The Amazing Argentine: A New Land of Enterprise. Fraser John Foster

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      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.

      CHAPTER VI

      ARGENTINA'S PART IN FEEDING THE WORLD

      It is well to mark that of the British food supply from overseas Argentina provides one quarter. Each person in the Republic, after providing enough food to supply himself, sends at least £8 worth of food to other countries.

      Argentina covers 776 million acres. Eighty million acres are suitable for wheat, but only one-fourth of this area is cultivated. The population is growing rapidly; it is now over seven millions, and is being increased by about a quarter of a million immigrants every year; but still the cry is for more inhabitants.

      At present there are six persons to the square mile; but when you remember that the province of Buenos Aires has a population of two and a half millions, you find the population for the outside areas is just under two per square mile.

      Three-quarters of the population are Argentines; everyone born in the country, no matter from what land the parents come, is reckoned an Argentine. Of the new-comers half a million are Italian, a quarter million Spanish, a tenth of a million French; then come the British, numbering 25,000; Germans 18,000; Swiss 15,000; Austrians 13,000, and so on, decreasingly. North Americans are few, though within recent years much United States capital has quietly taken hold of certain industries. Argentina is capable of carrying a population of fifty millions, and it will secure them within the next half-century. In race, language, customs, religion, it is especially favourable to folk from the thronged Latin countries of Europe.

      Every settler becomes a violent Argentine. The emphatic patriotism of the American is tepid alongside the hot-blooded nationality of Argentina. It is daily inculcated in the schools. The blue and white striped flag is honoured on every occasion. You are poetically reminded it is of the blue of the sky. When the Argentines were in revolution against Spain in 1810, and needed a banner to flaunt against the red and orange of the enemy, they got pieces of blue and white cloth (intended for garments) from an English warship lying at Montevideo, and made a flag of it. So the Argentine flag, like much of Argentine prosperity, is due to Britain.

      In proportion to the population there are as many millionaires in Argentina as in the United States. There are sturdy old fellows, who can hardly write their names, who scarcely know the extent of their wealth. Fifty years ago an Irish labourer landed in the country. He died the other day worth over £4,000,000.

      It is none of my business to boom land values in Argentina. Though the tendency of late has been a little too buoyant, I know of no land where there have been such enormous heaves in values, not fictitiously hoisted, СКАЧАТЬ