places. It would seem as though one holds more closely to the earth that demands the most labour, the greatest efforts, even the greatest disappointments.
No one was ever more attached to the land than the Boer, who lived at peace in an ungrateful soil, indifferent to the mineral wealth which it might conceal. It was this land, where he lived an independent life, that he defended so stubbornly; not the gold, which was yet the true wealth of the country.
The Argentine also has seen pass over its soil the same rude generation, having no other dream than independence. The “guacho” of old, a mixed type of the Indian and Spanish races, the true son of the pampa, was truly attached to the immense plain upon which he lived at the call of caprice, a wild rider in every sense. To-day the type tends to disappear, as civilisation, and more especially administration, everywhere make their influence felt; as the ancient virgin pampa is transformed into cultivable soil, bristling on all hands with barbed wire. As he was not easy to domesticate, nor break in to any continuous labour, the “guacho” has been supplanted little by little by the foreign farmer, the colonist; and to-day he is almost submerged by the wave of immigration which has invaded the country, and which forms now the major part of the population.
From the men of this new generation one must ask no other love for the soil than that which is born of the profits they draw from it. They can move indifferently from north to south, from east to west; the soil for them is everywhere the same, provided the harvest be good. But, apart from that, they nevertheless love this land of promise, and interest makes them its children.
From this generation, whose principal traits we have noted, it seems that we may in the future expect great things.
To be sure, if the world were to return to its old ideal, that of glory or imperialism, we hardly know what place the Argentine would find in the scheme of things. It is unsuited to a military policy; it has no ambition to measure itself with neighbouring nations, which are far more eager for adventure.
But if we stand on the economic plane, the only one which interests us, we must allow that this generation is well armed for self-defence in every field of the commercial struggle. From the fusion of the Latin genius with the Anglo-Saxon energy has issued a new product, extremely capable in business, full of practical sense, and very open to progress, which will be fully able to hold its own in a century in which money is the great instrument of domination. This race, formed haphazard of immigration, is yet the very race for Argentine soil; between the two there is a correspondence, an adaptation, as perfect as if it were the result of long-continued design.
To sum up: the Argentine nationality appears to a foreigner under two distinct aspects; there is its political side, characterised by instability and lack of organisation, and the economic side, in which an intense national life and progress are manifested. Will this truly abnormal situation, containing both very bad and very good elements, perhaps, terminate favourably, making of the Argentine people not merely a rich, but also a great nation? Will the development of public affairs, left so far to the hazard of politics, even reach the plain of our economic development? Will the Argentine nation eliminate, under the pressure of material progress, the leaven of anarchy left behind by a century of civil dissension? This is the secret of the future; this is the great achievement which remains to be accomplished in order to consolidate the present prosperity of the country.
In short, we must not lose sight of the fact that this prosperity has hitherto been less the work of man than of nature, which has been prodigal of her gifts to this fortunate land. This is a thought which has been expressed in a speech in the Argentine Senate, in which Senator Uriburu shows that Providence is always coming to the rescue by repairing the fault of the State.
“It is Providence,” he says, “which so opportunely sends us the rains to water our lands and to raise our marvellous crops; it is Providence that has given us the greatest Minister of Finance we have ever known, our fertile soil and our clear sky; the supreme Minister who looks after all our needs, who saves us from all difficulties, and who, despite our errors, continues to ensure the greatness of the Republic. Let man appropriate his work, but let him render unto Cæsar that which is Cæsar’s.”
And now if by some impossibility the situation were to change: if in spite of the enormous extension of cultivated lands a period of bad harvests were to follow the present period of fat cattle: would there not be reason to fear that the whole national edifice, founded as it is on prosperity, might become disintegrated, and crumble under the stroke of adversity? This is the peril we must indeed seek to avoid; it is for this reason that the intervention of a strong power seems necessary, in order to restrain the germs of evil brought by so many races, and to prevent the Argentine from falling back into the state of anarchy and revolution which for her is only a distant memory.
Taking even a more elevated standpoint, we may add that in order to amalgamate all the elements of immigration and to attach them to the country, through good and evil fortune, we need another solvent than personal interest or profit. To create a people it may suffice to give it a body, but to make it live it must also be given a soul, at whose breath the collectivity of individuals will be transformed into that moral unity which we call the nation. This is a question of prime importance in a country such as the Argentine, where the struggle for existence has taken a particularly keen form, which scarcely favours the development of disinterested sentiments.
It is for the State to develop among its people this national idea, and to turn all individual efforts to its profit. Its duty is to raise its authority above the medley of interest, to restrain ambition within a just limit by the influence of moral and patriotic ideas, and so to ensure the reign of justice and social peace, without which national prosperity will never be more than ephemeral.
In imagining, from this aspect, the formation of a nationality, we have no intention of criticising the country; still less do we deny the process of evolution which has gradually transformed its organisation. A nation is not created in a day, especially when it is a question of a country so young as the Argentine, which in less than a century has issued from the struggle for independence, and even to-day has hardly rid itself of the revolutionary spirit.
For a nation to become self-conscious, centuries must pass; traditions must be formed, and the great moral or intellectual forces of humanity—religion, science, literature, even poetry—must develop the sense of a collective life other than the life of business. And hitherto the Argentine has had no time to produce generations of thinkers, philosophers, and historians; still less poets. The most it has are statisticians, who give it the precise figures of her commercial balance.
We do not doubt, however, that, thanks to material progress, this slow elaboration of a new race will eventually be completed. In the first phase of her existence as a nation Argentina, according to the spirit of her Constitution, fraternally opened her doors to all who wished to inhabit her soil. No restriction was placed upon the entry nor on the permanent immigration of foreigners; on the contrary, legislation and social customs combined to favour immigration. The result is, that the new arrivals have regarded themselves as alien, in matters of economics and politics, to the nationality with which they have become incorporated; believing that their mission consisted solely in creating and circulating wealth, while regarding the solution of the great national problems with indifference.
But to-day the Argentine has entered upon a new phase; it must no longer merely receive, it must also incorporate all these elements of immigration, and, without awakening antagonism towards the foreigner, it must set to work to absorb him into the soul of the nation.
This faculty of assimilation is a virtue of the American soil. The United States have proved as much for North America, and it now remains for the Argentine to do the same for South America. The new generation of immigrants, having struck root into its hospitable soil, must live completely in the national life, absorbing those feelings of patriotism which animate the new citizen of the United States.
To give expression to these loyalist tendencies, we will confine ourselves to quoting the memorable words which were spoken in the Congress of Wisconsin, by an American congressman, born in Germany, the Hon. Richard Günther; words which were equally applauded and approved in Latin America. We shall perceive, through the very exaltation of his phrases, what unreserved devotion a naturalised foreigner may bring to his new country:
“We know as well as any other class of American citizens where our duty lies. We labour for our country in times of peace, and we shall fight for her in time of war, if ever such time arrive. When I say our country, I naturally mean our country of adoption, the United States of America. After passing through the alembic of naturalisation we are no longer Germans; we are Americans. Our attachment to America cannot be measured by the length of our residence here. We are Americans from the moment when we reach the American shore, until the day when we are laid to rest in an American grave.”
Climate—Soil—Geographical situation of the Argentine; its boundaries, its area.
Climate of various districts. The prevailing winds. Nature of the soil; its fertility; adaptation to the culture of cereals and the raising of live-stock—Transformation of virgin into fertile land—The Pampa—The cultivable area—Conditions favourable to production—The plagues of locusts.
Rivers—Their exceptionally favourable influence—The hydrographic system—Network of navigable river-ways: the Rio de la Plata, the Rio Parana—Conditions of navigability—Canals.
Ports—List of the principal ports, with a summary of their trade—Buenos Ayres: description of the port, its area, its capacity, tonnage; its docks—The Central Produce Market—Importance of Buenos Ayres in comparison with the great ports of the world—The port of La Plata—The port of Rosario; increase of its traffic; construction of the new harbour conceded to a French company—Bahia Blanca; its development—The decentralisation of traffic.
The Argentine Republic occupies the southern extremity of South America and runs from north to south from 21° 30′ to 54° 52′ of south latitude; or 33° in a meridian line. From east to west it occupies a width of 20°, between 54° and 74° of longitude.
Its territory is bounded to the north by Bolivia and Paraguay; to the east by Brazil and Uruguay; to the west by Chili. Its boundaries by land are 2980 miles in extent on the west; 993 miles on the north; the river boundaries on the east are 745 miles in length. Finally, the shores of the estuary of the Rio de la Plata and the Atlantic form a stretch of 1614 miles; all of which represents a total boundary-line of about 6334 miles.
The superficial area of the Republic has not hitherto been calculated on the basis of a geodesical survey; it has been arrived at only by calculation from charts which are more or less approximate. According to the estimates most worthy of credence, and allowing for the latest rectifications of the frontier, its present area is equivalent to 11,328,321 square miles. This is about six times the area of France, which contains only 203,905 square miles. The Province of Buenos Ayres alone is more than half as large as France.
The seasons in the Argentine, compared to those of the northern hemisphere, are of course reversed. The summer corresponds to December, January, and February; the autumn to March, April, and May; the winter to June, July and August; and the spring to September, October, and November.
In the matter of climate, the Argentine may be divided into three regions; those of the coast, the centre, and the Andes.
The coastal region comprises the Provinces of Buenos Ayres, Santa Fé, Entre Rios, and Corrientès. The average annual temperature is about 66·2° Fahr.; at Buenos Ayres it is only 62·6°. The average summer temperature is about 77°, that of the autumn 64·4°; of the winter, 53·6°, and of the spring, 62·6°. The hottest month is January, when the average is 77°; the coldest is July, with an average of 51·8°.
In this coastal region the extremes of temperature are 107·6° in summer and 41° in the winter; but these temperatures are both exceptional. However, a temperature of 95° is very usual on summer afternoons. It is a very unusual thing for the mercury to fall below freezing-point in winter or to remain there. Snow is also a very rare phenomenon, only to be seen perhaps once in five years.
A peculiarity of the Argentine climate in general is that the temperature will change very rapidly during the day, or even during a few hours; the change representing sometimes a difference of more than 36°, especially in the spring, which is the most usual season for these rapid variations.
The climate of the coast region—that is, of a country consisting almost entirely of plains—is, in general, influenced by the winds, which blow in gales at all seasons. Northerly and southerly gales are the most common; the first especially are very frequent. In Buenos Ayres one finds, during the summer, an alternation of sea and land breezes; the one during the day, the other during the night.
The northerly winds are always hot and even suffocating; they influence the nervous system, afflicting some people with neuralgic troubles. When these winds blow, the air is charged with electricity, until, the tension of the atmosphere having grown insupportable, a tempest comes to restore the equilibrium, to give place to another wind, coming from the south-west, and known as the pampero. This wind does not often last long, but it attains a velocity equal to that of a full hurricane. The pampero, so called because it is formed in the region of the pampas, is a wind full of ozone, and as such plays its part in disinfecting the vitiated air of the urban centres. But the effects of the pampero, and especially of the south-westerly winds, on the Rio de la Plata, where they produce a violent swell, are sometimes terrible.
As for the rain, there is no regularity in its fall; which naturally tends to render the results of culture and of cattle-breeding variable. Rains are more frequent in summer and autumn than at other times; while the least rainfall is that of winter. At Buenos Ayres it is rare for a month to pass without rain, which is often torrential, and accompanied by hail.
The climate of the central region, if we except the mountainous portions of the Provinces of San Luis and Córdoba, is distinguished from the seaboard region by its greater dryness and its sudden variations of temperature. In the plain the summers are very hot, and it is not uncommon to see the thermometer at 104°; while during the winter there are very hard frosts. As on the coast, northerly and southerly winds are the most frequent. Rain is rarer than on the coast, and falls almost exclusively in summer and in autumn: with rare exceptions the winter is perfectly dry.
In the Andean region the climate varies according to the height above sea-level, but is always characterised by sudden variations in the daily temperature, and by excessive dryness. On the eastern slope of the Andes and the plateaux of the north it never rains. These regions are continually swept by furious winds, which make agriculture impossible. To the intense heat of the day succeeds the cold of the night, with differences of temperature that sometimes amount to 68° in twenty-four hours.
The climate of the Argentine, with a few exceptions, has the reputation of being extremely healthy, on account of the sudden changes of temperature and the dryness of the air predominant over the greater part of the country. These atmospheric conditions are, to be sure, not favourable to affections of the lungs; but, on the other hand, they contribute to prevent epidemics. We find that among adults and adolescents the figures of mortality are no higher than the average figures for the healthiest countries in the world. The statistics drawn up by the City of Buenos Ayres even show that foreigners have a longer expectation of life than the indigenous population.
In matters of climate one must be careful not to become confused, as so many Europeans do, between our Argentine Republic and the neighbouring country of Brazil, which is nearer the equatorial zone. Favourable to human health, the Argentine climate is also, as we shall see, particularly favourable to most kinds of agriculture and to the breeding of cattle; from this point of view it is a privileged land, which calls only for labour to become productive.
For a greater part of its area the Argentine soil unites the geological and climatic conditions favourable to the production of cereals and for stock-raising. It is in the fertility of the cultivated lands and the richness of the pastures that the whole economic value of the country resides.
According to recent investigations by competent persons, the surface of the Argentine is largely composed of sandy soil; but a sandy loam is often found, also, more rarely, a gravelly clay; but there is very little actual clay. Other soils, such as absorbent calcareous earth, are not often found. In the subsoil a sandy clay abounds, the occurrence of clay and calcareous earths being greater in the subsoil than in the soil.
From the chemical point of view, the high percentage of potash—which remains practically undiminished—long ago attracted the attention of the agronomist. Phosphoric acid is also found, though in less proportions. Lime is often found in small quantities in the best soils in those districts most devoted to agriculture; and nitrogen is often abundant, except in the southern region of the Republic, and in some parts of the western region, where the rains are less frequent, the winds violent, and the vegetation poor and stunted.
Saltish soils are of frequent occurrence in the west and south, but in general the salt is not in sufficient proportions to hinder agriculture, especially when suitable means of culture are employed.
Soils of great fertility are found in the central and southern regions, and occupy vast areas in the Provinces of Buenos Ayres and Santa Fé, and in parts of Córdoba and Entre Rios. “There are areas which are apparently of poor fertility,” says M. Charles Girola, from whom we derive these data, “which yield magnificent crops, thanks to irrigation or a better distribution of the water supply; especially in the west and the south.”[16]
[16] Investigación agricola en la República Argentina, by Charles Girola, Agronomic Engineer, Head of the Agronomic Bureau in the Ministry of Agriculture. (1904).
But in the Argentine Republic experience has shown that there is scarcely any soil which is not capable of profitable use, either for agriculture or stock-raising. It is very frequently remarked that lands which for a long time had been regarded as poor and almost sterile, unfit for exploitation, are to-day converted into admirable natural or artificial prairies, feeding numerous herds of sheep or cattle; or have more often been cleared by the colonist, and are now yielding excellent crops. This wonderful transformation is chiefly due to the pasturing of flocks and herds, which break up and enrich the soil; also to the fertilising organic matter contained in the turf; and finally to the addition of innumerable dead insects, which are brought by the wind and form a deposit on the soil, which acts as a kind of natural manure.
These favourable conditions of fertility are all united in the region known as the Pampa, which occupies the greater part of the temperate zone of the country. It consists of immense and virgin plains, which stretch to the horizon almost without landmarks or changes of level, and offer admirable opportunities both for agriculture and stock-raising.
Nearly all those Argentine lands which to-day bring fabulous prices were referred to, at an earlier period, as “lands good for nothing.” For this reason a considerable premium should be put on the theoretical estimate, made a priori, of the areas suitable for advantageous cultivation, in proportion as human labour works its transformation.
It is difficult to estimate, except in the most approximate manner, the cultivable area of the Argentine. It should be not less than half the total area, or, in round figures, 370 millions of acres. Of this estimate at least two-thirds represents land suitable for stock-raising, leaving available for the production of cereals about 122 millions of acres; of which, at the present time, only a fifth part is under cultivation. We may see, by this simple comparison between the future and the present, that agriculture has still a great future before it and a large margin of development.
To give a true idea of this power of production, it is enough to recall, with M. Emile Daireaux, who has described the great farms of the Argentine pampa, that the plough, under the most favourable of climates, meets no obstacles in the way of hills or forests; not a tree, not a rock, not even a pebble in the soil. All European crops give there an abundant harvest, without expenditure upon manure, without shelter for the stock; the colonist may even content himself with a modest wattled hut, protecting him from the mid-day sun or the cold breeze of the night. The soil is everywhere friable; no painful struggles retard the speed of the plough, which traces at one stretch a furrow miles in length without turning the ploughshare. The plough is drawn by four horses, reared at hazard in the open air, knowing no grooming, no complicated training; and sometimes a single hand is able to manage two teams and ploughs.
Thanks to the frequentation of these lands for centuries by horses and cattle, these alluvial deposits, rich in natural manures, have an apparently inexhaustible fertility. Awakened by labour from its eternal sleep, the soil is so vigorous that one finds numerous instances where the same grain, sown for twenty successive years in the same place, yields always the same abundant harvest.
The only serious scourge which can menace the creative power of the earth, independently of the always to be dreaded drought, is the invasion of locusts.
These invasions take the form of flying armies of locusts passing between earth and sky, and revealing their passage by the semi-darkness they produce in the regions over which they travel. Leaving the hot deserts of the tropical regions, the locusts advance in their phalanxes, sometimes 50 or 60 miles across; swarm succeeds swarm uninterruptedly for several days, leaving behind them no trace of vegetation. They till the wells, stop the trains, by opposing veritable barriers of their bodies, obstruct the rivers in which they drown, and sometimes even, by the accumulation of their bodies, form a bridge over which the rear-guard can pass.
Serious though this danger may be, especially in the more exposed provinces, such as Santa Fé, we must say, in honour to the Argentine Republic, that it has never paralysed initiative; as is proved by the continuous increase in the area of sown soil. Very fortunately, too, this plague, like that of Egypt’s in Pharaoh’s dream, is intermittent, and an interval of seven years often passes before its return. Moreover, various means are being put into practice for defence against this formidable evil; means for preventing the reproduction of the insect, or of checking its development before the period of flight.
A special organisation has been formed under the name of the “Commission of Agricultural Defence,” in order to coordinate and direct the work of protection from the devastations of the locust, and considerable sums are devoted to this object every year. Regiments, mobilised along the line of passage, sweep the agglomerated masses of insects, in dense ridges, towards the ditches full of quicklime in which they are buried. Hundreds of tons of locusts perish thus, but unhappily the plague seems neither cured nor diminished.[17]