Read Ebook: Argentina from a British Point of View and Notes on Argentine Life by Ogilvie Campbell Patrick Compiler

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THE EFFECT OF A LONG DROUGHT 241

REFINED CAMPS 242

"RICH BLACK ALLUVIAL SOIL" 251

WATER KNEE-DEEP 265

QUEBRACHO COLORADO TREE 266

SLEEPERS AWAITING TRANSPORT AT VERA 267

TANNIN EXTRACT FACTORY 268

SOME OF THE HORSES 271

"AWFUL FLOOD" 276

ON THE WAY TO OLMOS 277

LIST OF DIAGRAMS.

FACING PAGE

IMMIGRATION RETURNS 2

AGRICULTURAL EXPORTATION 14

CULTIVATED AREA IN HECTARES 15

VALUE IN ? STERLING OF THE TOTAL EXPORTS OF ARGENTINA, 1900-09 22

ARGENTINA FROM A BRITISH POINT OF VIEW.

Argentina, which does not profess to be a manufacturing country, exported in 1909 material grown on her own lands to the value of ?79,000,000, and imported goods to the extent of ?60,000,000. This fact arrests our attention, and forces us to recognise that there is a trade balance of nearly 20 millions sterling in her favour, and to realise the saving power of the country.

It is not mere curiosity which prompts us to ask: "Are these ?79,000,000 worth of exports of any value to us? Do we consume any of them? Do we manufacture any of them? And do we send any of this same stuff back again after it has been dealt with by our British artisans?" It would be difficult to follow definitely any one article, but upon broad lines the questions are simple and can be easily answered. Amongst the agricultural exports we find wheat, oats, maize, linseed, and flour. The value placed upon these in 1908 amounted to ?48,000,000, and England pays for and consumes nearly 42 per cent. of these exports. Other goods, such as frozen beef, chilled beef, mutton, pork, wool, and articles which may be justly grouped as the results of the cattle and sheep industry, amounted to no less a figure than ?23,000,000. All these exports represent foodstuffs or other necessities of life, and are consumed by those nations which do not produce enough from their own soil to keep their teeming populations. Another export which is worthy of particular mention comes from the forests, viz., quebracho, which, in the form of logs and extract, was exported in 1908 to the value of ?1,200,000. The value of material of all sorts sent from England to Argentina in 1908 was ?16,938,872 , therefore it is clear that we have, and must continue to take, a practical and financial interest in the welfare and prosperity of Argentina.

New countries cannot get on without men willing and ready to exploit Nature's gifts, and, naturally, we look to the immigration returns when considering Argentina's progress. To give each year's return for the last 50 years would be wearisome, but, taking the average figures for ten-year periods from 1860 to 1909, we have the following interesting table. :--

Yearly Average. From 1860 to 1869 ... 15,044 " 1870 " 1879 " ... 29,462 " 1880 " 1889 " ... 84,586 " 1890 " 1899 " ... 43,618 " 1900 " 1909 " ... 100,998

Sixty-five per cent. of the immigrants are agricultural labourers, who soon find work in the country, and again add their quota to the increasing quantity and value of materials to be exported. Facing this page is a diagram of the Immigration Returns from 1857 to 1909.

Nature has been lavish in her gifts to Argentina, and man has taken great advantage of these gifts. My desire now is to show what has been done in the way of developing agriculture in this richly-endowed country during the last fifty years. One name which should never be forgotten in Argentina is that of William Wheelwright, whose entrance into active life in Buenos Aires was not particularly dignified; in 1826 he was shipwrecked at the mouth of the River Plate, and struggled on barefooted, hatless and starving to the small town of Quilmes.

Mr. Wheelwright was an earnest and far-seeing man, and his knowledge of railways in the United States helped him to realise their great possibilities in Argentina; but, strange to say, upon his return to his native land he could not impress any of those men who afterwards became such great "Railway Kings" in the U.S.A. Failing to obtain capital for Argentine railway development in his own country, Wheelwright came to England, and interested Thomas Brassey, whose name was then a household word amongst railway pioneers. These two men associated themselves with Messrs. Ogilvie & Wythes, forming themselves into the firm of Brassey, Ogilvie, Wythes & Wheelwright, whose first work was the building of a railway 17,480 kilometres long between Buenos Aires and Quilmes in 1863; afterwards they built the line from Rosario to Cordova, which is embodied to-day in the Central Argentine Railway. Other railways were projected, and this policy of progress and extension of the steel road still holds good in Argentina.

The year 1857 saw the first railway built, from Buenos Ayres to Flores, 5,879 kilometres long; in 1870 there were 457 miles of railroad; in 1880 the railways had increased their mileage to 1,572; in 1890 Argentina possessed 5,895 miles of railway, and in 1900 there were 10,352 miles.

The rapid increase in railway mileage during the last nine years is as follows:--

In 1901 there were 10,565 miles of railway. " 1902 " " 10,868 " " " " 1903 " " 11,500 " " " " 1904 " " 12,140 " " " " 1905 " " 12,370 " " " " 1906 " " 12,850 " " " " 1907 " " 13,829 " " " " 1908 " " 14,825 " " " " 1909 " " 15,937" " "

In other words, for the last forty years Argentina has built railways at the rate of over a mile a day, and in 1907, 1908, and 1909 her average rate per day was nearly three miles. This means that owing to the extension of railways during this last year alone, over a million more acres of land could have been given up to the plough if suitable for the cultivation of corn.

When William Wheelwright first visited Argentina it was little more than an unknown land, whose inhabitants had no ambition, and no desire to acquire wealth--except at the expense of broken heads. There was a standard of wealth, but it lay in the number of cattle owned; land was of little value, save for feeding cattle, and therefore counted for naught, but cattle could be boiled down for tallow; bones and hides were also marketable commodities; the man, therefore, who possessed cattle possessed wealth.

The opening out of the country by railways soon changed the aspect of affairs. The man who possessed cattle was no longer considered the rich man; it was he who owned leagues of land upon which wheat could be grown who became the potentially rich man; he, by cutting up his land and renting it to the immigrants, who were beginning to flock in in an endless stream to the country, found that riches were being accumulated for him without much exertion on his part. He took a risk inasmuch as he received payment in kind only. Therefore, when the immigrants did well, so did he, and as many thousands of immigrants have become rich, it follows that the land proprietors have become immensely so. It was the railways which created this possibility, and endowed the country by rendering it practicable to grow corn where cattle only existed before, but many Argentines to-day forget what they owe to the railway pioneers; it is the railways, and the railways only, which render the splendid and yearly increasing exports possible.

In 1858 cattle formed 25 per cent. of the total wealth of Argentina, but in 1885 cattle only represented 18 per cent. of the total wealth, railways having made it possible during those thirty years to utilise lands for other purposes than cattle-feeding. Let it be clearly understood, the total value of cattle had not decreased; far from that, the cattle had increased in value during the above period to the extent of ?48,000,000, and to-day cattle, sheep, horses, mules, pigs, goats and asses represent a value of nearly ?130,000,000. The following table shows how great the improvement has been in Argentine animals:--

Per Head. Cattle in 1885 were valued at an average of " 1908 " " " 32 Sheep in 1885 " " " 2 " 1908 " " " 4 Horses in 1885 " " " 11 1908 " " " 25

Notwithstanding these increased valuations per head, and the larger number of animals in the country, the value created by man's labour far outweighs the increased value of mere breeding animals.

Next to the railways the improvements in shipping have helped the development of Argentina; the shipping trade of Buenos Aires has increased at the rate of one million tons per annum for the past few years, and the entries into the port form an interesting and instructive table:

The following statement gives the total tonnage that passed through the port of Buenos Aires from 1880 to 1909, and will more clearly show the increase and advance made in the last thirty years. These figures include both steamers and sailing-vessels, and local as well as foreign trade:--

Tons. 1880 ... 644,750 1881 ... 827,072 1882 ... 995,597 1883 ... 1,207,321 1884 ... 1,782,382 1885 ... 2,200,779 1886 ... 2,408,323 1887 ... 3,369,057 1888 ... 3,396,212 1889 ... 3,804,037 1890 ... 4,507,096 1891 ... 4,546,729 1892 ... 5,475,942 1893 ... 6,177,818 1894 ... 6,686,123 1895 ... 6,894,834 1896 ... 6,115,547 1897 ... 7,365,547 1898 ... 8,051,045 1899 ... 8,741,934 1900 ... 8,047,010 1901 ... 8,661,300 1902 ... 8,902,605 1903 ... 10,269,298 1904 ... 10,424,615 1905 ... 11,467,954 1906 ... 12,448,219 1907 ... 13,335,733 1908 ... 15,465,417 1909 ... 16,993,973

In 1897, out of the total number of steamers that entered Buenos Aires, viz., 901, with a tonnage of 2,342,391; 519, with a tonnage of 1,327,571, were British. Taking the year 1909 we find that 2,008 steamers and 137 sailing-vessels entered the port of Buenos Aires from foreign shores with a tonnage of 5,193,542, and 1,978 steamers and 129 sailing-vessels left the port for foreign shores with a tonnage of 5,174,114; out of these, British boats lead with 2,242 steamers and 37 sailing-vessels, or say 53-1/2 per cent. of the total. Germany comes next with 456 steamers and 2 sailing-vessels, or say 10-3/4 per cent, of the total. Italy with 307 steamers and 67 sailing-vessels is next, and then France with 264 steamers. The total number of steamers that entered and left the port from local and foreign ports is 13,485, with a tonnage of 14,481,526, and 20,264 sailing-vessels with 2,512,447 tons, which make up the amount of 16,993,973 tons, as shown above.

In the year 1884 the experiment of freezing beef, killed in Buenos Aires, and shipping it to Europe was first tried. That was successful, but an immense improvement was made when the process of chilling became the common means by which meat could be exported. The frozen beef trade in Argentina has had a wonderful development; it commenced in 1884, and the export of chilled meat has progressed steadily at the rate of 25,000 beeves yearly, until, in 1908, it reached the enormous quantity of 573,946 beeves, or 180,000 tons. Frozen mutton has remained comparatively steady, and has only increased by 38,000 tons in twenty-two years, or from 2,000,000 sheep frozen in 1886 to 3,297,667 in 1908, whilst "jerked beef," which was mostly sent to Cuba and Brazil, has fallen from 50,000 tons per annum to 6,651 tons. The value of frozen and preserved meats exported in 1908 was ?5,233,948.

The value of live-stock in Argentina in 1908 was made up as follows:--

Cattle ... ... ... ?82,000,000 Sheep ... ... ... 25,000,000 Horses ... ... ... 18,000,000 Mules ... ... ... 2,000,000 Pigs ... ... ... 1,368,000 Goats and Asses ... 1,000,000

A few years ago it was common on an estancia feeding 50,000 or 60,000 cattle to find the household using canned Swiss milk. To-day 425,000 litres of milk are brought into the city of Buenos Aires each day for consumption, and no less than two tons of butter, one ton of cream, and three tons of cheese are used there daily. Argentina also exports butter. This trade has sprung up entirely within the last fourteen years, and in 1908 she exported 3,549 tons of butter, the value of which was ?283,973.

The figures supplied by one large company are interesting; they show that, on an average, cattle, when placed upon alfalfa lands, improve in value at the rate of .00 per head per month, so it is easy to place a value on its feeding properties. Thus, we will take a camp under alfalfa capable of carrying 10,000 head of cattle all the year round, where as the fattened animals are sold off an equal number is bought to replace them. Such a camp would bring in a clear profit of 0,000 per annum, and the property should be worth ?175,000 sterling. An animal that has been kept all its life on rough camp, and, when too old for breeding, is placed for the first time on alfalfa lands, fattens extremely quickly, and the meat is tender and in quality compares favourably with any other beef. No business in Argentina of the same importance has shown such good returns as cattle breeding, and these results have been chiefly brought about by the introduction of alfalfa, and a knowledge of the life history of alfalfa is of the greatest importance to the cattle farmer. All cereal crops take from the soil mineral matter and nitrogen. Therefore, after continuous cropping the land becomes exhausted and generally poorer; experience has taught us that rotation of crops is a necessity to alleviate the strain on the soil, and such an axiom has this become that in many cases English landlords insist that their leases shall contain a clause binding the tenants to grow certain stated crops in rotation.

This system is known in England as the four-course shift. Knowledge gained by successive generations of observant farmers has given us the key to what Nature had hitherto kept to herself, and to-day we know why the plan adopted by our forefathers was right, and why the rotation of crops was, and is, a necessity. Men of science are devoting their lives to the systematic study of Nature's hidden secrets, and by means of Agricultural Colleges, as well as private individual research, these discoveries are being given to mankind, and long before the soils of Argentina show any serious loss of nitrogen from continuous cropping, science will probably have established means of applying in a practical manner those methods already known of propagating the nitrogen-collecting bacteria which thrive on alfalfa, clover, peas, soya beans, and other leguminous plants. Almost every country is now devoting time, money, and energy to agricultural research work. In 1908 the Agricultural College at Ontario prepared no less than 474 packages of Legume Bacteria, and in 309 cases beneficial results followed from the application thereof to the soil; in 165 cases no improvements in the crops were noticed, this may, however, have been due to the want of knowledge of how to manipulate the bacteria, or to lack of experience in noting effects scientifically, but in any case the experiment must be considered successful when the results obtained were satisfactory in no less than 65 per cent. of the trials. No greater factor exists than the microscope in opening up and hunting out the secrets concealed in the very soil we are standing on.

If soils were composed of nothing but pure silica sand, nothing would ever grow; but in Nature we find that soils contain all sorts of mineral matter, and chief amongst these is lime.

Alfalfa thrives on land which contains lime, and gives but poor results where this ingredient is deficient. The explanation is simple. There is a community of interest between the very low microscopic animal life, known as bacteria, and plant life generally. In every ounce of soil there are millions of these living germs which have their allotted work to do, and they thrive best in soils containing lime.

If one digs up with great care a root of alfalfa , and care is taken in exposing the root , some small nodules attached to the fine, hair-like roots are easily distinguished by the naked eye, and these nodules are the home of a teeming, microscopical, industrious population, who perform their allotted work with the silent, persistent energy so often displayed in Nature. Men of science have been able to identify at least three classes of these bacteria, and to ascertain the work accomplished by each. The reason for their existence would seem to be that one class is able to convert the nitrogen in the air into ammonia, whilst others work it into nitrite, and the third class so manipulate it as to form a nitrate which is capable of being used for plant food.

Now, although one ton of alfalfa removes from the soil 50 lb. of nitrogen, yet that crop leaves the soil richer in nitrogen, because the alfalfa has encouraged the multiplication of those factories which convert some of the thousands of tons of nitrogen floating above the earth into substance suitable for food for plant life. As a dry fodder for cattle three tons of alfalfa contains as much nutrition as two tons of wheat.

The cost of growing alfalfa greatly depends upon the situation of the land to be dealt with; also upon whether labour is plentiful or not; but, in order to give some idea of the advantage of growing this cattle food, we will imagine the intrinsic value of the undeveloped land to be ?4,000, upon which, under existing conditions, it would be possible to keep 1,000 head of animals, whereas if this same land were under alfalfa 3,000 to 3,500 animals would be fattened thereon, and the land would have increased in value to ?20,000 or ?30,000.

Now, if the undeveloped land is to be improved, it becomes necessary either to work it yourself, with your own men, in which case you must provide ploughs, horses, bullocks, etc., or to carry out the plan usually adopted, that of letting the land to colonists who have had some experience in this class of work. Usually a colonist will undertake to cultivate from 500 to 600 acres, and agrees to pay to the landowner anything from 10 per cent. to 30 per cent. of his crops according to the distance of the land from the railway. The colonist brings his agricultural tackle along with him, and establishes his house , digs his well, and then proceeds to plough. In this work the whole family joins; the father leads the way, followed by the eldest child, and all the others in rotation, with the wife bringing up the rear; she keeps a maternal eye upon the little mite, who with great gusto and terrific yells manages somehow to cling to the plough and to do his or her share with the rest. Is it to be wondered at that work progresses fast under these conditions? There is but one idea prevalent in the family, namely, that time and opportunity are with them.

The first crop grown on newly-broken ground is usually maize; the second year's crop is linseed, and perhaps a third year's crop--probably wheat--is grown by the colonist before the land is handed back to the owner ready to be put down in alfalfa. The colonist's cultivation of the land will have effectually killed off the natural rough grasses which would otherwise grow up and choke the alfalfa. Sometimes the alfalfa is sown with the colonist's last crop, and in such cases the landowner finds the alfalfa seed, and during the sowing of this crop it is very advisable that either he or his agent should be in constant attendance, because the after results greatly depend upon the care with which the seeding has been done. When the colonist's contract is completed he moves on to another part, and the owner, who has year by year received a percentage of the crops, takes back his land. Considerable outlay has now to be made in fences, wells, and buildings; the more there are of these the better, the land will carry a larger head of cattle and the control of them is easy when the camp has been properly divided.

The colonists are generally Italians. They are an industrious and kindly people, hardy and quiet, well content with their surroundings, careful and frugal in their living, and many thousands could go back to their own country with wealth which has been acquired by constant and assiduous attention to the economies of life.

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