SETTLEMENT ON THE LAND
Prolific though Argentina is, and though its agricultural wealth has
only been scratched, it cannot be described as an ideal country for the
poor immigrant. The eyes of the land have been well picked, and there
are rich personal estates covering one hundred and fifty square miles.
There is little disposition to voluntary splitting up of estates, but
rather to hold whilst annually the value increases with the coming of
people and the advancement of railways. The Government is doing
something to assist the small man with limited capital to settle on
distant Government lands. But the poor immigrant, with nothing but his
muscle and his industry, has a long and rough road to travel before he
reaches independence as a landed proprietor. It is a hard land in which
to start making a fortune; but the man of money who can step into the
Republic, say, with £25,000 to play with, and who invests judiciously,
can double his capital in three years.
Whilst the old Argentines, those of Spanish descent, have waxed wealthy
simply by sitting still and letting the foreigner develop their
property, there are British Argentine families whose estates, if
realised, would produce double-figured millions, and whose proprietors
landed as labourers less than fifty years ago. Money has come to lots of
these people, shrewd and lucky, as though they held the key to a cave of
jewels. Some have remained modest in spite of possessions; others look
upon gold as the only god, and their blatant display at Mar del Plata,
and on the steamers of the Royal Mail Company, is something which would
make the conduct of the new rich of Chicago Quakerish by comparison.
The cry of Argentina, like that of all new lands, is for population.
Over 300,000 fresh arrivals land annually from all corners of the earth,
Russia, Syria, France, Germany, and England, but mainly from Spain and
Italy. Whilst the Spaniard comes to stay, there is a considerable ebb
and flow amongst the Italians, thousands coming out for the harvest when
wages are high, and making sufficient to return for the rest of the
year; then they return for the next harvest. Allowing for the ebb,
Argentina gets a solid increase in population by immigration of over
250,000 persons a year, and there are no assisted passages and no offers
of free land.
At each of the ports are Government hotels for immigrants. That at
Buenos Aires accommodates a thousand people. The new arrival, instead of
being distraught at landing in a strange country, or possibly falling a
prey to its sharks, is housed and fed for five days as the guest of his
new country. Careful inquiry is made as to capabilities, and, as there
is a never-satisfied demand from the interior for labourers, work is
certain, and officials see him and his baggage on the train, and an
official meets him at his destination and sees him firmly settled in his
fresh life. As work is assured, Argentina is a land where there are no
unemployed--except amongst the dissolute, who are to be found in all
countries. I saw these immigrants on the _Avon_ gathered at Vigo, and I
saw them in distant provinces, and I was struck with their sturdiness
and health. I place on record that I never saw a drunken man during all
my wanderings in the Republic. Blessed with a fine climate, and the
winter so temperate that fires are not necessary, life is easy, and
there is no crushing into towns for work, as is usual in Canada during
the frozen months.
[Illustration: VIEW OF GRAZING LANDS.]
[Illustration: A DRINKING PLACE ON AN ESTANCIA.]
Owing to such immense tracts being held by individual owners--many of
whom prefer the pleasures of Paris and Buenos Aires to living on the
land where the cereals are grown--most of the cultivation is done by
"colonists." The system varies in different parts of the country, but
the general procedure is much on these lines. In a little centre of
population, maybe a village, but important because those who live many
miles round are dependent upon it for supplies, is to be found a store
where most things can be bought, from a plough to a tin kettle. The
storekeeper enters into a contract with the owner of vast lands to
cultivate it, either on rent or on shares of the value of the produce.
This storekeeper is a middleman, often a sweater. Though I have no
doubt there are honourable exceptions, he is often a thief into the
bargain. He gets a "colonist" to take over a certain area and to
cultivate it on shares. The "colonist" has to build a mud house, and
sink a well, and he has to buy his plough and hire his horses, and
obtain all necessaries from the middleman, who can fix his own price.
When the wheat or the maize is gathered the only man to whom the
"colonist" can sell is the middleman, who has it very much in his own
hands to say what the price shall be, and he frequently furnishes the
ignorant "colonist" with false returns as to quantity. But even then he
keeps back what is owing on agricultural implements and loaned horses,
with the consequence that the poor fellow has very little--if
any--margin. It is not too much to say that the "colonists" are in the
grip of the middlemen, and it is with difficulty they are ever able to
break free.
Of course, the middleman runs risk of little return if there is drought
and a bad harvest, and, on the other hand, when he proceeds to sell the
wheat he finds himself encompassed by a ring of four Jewish firms, who
control the wheat market of the Argentine. The whole practice is
vicious, and I cannot but think that before long the Government will
have to take the matter in hand.
Admitting the exquisite climate, and the fertility of the soil, and
Nature's quick response to light work, the lives of these "colonists" in
the distant camp is sad. Men of the Basque country, the north of Spain,
the north of Italy, they come from the homeland, where means of
livelihood were sparse, to this new land, where, although the chances
are rather against them to secure independence, their material
well-being is certainly better than in the Old Country. But they are
ignorant people; they know nothing of, and so care nothing for, the
refinements of life; their houses are not much better than kraals. They
are removed by long distances from neighbours; they live on a
featureless plain, and have no communication with the outer world; they
cannot read, and books and newspapers are foreign to them. Their world
is fringed by the horizon. A visit to the wayside station, where, maybe,
one train a day passes, is their excitement. There are no schools and no
religious instruction. Their moral standard is low.
Many of these "colonists" take to farming with a minimum of practical
knowledge. Yet, though I have just drawn a rueful picture, I would not
have it thought there are no illuminating spots. A valuable work is
being carried on in agricultural instruction. On several occasions I
came across specially-built railway cars in which lecturers travel all
over the Republic and freely give advice to the peons how to get most
out of the soil. During the last seven years (since 1907) the Government
has zealously appreciated the need for organising the agricultural
and live-stock instruction. The work is not to be compared with the
splendid agricultural colleges to be found all over the United
States. The significant thing, however, is that the people of the
Argentine--perfectly conscious of all the advantages of science, and
with most of its best sons educated in Europe--have taken hold of this
problem of how to train its population to get the best out of the soil.
So schools are being formed over the country where information can be
obtained about the special productivity of particular districts, about
the growing of grasses, the feeding and care of beasts, milk production,
sugar-growing, cheese-making, market-gardening, fruit-rearing, and in
far western Mendoza I came across a college that is making instructive
experiments in viticulture.
Besides agricultural courses at the Universities, there is much done by
way of University extension lectures; but instead of lectures about
sea-power in the sixteenth century, or the relationship of Henry VIII.
to Rome, the lectures are on the breeding of cattle, the raising of
maize, the sowing of alfalfa.
It was my fortune to meet many cultured and travelled Argentines, but,
summing the people in a lump, and excluding the viciousness which trails
behind the wealth of Buenos Aires, and also making allowance for the
lack of that virility and perseverance of those strong men who are
fighting the big battle in Canada, the thing which constantly confronted
me was the fact that here in South America was a nation, born yesterday,
thoroughly alive to the worth of its possessions, brusquely modern,
content with nothing but the latest appliances and machinery and
thoroughly determined that, in the contest amongst the widespread
agricultural lands to supply food to the millions in crowded Europe,
Argentina will not be satisfied with an inferior position.
In a subsequent chapter I will deal with what has already been
accomplished in this field. Here, however, I limit myself to pointing
out that Argentina is increasing her capabilities with a purely
practical education. Men who can neither read nor write, but have come
under the influence of these itinerant schools, can talk with scientific
knowledge about their trade of food producing, be it meat or cereals.
Now another step is being made, and I trust with happy results in view
of the unfortunate position of the "colonists." So successful has been
the agricultural instruction during the past half dozen years, that the
next thing is to develop the commercial spirit so that the farmer may
have some chance of getting a fair return for his labour. Free lectures
are given on the business side of agriculture. Then, attached to the
schools are special buildings for experiments; and boarded pupils, the
sons of men who understand the money value of knowledge, are given a
thorough training. So that all may benefit there are free scholarships,
and I found that preference is given to competitors who come from
districts, suitable for a special industry, where schools have not yet
been established.
Anyone who visits the school for viticulture in Mendoza, for agriculture
and live stock in Cordoba, and for arboriculture and sugar-making in
Tucuman--and I saw all three--comes away nothing less than amazed at the
way these transplanted Latins, away south of the Equator and across six
thousand miles of ocean, are making headway--and the start only begun a
few years ago. There is the real spirit of enthusiasm combined with an
optimism which to a man from a staid old country seems exaggerated
until, seeing what has been done, imagination is allowed to jump freely
into the future. At Mendoza, nestling at the foot of the Andes and
reminiscent of a town in Tuscany, where the whole countryside is covered
with vineyards and wine is being made to supply millions of wine
drinkers in the country--for the Argentine peasant takes wine with his
breakfast--experiments are made with the best known vines from Europe on
a farm of sixty-seven acres, so that grapes suitable to the soil may be
matured. At Cordoba the school has 445 acres, and investigation is made
to secure earlier and higher yields, and with special attention to
obtaining varieties which have powers of resisting drought. The same
sort of thing goes on at Tucuman. The sugar industry is increasing at
astonishing speed. Many men with scant practical knowledge are attracted
to it. The school gives them instruction and will send members of the
technical staff to the sugar factories and distilleries to give
assistance. Facts like these argue that Argentina is a country really to
be reckoned with, and is not to be dismissed--as I have heard it
dismissed in England, even amongst those who consider themselves
educated--as a rubbishy South American Republic, whose only crop is
revolutions.
All over the Republic "regional schools" are being set up to provide
instruction, not in general agricultural subjects, but in regard to the
special requirements of the locality--for Argentina varies in climate
from tropical in the north to stern cold in the south; dairying, with a
model dairy, at Belle Ville; fruit culture at San Juan; forestry in the
Benitz colony. A scheme has been devised to equip Argentina with
agricultural knowledge by means of courses for children and adults,
travelling lecturers, information bureaus, co-operative experiments,
regional shows, encouragement of agricultural societies, organisation of
regional agricultural experts and military farms. Further, the National
Government have done an enormous service in providing irrigation works
in regions where the rainfall is uncertain.
It has to be admitted that some areas are subject to drought, and this
and other evils have to be taken into consideration when reviewing the
agricultural growth of a country like Argentina, which lives by its
produce, and which in 1912 exported £36,000,000 worth of live-stock
products and £53,000,000 worth of agricultural products. Given good
years, the _estanciero_ in average country makes 30 per cent. on the
year. He can afford to have one bad year in three and yet be prosperous.
But although districts suffer, the area of the country is so vast that
losses are swamped in general prosperity.
[Illustration: The irons are heated by fire made of bones of dead
cattle.]
[Illustration:
Putting cattle through the chute.
BRANDING CALVES ON AN ESTANCIA.]
As the older countries of the world concern themselves with national
defence, Argentina has established a Department of Agricultural Defence,
chiefly to fight the plague of locusts, which can eat out a whole
district in a single night. I recall in Cordoba Province seeing in the
distance what looked like a cloud of smoke. It was a storm of locusts,
so dense as it passed that midday was reduced to twilight. The locust
blights the land--it is the enemy. The locust is the thing which makes
the farmer shudder. When it comes it not only devours every blade of
grass within miles, but it lays its eggs in untold millions. The pest
has to be destroyed. The Government readily assists localities to
destroy the ova. The route of the swarms from the tropical north is
known. The telegraph tells of the progress. When they land, the
countryside turns out and catches them by the cartload. Sometimes the
district in which they have settled is fired. The whole zone where eggs
have been planted is ploughed. Animals are driven forth to trample the
pest. The Government has in its possession over 20,000,000 yards of
metallic barriers to make a line of defence, and when a swarm is penned
it is suffocated, burnt, or trampled. The Government not only has its
inspectors out, is ever ready to meet and repel the locust invasion from
Brazil and Bolivia with suitable appliances, but gives financial
assistance to those who help in the extermination. The Argentines are
determined to stop this pest. The way they are setting about the work
is evidence of their earnestness.
The point I specially desire to make, however, is that farming in
Argentina is not all casual, but is becoming a developed national
industry. There are many things to criticise about the Government; there
is maladministration and there is peculation. But that so much has been
accomplished, notwithstanding these drawbacks, accentuates the wonders
of progress.