THE EMIGRANT IN LIGHT AND SHADE
There is a popular story in Buenos Ayres of a Spanish emigrant who had
just arrived with wife and children, and as the group was crossing the
Paseo de Julio, the wife espied a silver coin in the gutter. She called
to her husband to pick it up, but he disdainfully answered, “I have no
concern with mere silver money, when I have come here to gather gold!”
The story usually ends here, but I suspect the frugal wife of picking up
that coin herself and thereby making money more easily than her husband
would be like to do for some time to come. For certain it is that the
Argentine is no “land of gold,” such as our world has had to marvel at
in California, Australia, South Africa, and Alaska. No,—it is something
better than any merely auriferous land! So rich is its soil, it returns
to those who work it such wondrous increase of harvest that it is truly
an inexhaustible gold mine. But the first and final essential to the
winning of its gold is Labour. This, as we know, Italy has given to the
Argentine in abundant measure, and those who only know the Italian by
such specimens of his race as grind organs and sell ice-cream in England,
have no least, small notion of what a splendid fellow he is, his many
vices notwithstanding.
Before we take a look at the different classes of emigrants which the
Argentine attracts and their influence on the development of the
country, a word or two on the land system may be in place. The time will
come, I doubt not, when some revolutionary change will be forced upon the
country, as the land is too closely held by the landed aristocracy—the
multitudes of small lots sold by speculative dealers notwithstanding. In
this young country, with its Republican Government and its progressive
ideas, we encounter the anomaly of a mere handful of fabulously wealthy
proprietors owning the greatest part of a vast country—nearly eight
times larger than the British Isles. Meanwhile, these prodigious tracts
of territory being so tightly held by a few private owners, have the
effect of increasing the values of the negotiable land, of which there
is evidently still sufficient to meet the demands of the moment. Double
the population, however, and such a change will pass over the scene that
legislation to force the hands of private owners and loosen their grip on
the lion’s share of the Republic’s soil will be inevitable.
The system on which the land is worked is also charged with danger to
the social development of the community, and some day it, too, must give
place to a better adjustment as between the owner and the worker. I have
made frequent reference in previous chapters to the estancias, without
entering into any detail as to the working of these great agricultural
estates, which, curiously enough, are known by the Spanish word for a
dwelling-house or a sitting-room (_estancia_ in South America means
either a farm, a country house, or the whole area of landed property
under one ownership). Here, however, I must explain something of the
peculiar methods of working these estates.
The owner himself will cultivate at his own cost a certain portion with
alfalfa, wheat, maize, or linseed, as the case may be, and will maintain
immense herds of cattle, sheep, and horses, according as he specialises
in agriculture or in live-stock. But the estancias are usually much too
large for their owners to develop to their full extent, and thus have
grown up two methods of co-operation, neither of which has in it the
germ of permanency, both being based on one man’s need and another’s
opportunity. The one system is worked by the _medieros_, the other by
the _colonos_. The mediero is a man who has come out from Spain or
Italy with some tiny capital in his pocket that enables him to purchase
certain agricultural implements, seeds, and probably to knock up a
shanty of corrugated iron,—wood for building purposes being a highly
priced commodity. But he cannot afford to purchase agricultural land in
any locality where his crop would be of adequate value to him once he
had raised it, for wherever the land is within reachable distance of a
railway line, it is impossible to purchase it at anything like its actual
market value, the method of the Argentine land-seller being invariably to
demand the price which the land may be worth in ten or fifteen years. The
land-vender takes “long views,” he is big with the future, so confident
of it that he values his possessions of to-day at the dream prices of a
somewhat distant morrow. Now, the mediero cannot come to grips with such
as he, and cap in hand he approaches the estanciero, offering in return
for the right to work so many acres of his land, to “go halves” with him
in expenses and in profits—hence mediero, or “halver.”
The colono (colonist) is a genuine knight of the empty purse, with
nothing to offer save his labour and that of his wife and children; but
_that_ is a great thing, and he is received with open arms throughout the
length and breadth of the Argentine. The estanciero not only grants him
as many acres of land as he may be able to work with his wife and family,
but lends him cows for milk, horses for the plough, and through his
_almacén_ supplies to him on credit the necessary implements, seeds, and
food, as well as corrugated iron and planks of wood for the building of
his _rancho_. It should be explained that the almacén on every estancia
is an important institution, a sort of universal provider for the
hundreds of medieros and colonos who have taken up land on the estate,
selling to them all sorts of commodities at a substantial profit to the
estanciero. The “colonist” is now expected to labour incessantly on the
land allotted to him, so that he may repay to the almacén the pretty
heavy debt he has contracted there, while an agreed percentage of his
crops will go to the owner of the estate.
These medieros and colonos include all nationalities, but are chiefly
drawn from the Italian emigrants, the Spaniards being more commonly
tradesmen. Everything looks _couleur de rose_ to the poor toilers; they
set about their task with high hope, a new feeling of freedom, little
recking that they have tied themselves to a new serfdom by the bond
of that initial debt with which they start. The mediero has a better
chance than the colono of “turning the corner” soon, and it too often
happens that the latter, after two or three years of incessant labour,
has no more than cleared his feet, when comes a bad harvest, and he is
back where he was at the beginning. Withered are his roses, poor fellow.
Disgusted at the result, and hoping that a change to some other part of
the country may turn out for the better, he disposes of the few things he
owns, quits his “camp,” and shifts to some other quarter, perhaps only to
repeat this chapter of his history.
Meanwhile, it will be seen the estanciero has had another corner of
his estate brought into cultivation, its value considerably increased
thereby, and the poor Italians have spent their strength for a bare
subsistence. That many of them do succeed in earning some profit,
especially those of the mediero class, and starting in some other
business, is undeniable; but the roll of those who have turned over the
soil of the Argentine and brought it into bearing to the great benefit of
its owners, and their own non-success is, I am told, beyond reckoning.
This, then, I submit, is no system that can endure. It carries its own
seeds of decay. So long as the stream of immigration flows as steadily as
of recent years, the system will doubtless continue, but a time will come
when disappear it must, and some method of employment based on a fairer
distribution of profits, or on adequate wages, take its place.
Apart from the ethics of the Argentine land system, which are clearly
open to criticism, one can have nothing but praise for the manner in
which emigration is officially encouraged, and the way in which the
emigrants are handled on arrival at the River Plate. There is a fine
saying reported of President Sáenz Peña when he represented his country
at the Pan-American Congress in Washington on the occasion of the fourth
centenary of the discovery of America. In the course of a speech he was
making, some fervid Pan-American thought it a fit occasion to interject
the watchword, “America for the Americans”! Quick as a flash Dr. Sáenz
Peña retorted, “Yes, but Latin America for humanity!”
This certainly is the spirit that informs the policy of Argentine
immigration. A hearty welcome is given to people of all races, whose only
right of entry into this new land of promise is the possession of brawny
muscles and the will to work. Every week they are arriving in ship-loads,
and the manner in which these cargoes of humanity are received at the
docks in Buenos Ayres and speedily transhipped by rail to different parts
of the interior, according to the demand for _brazos_, is one of the most
businesslike things the visitor will have an opportunity of noting in the
public administration. Ship-load after ship-load of Italians, Spaniards,
Portuguese, and other nationalities arrives and melts away, absorbed into
the thirsty country like water into sandy soil.
[Illustration: A “RODEO,” OR ROUND-UP OF CATTLE IN THE ARGENTINE PAMPA.]
During our stay, a splendidly equipped hostel, or shelter, was opened
for the emigrants. Erected by the riverside close to the scene of their
disembarkation, this building is capable of sheltering a large number
of newcomers. Sleeping-rooms fitted with wire mattresses upon which
the emigrants may place their own bedding (always the most precious
of their personal possessions) are provided for the men, and similar
accommodation for the women and children. There is no excuse for any
of them to go unbathed, lavatories specially fitted with showers being
provided for those who care to use them (the superintendent told me it
was seldom that an emigrant ventured on such an experiment), while in the
great common dining-room they may take their meals in comparative comfort
and can secure eatables at a low rate. The accommodation, if I remember
correctly, is free, and the whole place is so admirably clean that it
must come with something like a shock to most of the emigrants who pass
through it, habituated as they have been, almost without exception, to
dirty ways of life in their native lands. Many of the emigrants never see
Buenos Ayres at all, as the trains that take them into the Camp pick them
up at a short distance from the vessels which have borne them oversea,
and at the very doors of the shelter where they may have passed the night
of arrival.
Laughter and tears mingle a good deal in the landing of these poor people
from the Old World. Huddled almost like cattle in the steerage of the
steamers, their condition at sea presents what seems an unbridgable
abyss between their lives and those of the saloon passengers. Day after
day I have watched them sitting aimlessly on deck in their dirty, faded
clothes, the effluvia from the mass of them, even tempered by the sea
breeze, suggesting conditions of horror when they “turned in” at night,
that might recall the Black Hole of Calcutta. The captain assured me it
was not so very bad, but I never had the stomach to prove it for myself.
Yet, on the morning of arrival at Buenos Ayres, what a transformation!
Girls who have seemed the dirtiest of sluts throughout the voyage step
down the gangway quite neatly attired. The married women, tricked out
with little bits of finery, the men mostly in suits of black, with sombre
soft hats, and every Spaniard armed with an ample umbrella, are difficult
to recognise as the slovenly creatures one has seen for weeks feeding out
of tins and using fingers, for lack of knives and forks. But even among
the emigrants there are many grades, and not all are able to make this
sudden transformation, many having no more than the soiled and shabby
garments in which they have made their voyage, a little handkerchief tied
at the corners being a pathetic index of their worldly gear. But even
from among these, there will be some that one day shall bridge that awful
gulf between the steerage and saloon, and make a voyage home as cabin
passengers to advertise the magic Argentine!
Hope is the prevailing note in the demeanour of every new batch of
fortune-seekers. It shines brightest, perhaps, in the eyes of the alert
and wiry little Italians; the Spaniards, also, step ashore with a firm
and confident tread, but mostly among the Poles, the Bulgars, and the
Russians do we see the dull look of something very like despair. In
discussing the character of the emigrants with M. Huret, Señor Alsina, a
former Director of the Emigration Service, remarked:
What surprises one most in the careful observation of these
people from the four extremes of Europe is the rapidity of
their transformation, Spaniards from Galicia, brutish and
wretched, sordid Jews from Russia, lift up their heads
(_levantan la cabeza_) at the end of a few months. I have seen
them arrive bent and downcast, with all the timidity of a dog
that has been badly treated, so dejected and timorous, indeed,
that I thought it necessary to engage some Russian students to
lecture them on the dignity of humanity in general, and the
conditions of liberty which they could enjoy in the Argentine.
A few months afterwards, seeing many of them again, I could
observe that they had so entirely changed that they had become
argumentative, noisy, and given to discussion.
The case of the Armenians is in this respect entirely typical.
Some eighteen years ago they arrived here for the first time.
Becoming pedlars, they travelled all over the Pampa, some with
“bundles” on their backs, others pushing before them their
wares. Little by little they made money, even growing rich.
Many of them went in for politics, and to-day occupy positions
of influence in the public life. Very active in business, they
are in a fair way to surpass the Italians in the retail trade.
Proud of their title as free citizens, they refuse to sell
their vote, which is the common practice among the populace,
and their prosperity is so real, so positive, that the Armenian
Colony is offering to the Argentine a monument which will cost
them 120,000 francs.
I am afraid that appearances are very much inclined to be deceptive in
studying the faces of emigrants. Surely there are none who can look more
dejected than the Armenians and the Poles, who closely resemble each
other in facial appearance, yet the money-making potentialities of these
sad-faced emigrants are relatively much higher than those of the merry,
little, guitar-strumming Italians and Spaniards.
On the arrival of every new contingent, there is always a considerable
group of friends awaiting the vessel, and fortunate are they who have
come out on the initiative of some relative that has gone before and
prepared the way. These emigrants of yesterday, who have already come to
grips with fortune and won the first bout, form one of the pleasantest
features of the disembarkations, as they stand on the quayside in
their “Sunday best,” with their watch chains, tie pins, finger rings,
and highly polished boots to announce to all the world that they are
“getting on.” This friendly co-operation is of immense service to the
Emigration Bureau, and is really a sounder sort of propaganda than the
familiar widecast publishing of alluring pictures of the riches of the
country and the ease with which fortunes may be made. The emigrant who
comes because a brother or a friend has already substantially changed
his condition, and will have the advice of that friend to help him in
securing employment, is at least on sure ground, and where labour is in
such demand he cannot well make a mistake, provided he is willing to work.
In this way have grown up the distinctive “colonies” throughout the
country, the majority of the Russians making direct for the neighbourhood
of Bahía Blanca, where their services as agricultural labourers and as
craftsmen are in high demand; the Turks and Syrians concentrating in a
district of Buenos Ayres, where they seem to engage in every variety
of occupation in which there is a minimum of creative work and the
possibility of profiting as middle-men by the labour of others. A great
many French find their way to Mendoza, the centre of the wine-growing,
in which business not a few have become masters of millions. The German
emigration is of more recent origin, and embraces, like the French, a
superior class of people, as well as supplying a modicum to the toiling
community. Although all the emigrants, save the Spanish, are at first
conditioned in their occupations and their localities by their ignorance
of the native language, so that they must needs go where they find their
fellow-countrymen and more or less follow the pursuits in which these are
engaged, they speedily pick up the language, and once acclimatised and
furnished with the means of universal intercourse, they begin to look
around, weigh up the possibilities of the country, and strike out their
independent courses. In this movement, the British have practically no
part whatever, and with the exceptions of the scanty Irish emigration of
past years and the Welsh colony settled, with very equivocal success, on
the River Chubut some twenty years ago, the annals of the British in the
Argentine present no parallel whatever to those of the other European
nations.
When we talk of Argentine emigration, we refer chiefly to the Italian
and the Spanish, though the Basque provinces of France and Spain have
probably supplied the very finest element of foreign blood in the
Argentine nation to-day. Italy is sending from eighty to a hundred
thousand of her sturdy sons to swell the Argentine population every
year. The newcomers from Italy each year number about 200,000, but in
these later years there has been a very considerable movement towards
repatriation among the Italians and also among the Spaniards, so that
there is an offset of at least 50 per cent. for re-emigration. The
Italian who does not determine to make his home in the Argentine is
quickly satisfied with a comparatively small amount of savings. Once he
has netted from $1000 to $2500, he considers himself a man of independent
means, and is apt to return to his native village with his tiny fortune,
which will enable him there to live far more comfortably than he has been
existing in the Argentine, and to enjoy a life of comparative leisure.
The call of the Homeland is always very strong to the Italian, and if
he acquires his little fortune quickly, before his family have become
thoroughly Argentine in character and sentiment, he will almost surely
go back. The hundreds of thousands of his race who are fixed and rooted
in the Republic are they who, either through superior fortune have come
to hold such a stake in the land, or from longer delay in “turning the
corner” and the influence of their children, have become habituated to
their new environment.
The quickest fortunes, the easiest gained wealth, assuredly do not come
to those who take up the life of the colono or the mediero, as above
described, for there are innumerable other ways in which money can be
made more readily, and those who engage in shopkeeping—always a superior
class to the tillers of the soil, as they require some little capital for
a start—as well as the many Spaniards who enter the already established
business houses, are in more immediate touch with money-making
possibilities than the _braceros_. It is always thus, that they who are
of least use in the economical development of the country should be most
speedily rewarded.
I heard of an Italian waiter, who arrived in Buenos Ayres some time
in November of 1911 and immediately went on to Mar del Plata, the
fashionable seaside resort, where he readily secured a situation in one
of the hotels. In one month he netted a thousand pesos in “tips,” and
with this vast sum ($420) he incontinently returned to his native country
in order to purchase a piece of land and set up as a small farmer! A
coachman, also an Italian, whose services I occasionally employed during
our stay in Buenos Ayres, informed me that he was making a clear profit
of 600 pesos (or $252) per month. The coach, a very handsome one, and the
horse, a splendid animal, were his own property, and so careful was he of
his coach that he did not care to bring it out on very sunny days, lest
the upholstery might fade, while he disliked driving on very wet days,
so that he suited his own convenience as to the hours and days of work!
Withal, he was speedily acquiring a competence. He assured me he drank
as good wine as he got at home, and if he did not eat so well, it was
because nobody did in the Argentine, owing to the difficulty of getting
good food at reasonable prices. He also had been a waiter, but evidently
had his eye on a higher mark than his compatriot who hastened back from
Mar del Plata with his first month’s gratuities.
I do not doubt that if one had gone about, notebook in hand, collecting
experiences from all sorts and conditions of people who had emigrated to
the country, no end of “human interest” stories could have been obtained.
Such as I came by, however, were the fruit of casual conversations, and
the absence of the British and North Americans from the emigration
movement was probably the reason why I did not study it in more than its
broadest aspects. To follow it here in detail would involve so much in
the way of comparative statistics, that I make no apology for touching
the subject in the most sketchy, but I hope not unsuggestive, manner.
I did receive, after leaving Buenos Ayres, some copies of the _Herald_
containing a long and interesting correspondence, originated by an
Englishman in Buenos Ayres, entitled “Is Argentina as Bright as it is
Painted?” Some excellent letters were written by Britishers while the
correspondence continued, and although the Mr. Q’s and Mr. F’s could not
allow the occasion to pass without casting a stone at the unworthy land
of their birth, the whole weight of opinion was in tune with what I have
written. If anything, most of the writers went further, and some even
piously called upon the Almighty to protect the wretched English workman
whose lot it was to live in such places as Bahía Blanca and Rosario.
Personally, I must confess that I have seen worse places to live in than
Rosario, and even considerably worse than Bahía Blanca. I have been in
Antofagasta!
But enough of the British in this connection, for they certainly do not
amount to anything of real consequence in the sum total of Argentine
immigration, the Americans to still less.[2] What is to be noticed,
however, is a very distinct forward movement among the Germans. The
German has come rather late in the day to discover the Britisher very
thoroughly established in all branches of commerce throughout the
Republic. But, undismayed, the German has set himself to the task of
undermining British supremacy, laying his plans to capture a large share
of future business. There is, of course, no comparison in sheer bulk
between the German and the Italian immigration, as the number of Germans
arriving in the Argentine in 1912 was only 4,337, (to which we might add
6,545 Austrians) against 165,662 Italians. But in the smaller Teutonic
group lay greater money-making possibilities than in the Latin horde.
These Germans represent all classes of the community; there are quite a
few titled Teutons engaged in business in Buenos Ayres to-day. They are
developing their banking connection throughout the Republic with great
energy; German manufacturers are establishing branches everywhere; German
clerks are flooding into all sorts of businesses, their superior working
qualities to the Spaniard, their readiness to accept the lowest wages
that will support an existence, and their ability to acquire speedily the
language of the country, being all sound reasons for the ready demand
for their services. The competition of these German clerks will soon
change the complexion of the office staffs of the railways, for they
are even supplanting the British employees, and, if the cold truth must
be told, they are really better employees. One seldom meets a German
who cannot at least contrive to make himself understood in English, and
who, although seldom speaking the Spanish language with grace or correct
pronunciation, will not in a few months be able to converse in it with a
fair degree of fluency.
In addition to those different classes of Teutonic invaders come the
hand-workers—engineers, carpenters, builders, agricultural labourers. In
considerable numbers these work people, who share the ability of their
compatriots in the acquiring of languages, are filtering all over the
Argentine and in certain districts of the southwest, especially around
the celebrated Lake Nahuel Huapi, some thirteen hundred miles distant
from the capital, there are entire settlements of German farmers, with
their native school-teachers and Protestant missionaries. In fine, the
Germanising of the Argentine has begun, and if it is still far from
attaining the dimensions it has already assumed in Chili, I do not doubt
that a day is coming when the German will have ousted the British, the
French, and the Italian from their present supremacy in their respective
fields, although never likely to compete with Britain or France in
the matter of invested capital. At the time of writing, it is evident
that there is a further movement to encourage German enterprise in the
Argentine. I read in the London _Times_ this morning that the Kaiser’s
brother, Prince Henry of Prussia, accompanied by his Princess and suite,
are sailing on an official visit to the Republic in one of the fine new
passenger steamers with which the Germans are successfully competing
against the British lines for South Atlantic trade.
It is not to be supposed, although I have emphasised the fact that the
Italian immigration is essentially a movement of unskilled labour,
that it is exclusively so. For the Argentine offers to the observer a
very remarkable lesson in the industrial progress of Italy, which may
entirely escape him in his travels in Italy itself. To encounter at every
step, as one does wherever one goes throughout the Argentine, the most
persistent evidences of Italian enterprise in every branch of commerce,
is to discover the Italian in an entirely new light. Most of us are
in the habit of going to Italy to look at old things, to revel in the
glories of her past, and are apt to come away from Rome, or Florence, or
Venice, and especially from Naples, with an impression of bygone grandeur
and lingering poverty. It is true that we must set against this the
evidence of her prosperity and modern activity, which we find in Milan
and in Turin; but, on the whole, our popular notion of Italy is that of a
country living mainly on its past.
The Italian in the Argentine will speedily dispel this. Not only does he
supply the strong arms that are tilling the soil of countless leagues,
but he maintains many of the great importing establishments in Buenos
Ayres and the principal towns. Italian engineering agencies and workshops
abound. A large proportion of the splendid motor cars that crowd the
streets of the capital hail from Italy. Some of the finest chemists’
establishments are Italian. Not only are Italian workmen vastly in the
majority on all building operations, but very often Italian brains are
directing the whole undertaking; Italian contractors are paving the
streets. In short, Italy stands forth in the life of the Argentine to-day
as a magnificent industrial and commercial force, supported by the
wide-spreading base of Italian emigrant labour.
There is also a very large traffic between the two countries in casual
labour, ship-loads of Italians coming out each year for the harvest
season—during which wages jump up from 40 to 50 pesos a month to 5 or 6
pesos a day—and return home immediately on its conclusion. The Italian
steamers (the fastest that ply between Europe and South America, some
of them doing the journey from Buenos Ayres to Genoa in twelve days,
whereas the average of the English mail steamer from the River Plate to
London or Liverpool takes nineteen to twenty-one days) provide special
facilities for the shipment of these labourers at a very low head rate.
To the remarkable return movement among Italian emigrants, on which I
have already touched, this large element of casual labour has contributed
not a little.
As regards the Spanish emigrant, I had many discussions with Spaniards
settled in the Argentine, from which I gained a good deal more
information than I had ever been able to acquire from any printed source.
One of these gentlemen in particular had studied the question in five
or six of the republics, and was engaged upon a book for circulation
among his countrymen at home, putting the matter in a new light. In his
estimation, the Argentine conditions represent an improvement for only
the lowest class of Spaniard. This class of Spaniard I remember being
very fully described in a leading article in _La Prensa_. His notions of
thrift were there illustrated by his habit, when in his native country,
of journeying about the countryside bare-footed, with his boots and
stockings hung around his neck. When he approaches a village, he pauses
by the roadside to put on his stockings and boots, and so shod traverses
the village; but as soon as he has emerged on the highway again, he
removes them and continues his journey with them around his neck once
more! Such a custom touches the zero of social comfort and those
habituated to it could scarcely fail to do better in almost any other
country in the world.
According to my Spanish friend, such of his countrymen immediately
become enthusiasts for the new land, and not only being able to go about
permanently with their boots and stockings, but perhaps to buy a white
collar for themselves and even a pair of silk stockings for their wives,
feel they have suddenly made a magical transition into the very lap of
luxury. But for the craftsmen, the village carpenter, the blacksmith, the
modest tradesmen, he assured me the change was not always for the better.
Spaniards of these classes can, thanks to the cheapness of commodities in
their native country, and despite the lowness of wages, secure infinitely
better household accommodation, and will eat better food, drink better
wine, and altogether live a less strenuous and more satisfactory
existence, than the majority, at least, will be doomed to maintain in the
Argentine. As to all this, I can speak with no exact knowledge, and I
do no more than report the opinion of a Spanish gentleman, confirmed to
me, I may add, by several others of his race who ought to have been in
positions to judge.
The gentleman in question was probably somewhat prejudiced, as he was
a patriotic Spaniard, fond of elaborating his theory that Spain to-day
had lost her head over the Argentine and was hastening her decay by
orienting her literature and her journalism towards the lucrative market
of South America instead of towards purely Spanish ideals. Looking to
South America as a land of employment for her children, as in the past
her kings had looked to it to fill their coffers, she was guilty of a
crowning folly. If the energy she is pouring into South America were
properly utilised at home, it would return far greater profit to the
nation and the individual. Such, at least, was his line of reasoning, and
I more than half suspect it was well based in fact.
And withal, from what I could gather, in the annals of Argentine
immigration, the most interesting chapter that might be written
would describe the activities and achievements of the Basques. This
splendid race of people who seem to unite the finest qualities of
the French and the Spanish, have distinguished themselves above all
others in the making of modern Argentine. The geographical position
of their homeland, enabling them to acquire, in addition to their own
most difficult language—which polyglot Borrow found his hardest nut
to crack—both French and Spanish, are peculiarly adapted for making
their way in Latin America. But apart from the language question, their
personal characteristics, in which industry joins with intelligence and
imagination, would inevitably carry them to success. They stand to South
American colonisation as the Scot to British Empire-making, and the
peculiar custom of their country, whereby the eldest son inherits all
the family goods and remains at home to maintain the family succession,
while the younger sons have to fare forth into the world to seek their
fortunes, marks them out for colonists.
[Illustration: FAMILIAR SCENES ON AN “ESTANCIA.”
In the upper picture, a “Bebedero,” or drinking-place for the cattle; in
the lower, a flock of sheep brought in for shearing. The windmill pumps
seen in both illustrations are the commonest objects of Argentine
landscape.]
My acquaintance with the Basques was limited to one family only—a
wonderful family; they are French Basques, and some fifteen or sixteen
brothers and cousins are united in a great business, which has important
warehouses and distributing centres in every large town along the
Atlantic and Pacific Coasts of South America, as well as in many of the
business centres of the interior. But for a typical story of the Basques,
I turn to the pages of M. Huret and translate what is one of the most
interesting little romances of Argentine emigration:
I wish to relate in some detail the story of one of these
French Basques (perhaps the most celebrated of them all), as I
heard it from one of his sons. I admire and sympathise with the
pride of this intelligent plebeian in a country where so many
people think of little more than how to make others believe
in the aristocracy of their blood, as if the most beautiful
and the noblest qualities of “aristocratic” blood did not
potentially exist in the blood of the people!
Pedro Luro was born in 1820 in the little town of Gamarthe, and
in 1837 he arrived at Buenos Ayres with a few francs in his
pocket. Entering as a labourer in a _saladero_ (beef salting
establishment), he contrived to save enough to contemplate
matrimony, but suffered the loss of his little savings by
robbery. He applied himself with new energy to work; purchasing
a horse and a tilt cart, he converted the latter into an
omnibus, and with himself as driver plied between the Plaza
Montserrat and the suburb of Barracas.
He then married a countrywoman, Señorita Pradere, a relative
of his own, and with one of her brothers founded an _almacén_
(general store) at Dolores, some three hundred kilometres
to the south. But soon this store did not suffice for his
activity, and leaving his wife and her brother in charge of
it, he scoured the Pampa for cattle, wool and hides. Later on,
he made a proposal to a neighbouring estanciero whom he saw
planting trees on his ground, and effected a contract with him,
the conditions of which are famous still in the Argentine.
Luro was to plant as many trees as he liked on two hundred
_hectáreas_ of land, which the estanciero was to place at his
disposal, and was to be paid for the work at the rate of four
centimes for each common tree and twenty-five for each fruit
tree of which the fruit contained stones.
Calling to his aid a number of his fellow Basques, at the end
of five years, Pedro Luro had planted so many trees on these
two hundred hectáreas that the proprietor owed him a sum not
only superior to the value of the ground planted, but of the
whole five thousand hectáreas composing his estancia (land was
sold at that time in this district at 5,000 francs per league).
The estanciero did not care to pay Luro, with the result that
the astute Basque started an action at law and converted
himself into the proprietor of the 5,000 hectáreas.
About the year 1840, the southern part of the province of
Buenos Ayres was still almost desert, the land of small value.
These were the times of the Rosas tyranny, and incessant
revolutions. All around the abandoned estancias dogs had
returned to a state of savagery, and cattle wandered free in
innumerable herds across these immense spaces. It happened that
Luro was assisting at a _batida_ (battue) of these animals,
rendered mad by being entangled in the lassos and pricked
with knives in the hocks. Pondering over the value of all
that flesh and fat wasted, for it was then the custom merely
to secure the skin of the animal and leave its body to decay,
the idea occurred to buy from the landowner all the animals of
the class that were thus to be hunted and killed, at the rate
of ten pesos of the old Argentine money, equivalent to little
more than one peso of the present currency. The proprietor
was highly amused at the suggestion. “I quite believe I will
accept,” he exclaimed, laughing, “but do you really think it
would be good business?”
It was with the only system of capture known to the _gauchos_,
that is to say the lasso and the _bolas_ (three balls attached
by long leather thongs, which, thrown with great dexterity
at the legs of an animal, entangle these and bring it to the
ground), necessitating months and an enormous number of men,
that he would be able to bring some thousands of cattle—and in
what sad state—to the salting factory.
All the same, Luro insisted with perfect coolness, and the
contract was signed.
Now the tactics conceived by the intelligent Basque were as
follow: He began by prohibiting the gauchos from scouring
the country in cavalcades. During three months, only two men
on horseback, going slowly, were allowed to wander about the
pasture ground of these wild cattle. Little by little the
animals became accustomed to the sight of them and did not fly
away when they approached. When some hundreds of cattle had
thus been domesticated, they were taken farther away, where
others were still in a wild state, and these in turn were
easily reduced to the tameness of the first.
In batches of five hundred to a thousand, Luro was soon able
to herd the cattle direct to the salting factories, where he
sold them at 15, 20, 25, even 30 francs each. At the end of a
year, he had thus secured no fewer than 35,000 head of cattle.
He had made himself rich, and the proprietor of the estancia
had received from him at one stroke 70,000 francs, which he had
never expected, remaining enchanted with his transaction.
In 1862, Pedro Luro went still further afield, beyond Bahía
Blanca, whose fort at that time constituted the frontier
against the Indians. He was delayed for some time on the banks
of the River Colorado, owing to the Indians having robbed him
of his horses. Meanwhile, exploring the valley of the river, he
quickly grasped the potentialities of the district. Returning
to Buenos Ayres, he secured an interview with General Mitre,
to whom he proposed to buy from the State 100 square leagues
of land (250,000 hectáreas) at the rate of 1,000 francs per
league, with a view to founding a colony of three hundred
Basques in that region.
His scheme apparently approved by the President, he then set
sail for Navarra Baja in Spain, where he recruited some fifty
families, with whom he returned to the Argentine. But the
Government, while agreeing to the sale of land, would not, for
some unknown reason, permit the founding of the colony, so the
Basques were spread over the land of their compatriot. Many of
them, or their descendants, are to-day millionaires, while the
land bought at the 1,000 francs the league is valued now at 200
francs the hectárea, or say 500,000 francs per league.
Meanwhile, Pedro Luro continued his active commerce in skins
and wool. Ere long he had constructed the largest curing
factory in all the basin of the River Plate, expending millions
of francs on it. Then he set himself to the exploitation of the
bathing station of Mar del Plata, which had been founded by
Señor Peralta Ramos, one of the most fortunate of speculations,
from which his heirs, continuing his work there, have benefited
immensely. At his death he left to his fourteen children
375,000 hectáreas of land, 300,000 sheep, and 150,000 cattle,
then valued at 40,000,000 francs.
Pedro Luro was a Frenchman who did honour to his country by
his exceptional qualities, his spirited initiative, valour,
endurance, and business intelligence. He took to the Argentine
more than 2,000 of his fellow Basques, whom he employed in his
many agricultural and industrial establishments, providing
them with cattle, letting land to them cheaply, lending them
money. Almost all of these have made their fortunes. With Luro
disappeared one of those types that are almost legendary, and
without doubt the most famous colonist of the epic period of
Argentine immigration.
Here, then, is as fascinating a story as we shall find in the annals
of colonisation, and so eminent in the life of the Argentine are the
descendants of Pedro Luro to-day that the story of their origin and
the achievements of their progenitor would form a splendid subject for
some native writer, were not the Argentine authors too busy imitating
European models to lend themselves to the simple narration of such
splendid life-histories as the making of the Argentine presents. For
the passage I have quoted from M. Huret is no more than the prelude to
a romance which is likely yet to see its final issue in the founding of
a great and prosperous town at the mouth of the River Colorado in the
Bay of San Blas, southward of Bahía Blanca. The Luros are the lords of
all the land in that region, and I recall the interest with which I read
a series of somewhat highly coloured articles by Mr. A. G. Hales, the
Anglo-Australian journalist, then attached to the staff of the Buenos
Ayres _Standard_, who, in the latter part of 1912, made a journey on
horseback through that district. He pictured the coming of a day when
ships would sail from the city of San Blas laden with wines for the
tables of European epicures, and no end of other wonders that would come
to pass in the valley of the River Colorado, which fifty years ago the
shrewd Pedro Luro had secured for his descendants at so small an outlay.
At the present moment, there is no railway within 150 miles of San Blas,
and I suppose there is no more than a paper plan of the future city,
lying somewhere in the estate office of the Luros, and no ships cast
anchor in its bay, but there was a time when Buenos Ayres itself, and not
so many years ago Bahía Blanca, meant no more to the world than a name on
a map, and who shall say what dreams may not come true?