The latest census of the population, that is, the returns at the end of the year 1911,[1] presents some interesting figures. This is the fifth census taken in Portugal. The first, in 1864, gave the population as 4,118,410, in the census of 1878 it was 4,698,984, of 1890 5,049,729, and of 1900 5,423,132. That of 1911 gives a population of 5,960,056. Thus, in fifty years the population of Portugal has increased by nearly a third, and, although something must be allowed for the more accurate returns in recent years, is evidently in no danger of diminishing, in spite of increasing emigration. Moreover, there are no less than 211,813 families (over a seventh of the whole number, 1,411,327) of seven or more persons.

The density is 65 persons to the square kilomètre, as compared with 44 for the average of all Europe, Portugal coming eleventh on the list of European countries, Spain nineteenth (39 persons to the square kilomètre). The district which shows the largest increase is that of Minho (including the country between the rivers Douro and Minho), which was already overcrowded in 1900 with 162 inhabitants to the square kilomètre. It now has 178. Estremadura (which includes Lisbon) has also risen considerably—from 68 to 80. The other provinces show a much slighter increase (Beira Alta from 88 to 95, Algarve from 50 to 54, Beira Baixa from 39 to 42, Traz os Montes from 39 to 40, Alemtejo from 17 to 20).

Other points of interest are the increase of the city population[2] at the rate of 15 per cent., one-third more, that is, than the rate of increase for the country population, and the decrease in the number of foreigners by some 500 since the beginning of the century (41,197 in 1911, 41,728 in 1900, 41,339 in 1890). The number of Spaniards has fallen from 27,029 in 1900 to 20,517 in 1911, the French from 1,841 to 1,832, Italians from 561 to 547, Belgians from 188 to 170. On the other hand, the number of Brazilians has increased from 7,594 to 12,143, of English from 2,292 to 2,516, Germans from 929 to 969.

In the census of 1900 there were 108·8 women to 100 men in the population of Portugal. During the next ten years the percentage slightly increased, so that there are now 110 women to 100 men, that is, 4 per cent. more than in any other country of Europe. The census of 1911 gives the number of persons over eighty years of age in Portugal as nearly one per cent. of the entire population: 52,783. Of these 31,891 were women, and 20,892 men. These figures are subdivided as follows: Women, between 80 and 84 years, 21,154; from 85 to 89 years, 6,489; from 90 to 94 years, 2,900; from 95 to 99 years, 992; over 100 years, 265. The corresponding numbers of men are 14,256, 4,452, 1,554, 500, 130. This says much for the excellence of the climate and the hardiness of the race. On the other hand, the mortality among the children of the poor is enormous: it is quite common for two to grow up out of a family of seven or nine.

Emigration from Portugal has increased on a vast scale in recent years. The official statistics for 1909 (published in 1912) gave the number of emigrants as 30,288. Other statistics for the same year gave 38,213, of whom 30,580 were bound for Brazil. Both figures are well below the truth if the clandestine emigration is taken into account. It is impossible to keep count of those who cross the frontier into Spain, and many even of those who emigrate by sea succeed in escaping registration. In 1908 the number of registered emigrants was 35,731, in 1907 31,312, in 1906 27,332, in 1905 25,594. Of the 30,288 emigrants of 1909 25,039 were male (of whom 12,822 could read) and 5,249 women (of whom only 804 could read). Since 1909 the emigration has doubled and trebled. A Republican newspaper, O Seculo,[3] printed some figures in 1913. The writer pointed out that there were whole regions in Portugal without labourers for the fields, and that whole families were now emigrating as never before. Emigration agencies pululam por todo o Norte, fourteen agencies being established in Oporto alone. The Diario de Noticias[4] declared that there were tens of leagues of uncultivated land in Portugal, while over two millions sterling of cereals were imported annually. In 1912 the number of emigrants had more than trebled since 1902 in the districts of Oporto, Coimbra, Guarda, Vianna, Vizeu, Villa Real, Bragança, Leiria and Santarem. In the last five districts it had more than doubled since 1910. The figures given for the district of Bragança were 10,504 in 1912, 6,331 in 1907, and 550 in 1902! (the other chief increase being at Villa Real, respectively 7,732, 3,140, and 1,356). These are the two principal towns of Traz os Montes. The total number of emigrants in 1912 bordered on 100,000; but in 1914 there was a notable decrease. A large number of the emigrants go to Brazil (and indeed they are totally unfitted to go to any country of which they do not know the language), and maintain relations with the mother country, sending money home and sometimes returning as enriched Brazileiros.

In Portugal the salaries are low and give no great incentive to labour, especially as they have remained almost stationary, while the price of food and rent has risen. Even during the long harvest days the women receive only a shilling a day or even less for working perhaps sixteen hours in the fields, the men two shillings or less. Some instances of wages are given in M. Poinsard’s Le Portugal Inconnu. A day labourer of the Douro district receives 200 réis (= tenpence), an agricultural labourer in Alemtejo 250 (500 in time of harvest), a carpenter of the Serra da Estrella 320 réis, a miner in a lead-mine near Aveiro 350, a mason of Minho 400, a carpenter of Braga 400, a weaver of Guimarães 500, a mason of Lisbon 700, a weaver of Lisbon 700, a shoemaker’s assistant at Coimbra from 220 to 440, a carpenter in Alemtejo 400, a dressmaker’s assistant in Lisbon 240.

Many families live from day to day and from hand to mouth by odd jobs, and the tendency to live thus precariously has been increased by the recent unrest. They live on little or nothing, and devote all their energy and wits to pay arrears of rent sufficient to prevent them from being turned out of their houses, which often consist of but one or two rooms. In one instance a family of seven lives in a single room, the entire furniture consisting of an old mattress in one corner. Needless to say, the windows are kept closed at night and there is no fire-place, a comparatively rare thing in the Portuguese climate. (The cooking is done over three stones.) Far worse than their poverty is their ignorance and carelessness of health and hygiene. Not that these deficiencies are confined to the peasants of Portugal, but they are most serious in a hot climate. Little attention is given to the advantages of air and water, and what wonder when even educated persons pay little heed to them. During some days of exceptional heat, in the summer of 1913, the correspondent of a Lisbon newspaper at Oporto wrote that the heat there had been so terrible that windows had to be kept open at night. And this in a climate which rarely gives excuse for closed windows. There is no direction from above; many villages have not a single educated inhabitant, and but few inhabitants who can write or read, and have not even a church.

The mayors of many a town and village are too much occupied with high politics to think of such sublunary matters as the cleanliness of the streets. Rubbish is left in the burning sun for children to play in, street, river, and cliff being polluted with it, and many small towns are in a truly miserable state. The mayor of one of them was asked why a cart was not sent to collect the rubbish, and his answer was typical. Although it was well known that no such cart was in existence, he did not say that a cart would be sent or that he would see what could be done or any other such polite evasion. He merely said that a cart is sent every day, and there was an end of the matter. With such simplicity are these questions solved. It is worth while to dwell on such matters since they are of more importance than fine-sounding party programmes. The local authorities, appointed for party reasons, would no doubt scout the idea that anti-clericalism may be of less value than the destruction of flies. They drive out the “ominous soutane,” and the land, as Egypt of old, is “corrupted by reason of the swarm of flies.” “The unhealthiness of a great part of the country, the crowded and sometimes wretched houses, the complete absence of any hygienic discipline among the rural population, are other probable causes of the lack of energy of the agricultural labourer, who for the rest is constitutionally capable of great endurance.... With notable power of endurance, a climate which permits an almost uninterrupted activity, both for labourers and vegetation, the agricultural population of Portugal will have a wide future before it when food, houses, and hygiene are improved, and many regions rendered more healthy, when irrigation and technical instruction are extended, crops better adapted to the soil, machinery more generally employed and agrarian societies organised.”[5]

In many houses such a thing as a bed is unknown, but in houses that can afford it the articles are far more numerous (and ugly) than, for instance, in Spain, and in the kitchen an infinite variety of pots and pans fills up the room to the exclusion of cleanliness. Many families subsist on bread, potatoes, mussels, sardines, with occasional rice and bacalhau, meat being unknown. Their state has not changed much since the sixteenth century, when many of the Portuguese are represented as “ne vivant quasi d’autre chose que de caracolles, de moulles et petits poissons”—a people “non adonné aux superfluités.”[6] With overcrowding in unhealthy quarters in the towns and gnawing poverty in the country it is not surprising that the mortality is high.

The evils are increased by the total lack of direction. Sometimes at the very gates of a large and flourishing property one comes across a village of tumble-down hovels like so many walls of loose stones built irregularly and picturesquely along a “street” of stone and rock which becomes a torrent in winter; and one is inclined to compare them with the neat, comfortable cottages in villages under the supervision of those “harassing” English squires. Yet in each case it needs only the interest and goodwill of one person to alter the state of the whole village and give an impetus to cleanliness and comfort and education, but that person will certainly not be the agent of an absentee landlord.

In the size of holdings there is the same difference between the north and south of Portugal as between Galicia and Andalucía in Spain. In Minho the land is all dividing walls and hedges round diminutive fields, the average size of holdings being under an acre, and many of them mere patches the size of a pocket handkerchief. In 1908 for 5,423,132 inhabitants the number of holdings was given as 11,430,740! “And if it is considered that this division is increased in, and almost confined to part of the centre and to the north, the extent of the evil will be clear. I know of many proprietors who, to obtain a total rent of fifteen or twenty escudos,[7] have over a hundred properties scattered over the parish, the rent of some of them representing fractions of a halfpenny.... In many parishes of the north there are olives, chestnut-trees and oaks in the property of one person but belonging to someone else, and sometimes these trees are divided between more than one owner.”[8]

In Alemtejo the average size of a property is forty or fifty times greater than in the north, properties of 20,000 acres being not unknown. Alemtejo, under the Romans flourishing with corn, has large tracts of waste land, and when the land is cultivated modern machinery is rarely in use. When introduced by the owner of the land it is allowed to fall out of use, if possible, by the workmen, and at harvest time one has the picturesque sight of an interminable row of labourers at work without any of the noise and bustle of machinery. It has been suggested that some of the emigrants from the north of the country should be encouraged to go to Alemtejo instead of Brazil, and that the cultivation of seven or eight hundred more acres of Alemtejo as corn-land would put an end to the importation of corn which now drains the country of hundreds of thousands of pounds yearly, and seems to belie the undoubted fact that Portugal is above all an agricultural country. There are difficulties in the way of the scheme, since Alemtejo is a little too near home to form the Eldorado of the peasant of Minho and Traz os Montes. Moreover, if a part of Alemtejo were subdivided into small holdings for peasant colonists, whatever advantages were given to them the probability is that the holdings would gradually accumulate in the hands of one or two persons and form a few more Alemtejan montes and herdades. At least this was the result of a similar experiment in Andalucía.

There is also the difficulty of water, Alemtejo more than the rest of Portugal standing in need of irrigation (artesian wells), although irrigation is welcome to agriculture throughout the country in view of the long summer droughts. Given water, vegetation of all kinds grows and prospers with marvellous rapidity in this land of hot sun and warm air.

A requirement that goes hand in hand with irrigation is that of afforestation. It is true that woods cover above 22 per cent. of the total area of Portugal, which is double the average in Spain and two-thirds of the average in Europe. The cultivated area was given as 5,068,454 hectares in 1906, the uncultivated as 3,842,186. Trees were calculated to occupy some 1,700,000 hectares,[9] and most of these trees are of a valuable kind. Those of widest extension are pines (about 430,000 hectares[10]), evergreen oaks (azinheiras: 416,000 hectares), cork-trees (366,000[11]), and olives (329,000). Chestnuts cover some 84,000 hectares, and oaks 47,000.[12] But, especially in Traz os Montes, Alemtejo, and the Serra da Estrella, there is plenty of scope for afforestation. In the latter, which compares so unfavourably with the well-wooded Serra do Gerez, something has been done. Near Manteigas about 2,000 acres have been afforested (chiefly with pine and oak). In 1913 alone some four hundred bushels of acorns were sown. Altogether since the law of 1901, which placed the woods under the Department of Public Works, some 12,000 acres have been afforested[13] by the State, and private individuals are said to afforest almost as many acres annually, the State selling 30,000 kilos (at threepence the kilo)[14] of pine seed yearly. The State itself possesses comparatively little land, and the town councils have shown no inclination to be dispossessed of their commons. The more enlightened Portuguese from King Diniz onwards have always been keenly alive to the advantages of afforestation, but the more remote town councils have done nothing to counteract the destruction of trees at the hands of the peasants.[15] At the new annual “Festival of the Tree” trees are planted throughout the country by the school-children. The yield of a hectare of the famous Leiria pine woods is estimated at four milreis, and the expense at one milreis, giving a net profit of about twelve shillings. This would be increased by easier and cheaper means of transport.

The state of the Portuguese roads has recently been attracting much attention, and during the last sixty years has been the constant care of Ministers of Public Works. (This department was created in 1852.) About 13,000 miles of roads have been projected by the State, only about a half of which have been constructed[16]—almost all in the second half of last century. The worst is, however, not that roads are not made, but that there is apparently no money to keep them in repair. Yet an average of over a thousand contos has been spent on roads annually during the last sixty years. A writer recently in O Seculo[17] remarks that Portugal “is imperfectly equipped with roads and, moreover, those which exist are in such a state, in most districts, that they can scarcely be used. We know various places which are so to say isolated from neighbouring towns, and can only be approached easily by railway. The state of the roads with ruts and holes in which carts sink has in certain parts given rise to a curious industry, that of rescuing vehicles which have stuck fast. It is exercised by peasants possessing yokes of oxen, who at sunrise, armed with hooks and ropes, lead them to the worst places, and there wait patiently for a motor-car or other vehicle to sink in, and then immediately offer their assistance, in return for a few shillings or pence, according to the quality of the vehicle and its occupants.” Motor-cars, which are surprisingly numerous in Portugal, and are all imported from abroad, deserve a better fate than this, considering that they pay a tax of £24 at the Customs.

But, on the whole, the roads of Portugal compare favourably with those of Spain, and any improvement to encourage tourists must be carried out in connection with Spain, that is, with the roads between the Portuguese frontier and Irun. Now, both in Portugal and Spain, societies are established to watch over the interests of tourists. The Sociedade de Propaganda de Portugal, which is doing good work, has its headquarters at the Largo das duas Igrejas, Lisbon, and is most prompt and willing in answering any inquiries. It may be hoped that improvement will be rapid, and of course it is equally important for agriculture, which especially requires the construction of a large number of small by-roads. The construction of roads in both countries has been too often intimately connected with politics, and their repair, when entrusted to the local authorities, has been a disastrous failure. Were a first-rate road to prolong to the Portuguese frontier the road of five hundred miles from Paris to the Bidasoa, and could the roads in Portugal be compared with those of the Basque provinces (both in France and in Spain), a country so beautiful and with so many famous buildings would be overrun with motor-cars (so that quiet people would flee to the mountains).

The railways are even more deficient. When those in construction have been completed the total will amount to a little over two thousand miles. The whole of the south of Portugal is served by but one line, which goes from Lisbon (i.e., from Barreiro across the Tagus) to Faro, branching off midway to Evora and Villa Viçosa and again to Moura. The journey to Faro requires over twelve hours, with the result that Algarve is practically cut off from the capital. The desert of Sahara is scarcely more remote. A briefer route and a bridge over the Tagus at Lisbon are in contemplation. Hitherto facilities given to travel have chiefly taken into consideration persons leaving Portugal or coming so far as Lisbon and Oporto only, and many of the most delightful and characteristic parts of the country are left unvisited.

The postal service between Lisbon and foreign countries is good, but in the provinces it differs little from the service in Spain, where the receipt of a letter is as hazardous as the winning of a prize in the lottery.[18]

Besides tourists and agriculture, improvement in the communications would encourage the development of the mining industry. At present the number of miners in Portugal is small, although the subsoil is known to be rich in minerals. Many of the mines that are worked are in the hands of foreigners, and the minerals are often exported in the condition in which they leave the mine. The statistics for 1912 show an increase in the production of coal (70 contos), iron (21), copper (254), and tin (33). The mineral obtained in largest quantities is wolfram; gold, antimony, uranium, zinc, and other minerals are produced on a very small scale. The total yearly output of the mines in Portugal is estimated at under £400,000.

About 60,000 persons, or one per cent. of the entire population, are engaged in fishing or in selling or preparing fish. Sardines are very plentiful, and donkeys laden with them are driven far inland. The number of Portuguese who go to the north seas to fish for bacalhau has greatly increased in recent years, and in 1911 amounted to 1,400, in forty-five boats of an average size of 280 tons, whereas in 1902 there were but fifteen boats with an average size of 180 tons.

The number of workmen employed in the cutting and preparation of cork may be 5,000, but, even if these be included, the total industrial population of Portugal will scarcely exceed three per cent. of the whole population. The largest number are employed in cotton and woollen factories of the north (Covilhã Guimarães, Portalegre, etc.), the former with some 30,000, the latter with some 10,000 workmen. A far smaller number are engaged in factories of paper, glass, glazed tiles (azulejos), silk, etc.[19] Portuguese industries, although they are bolstered up by an excessive protection, are not congenial to the climate or the character of the people, and but for protection many of them could not exist for a month, while under protection they tend to vegetate and to raise the prices rather than the quality of their products. It is sometimes complained that the Methuen treaty killed Portuguese cottons and woollens, but as a matter of fact an even more exaggerated protection could not enable them to compete with foreign goods. They are exported chiefly to the Portuguese colonies; the woollen goods supplied in Portugal are mostly of a very rough sort, such as peasants’ caps and cloaks, excellent of their kind. The Portuguese have always shown a preference for English stuffs.[20] In the same way the paper produced is of the commonest; perhaps the only manufacture in which they excel is that of the glazed tiles, with which so many houses are lined within and without.

The main business of the Portuguese is not industry, not even politics, but agriculture,[21] the number of persons engaged in agriculture being calculated at about three-fifths of the whole population. Agriculture often, too often, means vineyards. The soil and sun of Portugal combine to make it a land of the grape; and along the sea vines can grow where other crops cannot, dying down to escape the winter storms, then receiving the spring rains till the grapes begin to swell and sweeten in the summer months of drought.

Nearly every other village seems to be celebrated for its wines—common wines prepared without care, and selling for twopence or threepence the litre bottle. The yearly average of production is about a hundred litres to every inhabitant in Portugal. The wines chiefly exported are of course port wine and Madeira.[22] The wines of Collares, Bucellas, and Carcavellos have a great reputation in Portugal, as also those of Ribatejo, the Moscatel of Setubal, and the light vinhos verdes of Minho (Amarante, Basto, Monsão). The famous treaty of Methuen in 1703, which stipulated that Portuguese wines should be exported to England at a reduced tariff (see pages 126 and 225) has been blamed by some Portuguese for the fall of the price of wines in Portugal. That is, they blame England because the Portuguese after the treaty, in their eagerness to benefit by it, devoted themselves to vine-growing to the exclusion of other branches of agriculture. The Portuguese vine-growers have had to contend against this over-production, against the ravages of phylloxera, which a quarter of a century ago destroyed nearly two hundred thousand acres (since for the most part replanted), against foreign falsifications, against the competition of France, Italy, and Spain.[23] Recently the export of common red wines of Portugal to Brazil has greatly increased, Brazil being now the country to which, after England, Portugal exports most wine—as also the export of generous wines to Germany since the German-Portuguese commercial treaty of 1908. Against these advantages must be set the closure of French markets and the decreasing popularity of port wine in England. The districts of Portugal which produce most wine are those of Lisbon (about 160,000 acres of vineyards), Braga (about 75,000 acres), Vizeu (about 72,000 acres), Santarem (about 65,000), Oporto (about 62,000).

The total cultivated area in Portugal exceeds twelve million acres, and of this area olives occupy about a fifteenth, or 329,000 hectares (in 1906), vines 313,000 hectares, and fruit trees (chiefly the fig, almond and carob, which need little rain and flourish in Algarve) about 630,000 acres. Olives are grown principally in the districts of Santarem (75,000 hectares), Leiria (35,000), Castello Branco (33,000), Beja, Bragança, and Coimbra (some 25,000 hectares each), and Faro (20,000). The annual export of olive oil is considerable, but it cannot compare for excellence with the oil of Italy: it is in fact from Italy that oil comes for the tinning of fish in Portugal.

But the most remarkable imports into Portugal are those of wheat, maize and rice, in which, as in garden produce and cattle, Portugal should be able to become almost, if not quite, self-supporting. While whole regions remain untilled and emigrants are counted by the thousand monthly, immense sums are spent every year in importing wheat and maize: in 1913 the Treasury received about £600,000 merely from the duty on these imports. Maize is grown chiefly in the north, where in summer it gives a cool peaceful look to the province of Minho, wheat in Alemtejo, and rye in Traz os Montes. Official statistics for 1911 give the number of hectares sown with corn as follows in the various districts: Beja 117,324 (11·44 per cent. of the entire area of the district), Castello Branco 68,299 (10·21 per cent.), Evora 65,290 (8·82), Lisbon 54,810 (6·90), Portalegre 47,608 (7·64), Santarem 29,252 (4·41), Faro 19,648 (3·91), Bragança 18,563 (2·85), Guarda 8,996 (1·64), Coimbra 5,754 (1·47), Vizeu 2,776 (·55), Villa Real 2,691 (·60), Porto 2,064 (·89), Braga 1,492 (·55), Aveiro 1,004 (·56), Vianna 996 (·44). Alemtejo, besides corn, provides wide pasture lands, and live stock forms one of Portugal’s principal exports (chiefly to England and Spain), while, on the other hand, large quantities of meat are imported from South America. Mules and pigs are most numerous in the province of Alemtejo, horses and donkeys in Estremadura, sheep and goats in Traz os Montes, and oxen in Minho.

Portugal’s chief exports, besides wine and cork, are cattle, fish, fruits, minerals, wood, olive oil. There is no reason why all of these, with the exception perhaps of wine, should not show a gradual increase as fresh markets are obtained, and better methods (especially in the preparation of olive oil) and quicker communications, which will enable Portuguese fruits and flowers to be exported in ever-growing quantities.[24] The principal imports, apart from machinery and articles of luxury, are wheat, maize, sugar, cod, rice. A large number of Dutch cheeses is imported every year, although the curious little soft white cheeses, about the size of half a crown, are very common in Portugal, and are a favourite food of the peasants. Indolence, ignorance, mistaken finance and lack of capital have hitherto fettered agriculture in Portugal, neglect on the part of the State and of private landowners going hand in hand with illiteracy and distrust on the part of the peasants. But it can hardly be doubted that Portuguese agriculture has a prosperous future and that the miserable lot of the peasant will be improved. Portugal should be able to become a land of enlightened and cultured farmers, such as are sometimes found in the north of Europe (for instance, in Denmark), as it were a land of little Herculanos, combining farming with scholarship.