Chapter VI: Introduction

This book, intended to make known in Europe the present situation and the economic future of the Argentine Republic, comes at an opportune moment to fulfil its mission of popularisation.

During the last ten years of the nineteenth century the Argentine has suffered all the misfortunes and known all the disasters that can affect a rural and agricultural people. The locust, coming from the Tropics, devoured the crops; anthrax, imported from Europe, decimated the cattle; the threats of a war with Chili imposed enormous expenses and exhausted the national revenue; finally, a commercial and industrial crisis, and domestic disturbances, consequent upon the general misfortune, completed the tale of calamities which put the vitality of the nation to the test.

But as there is no night so long that it has no dawn, all these shadows fled away. Our quarrel with Chili was submitted to arbitration, and the decision of His Majesty the King of Great Britain not only terminated a cause of difference of fifteen years’ duration, but re-established fraternal relations between the two Republics. The rural plagues were attacked and vanquished by measures which experience indicated as preventive of recurrence; commercial and industrial prosperity returned; the tranquillity of the interior was assured; and the general welfare increased. To accentuate still further this beneficent reaction, the immense and fertile plains of the pampa, open to the activities of the agriculturalists, began to produce abundant harvests, which struck the European markets with amazement, and diverted towards the Argentine a current of gold which was estimated at more than £20,000,000, and a stream of immigration, which, in the year 1904, brought 125,000 workers, and which promises to be even greater in the present year.

The Argentine Republic has issued triumphantly from its lengthy and severe ordeal; it has emerged richer, stronger and more confident of its own destiny than at any other period of its history; and the increase of its revenues and the rapid growth of its prosperity have secured the attention of the great financial centres of Europe.

Public curiosity being thus awakened, many people have inquired: What is the Argentine? How far is the development of its wealth a sound and durable process? What is the probable future of its people? Is it a meteor that flashes brilliantly through space, or a star rising upon the economic and political horizon?

While some content themselves with asking such questions and awaiting their reply, M. Lewandowski, the representative of one of the greatest credit establishments in France, wished to gain some practical experience of the phenomenon. He took the most certain, most practical means; took steamer, crossed the ocean, and landed in the Argentine. With the learned collaboration of Señor Alberto Martinez, one of the most competent of men in matters of statistics and finance, he made a profound study of economic questions, and the present book is the outcome of their common observations.

This book should be read by all those who are not convinced that the word Europe sums up all humanity; but who take the pains, on the contrary, to follow the development of all other nations; understanding how necessary it is for the great nations to observe the progress and evolution of the younger peoples. Thus they avoid the risk of being surprised by the sudden apparition of great economic or political forces which they had not foreseen, or by which they had not known how to profit.

South America suffers from a prejudice that we cannot unhappily disclaim as being unjustified. The directing classes in France, as in all other European nations, with the exception of a small commercial and financial circle, seem to have been kept in intentional ignorance of all things relating to the nations of the new continent. The Argentine, Chili, Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador,——countries separated one from another by enormous distances——are none the less, for the generality of Europeans, more or less one and the same thing; that is, they form a kind of a geographical nebulosity, which is known as _South America_. The post-office employés of Buenos Ayres have often occasion to smile when they read the addresses inscribed on the envelopes of letters dispatched by the learned and scientific bodies of Europe, and Argentines residing abroad continually find food for reflection in the questions asked them by persons occupying the highest positions.

Yet for the old world there is every incentive to study more closely the development of these new peoples. It is enough to point out that the Argentine to-day occupies as significant a position as that held by the United States at the beginning of the nineteenth century; and that its continued evolution will undoubtedly, before the end of the present century, give it an importance equal to that of the United States at the present time.

In a conversation with Mr Roosevelt and his Secretary of State, Colonel John Hay, I had occasion to make this very remark, and the President replied, with the rapidity of judgment and the affirmative tone which are so characteristic of his mind: “In less time than that; you will find fifty years enough; for you will profit by all our experience and all the human progress effected during the nineteenth century.”

The shadow of discredit which has hitherto lain upon South America is explained by the continual anarchy to which the majority of its peoples have lent themselves since the immense colonial empire of Spain threw off its fetters in the first quarter of the last century, in order to break up into fifteen separate republics. This anarchy and disorganisation, compared with the orderly spirit of progress which has reigned in the great republic of the North, have given rise to the belief, to-day general, that the so different destiny of these States was due to the special qualities and aptitudes of the Anglo-Saxon race, which the Latin races lacked.

This belief results from a superficial and incomplete examination of the facts, and has gained easy acceptance, even in works of a more or less scientific nature, such as _The Psychological Laws of the Evolution of Peoples_, in which the author cites, with regard to the Latin races and the peoples of South America, a number of inaccurate and prejudiced facts, which have been gathered from the writings of a dyspeptic and ill-tempered journalist. Such data have caused M. Gustave Lebon to deduce psychological laws which are hardly favourable to the South American races.

If we wish to gain some idea of the true causes of this diversity of destiny between the peoples of North and South America, we must study the origin of each and the particular form which colonisation has assumed in each case; forms imposed by the force of historic facts rather than by the will of man.

The Anglo-Saxons arrived in the American coasts and founded, in the first half of the seventeenth century, such cities as Boston, Charleston, Philadelphia, etc., when America had already been discovered and explored by the Spaniards a century and a half before. These colonies were formed of groups of families who had abandoned their mother-country to seek a new one, where they could live and labour free from the persecutions of religious and political intolerance.

When these colonies attained a certain fame, the surplus of the overflowing populations of Europe was naturally attracted by these virgin and fertile lands, relatively near at hand though across the ocean. Thus there formed a current of immigration which rapidly peopled America and utilised the great natural resources of its enormous territory. In this way was gradually formed a new people, which was to a certain extent a development of the various nations from which it originated, and which preserved their customs and their political and social habits.

These colonists began by buying land of the native tribes; but, increasing in numbers and in strength, they found it more convenient to rob them, thus forcing the Red Indians to retreat towards the north and west; and for reasons of self-respect, or on account of religious principles, no deliberate attempt was made to mingle with the indigenous population.

This form of colonisation, whose prime cause was to be found in persecution, not in the execution of a preconceived plan, resulted in the existence, at the end of the eighteenth century, of thirteen colonies peopled exclusively by men of the white races, originally natives of the countries of Northern Europe, who had transported to this new soil their manners and customs, their social and political laws, their liberal traditions and their economic system, so that from the moment they declared themselves independent, they were able immediately to form a single nation, united by all the ties which make for the cohesion of a people.[11]

[Footnote 11: The late Signor Pellegrini, in his anxiety to defend the Latin races, is not strictly impartial. At the time of the Declaration of Independence the population of the States was very largely English (with a substratum of Dutch in New York) but of different periods; and these different periods preserved their own traditions. The difference between the New England Quaker and the Kentucky trapper, or the Virginian fox-hunting squire, and the Dutch patroon or Highland crofter, was as great as any to be found among the Latin races, if not greater, and was largely a difference of arrested periods as well as a racial and a social difference. The result was that Federalism was accomplished peacefully only by the genius of Hamilton.——[TRANS.]]

To attain such progress, to reach the summit on which they rest to-day, the United States had only to persist in the same path, to follow the same groove, and the incontestable merit of this people and of its great statesmen is that they have been faithful to the principles of liberty and equality which they inherited from their ancestors, the venerable “conscript fathers”; principles which they ratified in the admirable Constitution whence this vast political organism has derived its cohesion, its vitality, and its strength.

How different were the origins of the peoples of Latin America! The Spanish sailors did not cross the ocean like the passengers of the _Mayflower_, or the companions of Penn, seeking solitary shores, known though distant, where they might establish a home, there to live and labour in peace and liberty.

The Spanish navigators, as brave as they were audacious, launched themselves into the unknown, guided only by their own genius, in order to discover a world, to conquer new lands, new subjects, for their country and their king; and in the pursuit of that heroic dream they performed exploits which to this day amaze us by their audacity.

These were the famous _conquistadores_, whom one of their descendants, José Maria Hérédia, has celebrated in the admirable lines:——

“As from the natal charnel-heap a flight
Of falcons: sick of purseless pride at home
By Murcian Palos pilots and captains come
With brutal and heroic dreams alight:

They seek the fabulous ore that comes to birth
And ripens in Cipango’s distant mines,
And the trade-wind their long lateens inclines
Toward the dim limits of the Western earth.”

These first colonisers of Spanish America——soldiers, missionaries, officials, adventurers, men without family——seized upon a whole continent, which they discovered and conquered at the price of unheard-of exertions. They parcelled out the land, subjugated the native tribes, reducing them to servitude in their famous _encomiendas_, or putting into experimental practice, as in the Jesuit missions, theories of collectivism, which is to-day regarded as a modern invention. It was a true feudal system that arose in the new world.[12]

[Footnote 12: It must be remembered, in comparing North with South America, that the former also had its period of extensive slavery, its plantations worked by convict labour, and for a period an almost feudal system.——[TRANS.]]

If, on the one hand, the native races were initiated into the doctrines of Catholicism in exchange for their liberty and independence, they did not, on the other hand, receive from their masters any political instruction, but preserved their habits of submission and passive obedience to their chief, which constituted their sole political tradition.

When, therefore, the day of emancipation arrived, and this enormous colony, in arms against its oppressors, declared itself independent, and divided itself into several Republics, the great mass of the population consisted of Indians converted to Christianity, and half-breeds, who preserved their habits unchanged and had no ideas, no traditions, other than that of government by individual might.

Only in the urban centres did the white race, with its conception of political institutions, predominate. And when the new Government wished to organise itself in an independent manner, the two tendencies and traditions, which correspond to two distinct mentalities, violently clashed, and began that long struggle, not wholly terminated even to-day, of which the history is the history of anarchism in America.

Another factor that also procured this conflict was the colonial political economy of Spain, which was not only a mistake, but a mistake of the period; an error which closed the whole continent to commerce, shut it away from the outer world, and maintained these masses of humanity in ignorance and isolation, in order to exploit them simply as a machine, or as an element of wealth for the service of their masters.

The problem which confronted the politicians of South America when they found themselves face to face with this new people, whom they must of necessity organise, was thus very different from, and far more difficult than the problem which the founders of the North American Union had to resolve.

These native masses obeyed with all their might and with the utmost enthusiasm so long as it was a question of fighting against the foreign troops and of winning their independence; but, victory once assured, guided by their leaders, the _caudillos_, most of whom were white, they revolted against the tendencies which began to show themselves among the Europeans of the cities, and in many places succeeded in dominating over them by force of numbers, thus preventing all political and administrative progress, and maintaining, as their form of government, the personal, arbitrary, and irresponsible power of a leader, that is, of the _caudillo_.

The written Constitutions which these people had established upon declaring their independence, and which were inspired by the Constitutions of the United States or the Swiss Republic, were thus reduced to a dead letter, as they were in complete contradiction to the political habits of the mass of the populace, and required, for their application, a political education which the peoples of South America did not possess. A whole century had to elapse before immigration, material interest, and the influence of civilisation, were able slowly to modify the political mentality of these peoples, by reinforcing and popularising the principles of government, extirpating the elements and suppressing the causes of the anarchy which had so long disturbed them.

Among the nations which experienced these beneficent influences, the Spanish colony known as the _Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata_, to-day the Argentine Republic, was quite specially favoured. Its territory, composed of immense prairies, the celebrated Argentine “pampas,” stretching from the sea-coast and the river littoral, offered the unique wealth of their fertility and their climate. There were no mines of gold or silver to arouse the greed of adventurers; they came to these regions only to traverse them, and so to proceed immediately to the gold-bearing regions of the distant Cordilleras.

Moreover, the first colonists who established themselves on the banks of the Plata, repulsed and expelled by the natives, were forced to abandon a certain number of cattle and horses, which found in these prairies an admirable opportunity to live and multiply in freedom, until finally they formed the immense herds of wild cattle and horses, whose hides became the principal wealth and the chief article of commerce of these regions.

Although the Rio de la Plata had no commercial relations with the outside world, and was only able to trade with Cadiz, the immensity and the solitude of its shores favoured a contraband trade; to such a degree that English, Dutch, and Portuguese smugglers came from all parts to exchange their manufactured articles for the hides of these wild herds.——This it is that explains how Buenos Ayres was able from the outset to become a great commercial centre, in which the trades dependent upon stock-raising quickly occupied the first place.

Commercial activity, the development of communication by sea, the fertility of the soil, the climate——all contributed from the early days of emancipation to attract European immigration. This immigration, like that which peopled the America of the north, was composed of families who came to settle, to form new homes, to labour. These families, following the example of their predecessors in the United States and for the same causes, did not mingle with the native tribes, but struggled against them, and forced them to abandon their lands and fly to the south, until at last, after a long and cruel struggle, they almost completely disappeared.

This immigration increased year by year, and to-day the great majority of the population of the Argentine Republic——a population now exceeding 5 millions——is of European origin.

That this immigration, which flows from all the nations of Europe, has been the chief agent of the present prosperity of the Argentine, and is the condition of its future greatness, is an incontestable fact. One of our leading statesmen has declared, of America, that “to govern is to people”; and this aphorism has remained a fundamental principle of government. To recognise the full force of this assertion, we must reflect that these unusually fertile prairies, situated in a privileged climate, near the sea-coast or on the banks of enormous rivers, navigable even by transatlantic steamers, need nothing but human labour to transform them, with less effort and at less expense than anywhere else in the world, into immense fields of wheat or maize, or pastures of lucerne, covered with herds, able to produce bread and meat enough to feed all Europe.

Accordingly the agricultural production of the Argentine Republic is limited only by the number of hands which lend themselves to its exploitation; in which we have a repetition of the very phenomenon which has served as the foundation of the development of the United States.

Under these conditions the progress of the Argentine Republic is a necessary and inevitable fact, which extraordinary circumstances might for a time retard, but which nothing could finally arrest; except, indeed, one could restrain the daily exodus of fresh swarms from the human hive, which abandon the old soils, exhausted by production, to seek out the fertile, virgin, and unpeopled areas of the globe.

Hitherto this exodus has been directed principally to the United States; attracted thither by a host of special and favouring circumstances. But the time is rapidly approaching when North America in turn will find herself populated to the saturation point, and will no longer be able to receive the hosts which benefited her formerly. The laws of the United States are already beginning to impose conditions upon immigration which are constantly becoming more severe; and these laws are imposed by the two great political forces——the superior social classes and the lower classes of the people.

The upper classes, Anglo-Saxon in origin, fear that contemporary immigration, coming as it does from peoples of alien race, from the south or east of Europe, may modify or enfeeble those great moral and political qualities to which they attribute the greatness and prosperity of their nation. On the other hand, the federated workers see in these new arrivals, healthy and vigorous, but having fewer needs, a source of dangerous competition, which may have a disastrous influence on conditions of labour and payment.

The stream of irrigation which is now setting in towards the United States, and which amounted in numbers to 800,000 in the year 1904, must necessarily therefore, as time goes on, turn aside in other directions, and as it will nowhere meet with more advantageous circumstances than in the Argentine, it will flow thither as it flows already, but in greater and greater numbers, resulting in a development of wealth and power superior to any hitherto known.

Some persons, however, formulate certain reservations as to the consistency and the political and social value of nations formed by these human inundations, composed as they are of men of different races, having neither the same language, nor the same religion, nor the same customs; they doubt whether this new Babel can give birth to a national spirit sufficiently vigorous to impress a character of political and moral unity upon these new recruits.

In order to prove that these fears are ill-founded, we have only to take the practical example furnished by the United States. Into this vast national crucible there poured, from the outset, the stream of emigration from Great Britain, Holland, France, and Spain; later came Scandinavians, Germans, Lithuanians, Poles, Hungarians, Italians, Syrians and Arabs. From the fusion of all these elements has issued a new race, homogeneous and powerful, with a strong national spirit which is known as “the American spirit,” and under that name has won the respect of the world. This result is neither accidental nor due to special antecedents; it is the consequence of a natural evolution, ably and intelligently directed.

The European law, which attributes to the son the nationality of his father, may have had its justification in the past; to-day it is maintained only by force of tradition.

Nationality and love of country are only an extension of the love of the family and the home; and these sentiments cannot, any more than others, be forced upon one by law. There can exist for a man only the home and the family in which he was born and bred. Doubtless he will feel himself attached to the home of his forbears by ties of sentiment and respect; but all the roots of his intimate feelings bind him to the home and the family into which he was born; they are in his blood, and thence he has received the first impressions which mould his character and imprint those characteristics which form his personality.

It is the same with nationality and the mother-country. It is useless to attempt to persuade either child or man that his country is not that in which he was born, in which he has grown up, but another distant country which he has neither known nor seen.

The difference of origin among the children of immigrants of different nationalities disappears in childhood, through the community of life in school and workshop; through sharing alike in work and play; and it is in the earlier years of life that the mind is moulded by its surroundings; in these years develops that feeling of attachment to the soil, of union, solidarity, and common memories, that shows itself later in an ardent patriotism. Unity of language necessarily favours the process of fusion, and explains the fact that the descendants of immigrants of different race, religion, language, habits and traditions, are able to fuse so completely as to form a perfectly homogeneous population, one in mind and in sentiment, thus constituting a new nationality, young, vigorous and strongly individual.

We have thus under our eyes a practical example of the unity of the human race. The hazards of life, in the course of centuries, having dispersed the primitive race throughout the earth, it has formed, under the influence of circumstances, new types, which in the course of time have met and mingled, to form new crosses in their turn, which as a matter of fact are only the modalities of a common primitive race.

The same phenomenon is being repeated in the Argentine, as in all the American republics, and the spontaneous and vital sentiment of nationality continually strikes the observer, who notes the pride with which a child born in Argentina, whether he be the son of a Spaniard, Frenchman, Italian, or German, affirms, when questioned, that his country is the Argentine.

Thus this Republic possesses all the requisite conditions of becoming, with the passage of time, one of the greatest nations of the earth. Its territory is immense and fertile, its surface being equal to that of all Europe, excepting Russia; it is capable of supporting with care at least 100 millions of human beings; almost every climate is to be found within its limits, and, consequently, it can yield all products, from those of the tropics to those of the polar regions. Its rivers and its mountains are among the greatest of the globe. As its maritime frontier it has the Atlantic, which brings it into contact with the whole world.

It is governed by institutions more liberal than those of any other nation, especially in all that affects the foreigner; it regards the influx of immigration with approval, and seeks to promote it. In proportion as its vast vacant spaces become peopled their value is increased tenfold, and production grows at an enormous pace; for a single family, by the aid of modern machinery, can exploit a larger area of soil, yielding a produce far greater than is required for its own consumption; a fact which explains the surprising rate at which the export trade has increased.

Such are the true causes of the prosperity of this country, as is proved, with abundant detail, by MM. Martinez and Lewandowski; and as these causes are not accidental, but fundamental and permanent, they should produce in South America the same results as in the North.

Granted that wealth and prosperity are essentially conservative elements, we have here a serious guarantee of political stability; the more so as the country has already passed the difficult age and is cured of the malady endemic to South America——anarchy.

It is also to be hoped that our Argentine politicians, taught by experience, and comprehending all the responsibilities imposed upon them by their noble mission——the work of racial regeneration and the betterment of South America——will succeed in making constitutional government an actual fact, by restraining and uprooting the tendency to personal power, which is the lamentable heritage of indigenous tradition.

It is a great nation that is rising on the brink of the twentieth century; the mistress of an enormous inheritance. Immigration and the increase of the birth-rate are furnishing it with the arms it requires; it lacks only those reserves of capital which, like all new peoples, it has not as yet had time to create.

In no country can European capital find a more fertile or advantageous field for its operations: a fact already well known in England; and one the authors of this book have wished to emphasise for the greater benefit of French capital. In this they serve the interests of France and, still more particularly, those of the Argentine Republic; and in the name of my own compatriots, as well as for myself, I take this opportunity of expressing my sincere gratitude.

C. PELLEGRINI.

THE ARGENTINE IN THE
20TH CENTURY

GENERAL PLAN AND METHOD OF THIS BOOK

Before commencing a study of the financial and economic situation in the Argentine Republic, it is important to decide at the outset as to the spirit in which this examination should be pursued, and the method most proper to such an inquiry. We tread upon a novel and peculiar field, and any too rigid comparison with the events of other countries might easily lead us to errors of appreciation.

Above all we must practise the philosophical principle _nil admirari_; we must be astonished at nothing, and abstain from all too absolute judgments. Although, as the figures of foreign trade will show, the progress of the country has surpassed all expectation, it is, on the other hand, almost impossible to foretell how far the results of one year will be ratified by the year following.

Like all young nations, the Argentine progresses on its path to the unknown by leaps and bounds; it is as yet in an unstable condition, in which the oscillations of prosperity are still of great amplitude and exceedingly sudden.

It is easy to discern the cause of this essentially unstable condition.

The Argentine, in its present phase, is an agricultural country, whose principal sources of wealth are cereals and stock-raising; the result is that each year the whole life of the country is affected by the harvest.[13] On the harvest depends, in a great degree, the movements of external commerce; it produces those sudden changes which occur from year to year, and which result occasionally in a variation of £8,000,000 to £12,000,000 above or below the average.

[Footnote 13: We use the word harvest here in its widest sense, but we must ultimately distinguish the results of stock-raising from those of agriculture, since they do not necessarily vary in the same direction.]

The harvest influences not only the exports, more than half of which consist of agricultural products, but has no less an influence on the value of importations.[14]

[Footnote 14: The value of the exports in 1907 was £59,240,874, and according to the official figures the products of agriculture amounted to £32,818,324.]

The national powers of consumption are, in fact, very intimately connected with the measure of the agricultural output; as the latter is bad or good, the home consumption absorbs more or fewer imported products. Thus the poor harvests of 1901 and 1902, which resulted in a fall of nearly £1,800,000 in the cereal exports, produced in 1902 a fall of £800,000 in the imports of iron and materials used for construction. The same depression was visible in the imports of textiles and beverages, and still more so in those of articles _de luxe_. The spending powers of the country being closely dependent on the facility of realising the products of the soil, it is easy to understand that in the case of a bad harvest or a poor market the consumers have no longer the same powers of purchase.

We find the same ups and downs in the figures of the Budget, the contributive powers of the country being influenced by the same causes as its consumption. If the crops are poor, the Budget of the following year shows immediate traces of the fact. Thus in 1902, the year of the bad harvest, the total receipts were estimated at £5,534,000 in paper, and £9,486,669 in gold; but the actual receipts were only £5,221,000 in paper, and £8,047,755 in gold; a deficit of £1,438,913 in gold.

At the same time the Customs receipts, which are the most variable item of the revenue, on account of their direct relation to consumption, have fallen from one year to another (as in 1903 compared with 1902), as much as £1,200,000 in consequence of the agricultural crisis.

There is an equally direct relation between the financial situation and the results of the harvest. If the commercial balance is favourable, the Argentine becomes a creditor of foreign countries by the excess of its exportations, and the resulting payments in gold, after the deductions of the interest on the foreign debt, increase the proportion between the metallic currency and the monetary circulation in general.

As these few examples prove, the prosperity of the country is subordinated to the result of the harvest; the latter gives the measure of all improvement, all progress of a financial and economic order. Unlike the ancient European nations, the Argentine Republic has no reserves of accumulated capital behind it, so that it can live on its own savings in times of crisis. Its commerce and its industries depend almost exclusively upon its agricultural yield, and share all the latter’s vicissitudes.

All depends on the value of the soil, the basis of public and private wealth. The power of expenditure which follows a good harvest may contribute towards proving personal property, but the latter remains always strictly related to the agricultural yield and general produce of the soil, and does not constitute an easily-realised reserve.

For the rest, we must recognise that, as a rule, this capital does not remain inactive, and is as little as possible sterilised by investment in the public funds. Those who possess available cash, in the shape of revenue from a large estate, usually employ it by increasing their stock of cattle, or in reclaiming more land, or by investing it in other estates; so that all that comes from the earth returns to the earth, and goes to increase its yield.

The peculiar situation of this great agricultural country, which constitutes at once the strength and the instability of the Republic, shows us in what spirit and by what method it should be studied. All depends upon the yield of the soil, for this is the great dispenser of the national wealth; it is therefore the agricultural system that we must examine first of all, if we wish to arrive at a solution of the problems arising from the present condition of the Argentine or predict its future.

To follow out this general plan, we must consider the country first of all from two standpoints: we must examine into its production and its markets or outlets, in order to learn the true conditions of its existence, the value of its soil, and its sources of revenue.

We shall then proceed to examine its administrative machinery, showing how the Argentine lives and progresses as a nation, and to analyse its financial and monetary organisation with reference to the economic situation.

The two portions of this scheme are closely connected, and their study must lead us to the same conclusion, that the Argentine is a nation in a state of growth, and, like all young nations, still uncertain of its first steps; but it is animated by a spirit of initiative, and urged by the breath of progress, which may lead it to a high destiny among the great productive countries of the earth.

THE ARGENTINE NATIONALITY[15]

Is there an Argentine nationality, and what is its significance in
respect of the territory it occupies?——The formation of this
nationality.

An examination of the qualities of the Argentine people.——Sense
of progress; remarkable faculty of assimilation: character
essentially practical.——The fusion of the Latin genius with
Anglo-Saxon energy.

The contrast between the political world, with its instability and
lack of organisation, and the economic world, which manifests
intense vitality and national progress.——The necessity of
developing the national idea, and of raising it above material
questions.——The slow elaboration of a new race born of the
various elements of immigration.

[Footnote 15: We must here explain that the Argentine possesses two currencies: the piastre or dollar, whose value is 5 francs, and the paper piastre, which by the law of conversion is equivalent to 2 francs 20, or 1s. 7·2d.

As for weights and measures, the decimal metric system has been adopted. In surveying large areas, the square league is occasionally employed as unit, which contains 2500 hectares, or 5628 acres = about 9-1/2 square miles.

We should also explain that the Argentine Republic, of which the Federal capital is Buenos Ayres, is divided into fourteen autonomous Provinces and ten national Territories. The Provinces, in the order of population, are as follows: Buenos Ayres, Santa Fé, Córdoba, Entre Rios, Corrientès, Tucuman, Santiago de l’Estero, Mendoza, Salta, Catamarca, San Juan, San Luis, La Rioja, and Jujuy.

The national Territories are: La Pampa, Misionès, Nequen, Rio Negro, Chaco, Formosa, Chubut, Santa Cruz, the Andes, and Tierra del Fuego.]

To present a complete picture of the Argentine, it is not enough to describe its configuration, its great rivers, its climate, its population, its forms of agriculture, and the value of its soil; all this is a dead letter, and will by no means yield us the secret of the country’s future, unless we first resolve one question of a sociological character: Is there an Argentine nationality, and what does it signify in respect of the territory which it occupies? Could one, for instance, estimate the importance of the United States merely from the point of view of their agricultural and mineral wealth, without taking into account the work and the character of the admirable Anglo-Saxon race, which has adapted itself to American soil, and has succeeded in obtaining from it its full value?

And could we explain the fact that certain countries of South America, which also, thanks to their natural wealth, have all the elements of rapid development, have remained stationary, and hardly count as nations, if the question of race did not throw light on the mystery, showing us that with the most favourable factors of the soil, a ferment is essential to start the growth of the seed?

Concerning the Argentine, this then is the problem which we have to consider, if we wish to see further than the present moment, and to judge in what measure its progress may be consolidated and even accelerated. In other terms, we must understand whether the Argentine must depend upon a fortuitous grouping of individuals brought together by the various streams of immigration, and having no common tie but the desire to enrich themselves, or whether these various elements are destined to become fused, and in time to form a true nationality, with its own traditions, its own ideal.

This latter is naturally the end to be pursued by the Argentine Government, if it wishes to prepare for the future by making moral and material progress go hand in hand. Its _role_ is not to manage the country like a directing syndicate, but to direct all individual efforts, all initiative, and all other available forces, to the same national and patriotic end.

It was this idea that a President of the Republic, Señor Quintana, felt it his duty to enunciate, when, upon assuming the Presidential authority, he stated, in his inaugural message: “I am the head of a nation which has in America an ideal”; and he added: “There is one common characteristic among us that was discovered as early as the colonial period, in the magnitude of plans of campaign, in the clamour of intestine conflict, in the government of the constitutional period; it is, that we all bear in our hearts the sense of our future greatness.”

How far can these aspirations be translated into facts? That is a question we must examine seriously and with an absolutely unbiassed judgment.

We cannot study this question of the Argentine nationality in books; for a country which has been so rapidly carried away on the tide of material progress has but little time to examine itself. Neither has it been able to form a literature or a sociology which might reflect the dominant characteristics of the generation; it is only by an inquiry and an analysis of the facts that we can isolate this element of nationality from the various foreign elements which have contributed to its formation.

One factor that facilitates our task is the clear-sightedness of the Argentines themselves, who are the first to recognise, with abundant good-temper, their own shortcomings. They are almost exaggerated in their self-criticisms when depicting themselves; and our work has been cut out for us in avoiding too hasty generalisations and in softening certain too rigorous judgments, although these emanated from men who were certainly in a position to understand the tendencies of their generation.

One principle dominates the whole question: it is that which a contemporary historian expresses in these terms: “When peoples come into contact they begin by an exchange of their faults.” Such an observation might well apply to a people like the Argentines, who are not yet settled on their own foundations, and are constantly increased by immigration.

All the varieties of the Latin race have contributed to form this people: Spain and Italy have made the largest contributions, and France has also in her time contributed her share. The Argentine has even assimilated a Basque population, of especial interest on account of its aptitude for agricultural work, and its adaptability to its new surroundings.

Finally, the Anglo-Saxons have also entered the Argentine, to mingle with the Latin element, and have given great assistance in opening up the country, by setting an influential example of initiative, progress, and energy. This penetration of the Latin race, a little indolent and inactive as it is, by the energetic and progressive Anglo-Saxons, enables us the better to understand the good and bad qualities of the Argentine nationality.

In short, if we are to obtain an unbiassed view of the national physiognomy of this adolescent people, we must remember that its good qualities, like its faults, are the result of the commingling of the varied elements which have entered the country by immigration; elements that have mixed and reacted upon each other, so that their dominant characteristics have finally appeared in the Argentine character.

There is one gift which we cannot deny this people: intelligence, joined to a remarkable power of assimilation. It also has that gift of enterprise, that sense of progress, which are found in the Anglo-Saxon races, and which have found such magnificent scope in the United States.

A young nation, without a past, the Argentine is not impeded, like most of the Latin nations, by a load of custom, prejudice, and routine, hampering its motions and impeding its progress. Profiting by the experience of others, it knows how to adapt itself to the best; taking its good wherever it finds it. It creates nothing, invents nothing, but appropriates all new ideas, which find upon its soil the conditions favourable to a rapid expansion. It is, indeed, formed after the likeness of its own soil, which produces without effort and lends itself admirably to every kind of culture.

This sense of progress is certainly the most characteristic trait of the Argentine, and the one by which it is distinguished among the other Latin nations of South America. Uruguay, for example, which possesses a soil as rich, and offers the same facility of transport, has given no proofs of initiative and vitality to lead one to hope that she has really entered upon the path of progress. It is the same with Paraguay and many other States, which have not succeeded in accomplishing any of the changes demanded by modern civilisation.

The Argentine, on the contrary, has always known how to derive benefit from whatever source was available, thanks to the current of immigration which keeps it in permanent touch with foreign countries. It has also assimilated the inventions and the methods of more civilised nations, and has attracted men capable of applying them. At the head of the great administrations of the State, one often finds specialists from Europe or the United States, who bring the fruits of their experience, and increase the intellectual possessions of the nation. The departments of railroads, navigation, public works, and hygiene, thanks to these happy selections, offer every security of efficiency in operation.

One may say, it is true, that this is the result of foreign influence; but what does the origin of all these improvements signify in respect of the future, so long as they become incorporated in the life of the Argentine and contribute to its evolution? One thing which proves that the instinct for progress is at the heart of the national temperament is that it is found in the lower strata of certain public services in which the foreign element plays no part. The administration of the police, for instance, and that of the posts and telegraphs, to cite no other examples, are conducted with as great a regularity as in any European country.

Thus, while allowing that the initiative of all improvements comes from abroad, we must not overlook the fact that the Argentine has assimilated them with the utmost facility, and that this gift of assimilation forms to-day a valuable portion of the national patrimony.

Despite its eminently cosmopolitan character, which is a peculiarity of its development, the Argentine Republic has succeeded in retaining its own personality among so many diverse elements. It is the type of the modern nation, whose ideal is that of the United States——_business_. A man is _zonzo_ or _vivo_——a fool or more than capable——there is no medium.

From this point of view the Argentine is at the apex of its period; it has no use for abstract ideas or immortal principles; its ambition being above all to sell its corn and cattle and to enrich itself. Behind the agitation of the political parties there is no other object than this: to share in the exploitation of the country and to enjoy its wealth. The heroic period is over for the Argentine; its independence is to-day definitely assured; it pursues no dreams of conquest now, but seeks only pacific victories for its products in the great international markets.

Prosaic as the present generation is, it is not, from our point of view, completely without nobility; it loves its native soil and glorifies it; not, assuredly, after the fashion of Virgil saluting the Latin soil, fertile of heroes, but as a land productive of rich harvests, and the source of material prosperity. This it is that explains the powerful attraction which the Argentine exercises upon all those who have trodden its soil. The country progresses with such rapidity, the value of the soil increases in such proportions, that the most indifferent end by being drawn into the stream. Those who come to live here without any idea of final residence make up their minds to settle as soon as they hold the smallest parcel of property. When a man has lived some little time in the Argentine, and has watched the spectacle of its rapid development, he is quickly seized by the business vitality which forces him to take part in the great movement.

This love of the Argentine for his land may certainly have its noble side, but he knows nothing of the moving spirit of poetry which clothes that love in the old countries of Europe, where man becomes attached not only to the cultivable land, but to all the memories of the native village; the familiar hills and meadows, the old church, and all that puts us into communication with the soul of places. It would seem as though one holds more closely to the earth that demands the most labour, the greatest efforts, even the greatest disappointments.

No one was ever more attached to the land than the Boer, who lived at peace in an ungrateful soil, indifferent to the mineral wealth which it might conceal. It was this land, where he lived an independent life, that he defended so stubbornly; not the gold, which was yet the true wealth of the country.

The Argentine also has seen pass over its soil the same rude generation, having no other dream than independence. The “guacho” of old, a mixed type of the Indian and Spanish races, the true son of the pampa, was truly attached to the immense plain upon which he lived at the call of caprice, a wild rider in every sense. To-day the type tends to disappear, as civilisation, and more especially administration, everywhere make their influence felt; as the ancient virgin pampa is transformed into cultivable soil, bristling on all hands with barbed wire. As he was not easy to domesticate, nor break in to any continuous labour, the “guacho” has been supplanted little by little by the foreign farmer, the colonist; and to-day he is almost submerged by the wave of immigration which has invaded the country, and which forms now the major part of the population.

From the men of this new generation one must ask no other love for the soil than that which is born of the profits they draw from it. They can move indifferently from north to south, from east to west; the soil for them is everywhere the same, provided the harvest be good. But, apart from that, they nevertheless love this land of promise, and interest makes them its children.

From this generation, whose principal traits we have noted, it seems that we may in the future expect great things.

To be sure, if the world were to return to its old ideal, that of glory or imperialism, we hardly know what place the Argentine would find in the scheme of things. It is unsuited to a military policy; it has no ambition to measure itself with neighbouring nations, which are far more eager for adventure.

But if we stand on the economic plane, the only one which interests us, we must allow that this generation is well armed for self-defence in every field of the commercial struggle. From the fusion of the Latin genius with the Anglo-Saxon energy has issued a new product, extremely capable in business, full of practical sense, and very open to progress, which will be fully able to hold its own in a century in which money is the great instrument of domination. This race, formed haphazard of immigration, is yet the very race for Argentine soil; between the two there is a correspondence, an adaptation, as perfect as if it were the result of long-continued design.

To sum up: the Argentine nationality appears to a foreigner under two distinct aspects; there is its political side, characterised by instability and lack of organisation, and the economic side, in which an intense national life and progress are manifested. Will this truly abnormal situation, containing both very bad and very good elements, perhaps, terminate favourably, making of the Argentine people not merely a rich, but also a great nation? Will the development of public affairs, left so far to the hazard of politics, even reach the plain of our economic development? Will the Argentine nation eliminate, under the pressure of material progress, the leaven of anarchy left behind by a century of civil dissension? This is the secret of the future; this is the great achievement which remains to be accomplished in order to consolidate the present prosperity of the country.

In short, we must not lose sight of the fact that this prosperity has hitherto been less the work of man than of nature, which has been prodigal of her gifts to this fortunate land. This is a thought which has been expressed in a speech in the Argentine Senate, in which Senator Uriburu shows that Providence is always coming to the rescue by repairing the fault of the State.

“It is Providence,” he says, “which so opportunely sends us the rains to water our lands and to raise our marvellous crops; it is Providence that has given us the greatest Minister of Finance we have ever known, our fertile soil and our clear sky; the supreme Minister who looks after all our needs, who saves us from all difficulties, and who, despite our errors, continues to ensure the greatness of the Republic. Let man appropriate his work, but let him render unto Cæsar that which is Cæsar’s.”

And now if by some impossibility the situation were to change: if in spite of the enormous extension of cultivated lands a period of bad harvests were to follow the present period of fat cattle: would there not be reason to fear that the whole national edifice, founded as it is on prosperity, might become disintegrated, and crumble under the stroke of adversity? This is the peril we must indeed seek to avoid; it is for this reason that the intervention of a strong power seems necessary, in order to restrain the germs of evil brought by so many races, and to prevent the Argentine from falling back into the state of anarchy and revolution which for her is only a distant memory.

Taking even a more elevated standpoint, we may add that in order to amalgamate all the elements of immigration and to attach them to the country, through good and evil fortune, we need another solvent than personal interest or profit. To create a people it may suffice to give it a body, but to make it live it must also be given a soul, at whose breath the collectivity of individuals will be transformed into that moral unity which we call the nation. This is a question of prime importance in a country such as the Argentine, where the struggle for existence has taken a particularly keen form, which scarcely favours the development of disinterested sentiments.

It is for the State to develop among its people this national idea, and to turn all individual efforts to its profit. Its duty is to raise its authority above the medley of interest, to restrain ambition within a just limit by the influence of moral and patriotic ideas, and so to ensure the reign of justice and social peace, without which national prosperity will never be more than ephemeral.

In imagining, from this aspect, the formation of a nationality, we have no intention of criticising the country; still less do we deny the process of evolution which has gradually transformed its organisation. A nation is not created in a day, especially when it is a question of a country so young as the Argentine, which in less than a century has issued from the struggle for independence, and even to-day has hardly rid itself of the revolutionary spirit.

For a nation to become self-conscious, centuries must pass; traditions must be formed, and the great moral or intellectual forces of humanity——religion, science, literature, even poetry——must develop the sense of a collective life other than the life of business. And hitherto the Argentine has had no time to produce generations of thinkers, philosophers, and historians; still less poets. The most it has are statisticians, who give it the precise figures of her commercial balance.

We do not doubt, however, that, thanks to material progress, this slow elaboration of a new race will eventually be completed. In the first phase of her existence as a nation Argentina, according to the spirit of her Constitution, fraternally opened her doors to all who wished to inhabit her soil. No restriction was placed upon the entry nor on the permanent immigration of foreigners; on the contrary, legislation and social customs combined to favour immigration. The result is, that the new arrivals have regarded themselves as alien, in matters of economics and politics, to the nationality with which they have become incorporated; believing that their mission consisted solely in creating and circulating wealth, while regarding the solution of the great national problems with indifference.

But to-day the Argentine has entered upon a new phase; it must no longer merely receive, it must also incorporate all these elements of immigration, and, without awakening antagonism towards the foreigner, it must set to work to absorb him into the soul of the nation.

This faculty of assimilation is a virtue of the American soil. The United States have proved as much for North America, and it now remains for the Argentine to do the same for South America. The new generation of immigrants, having struck root into its hospitable soil, must live completely in the national life, absorbing those feelings of patriotism which animate the new citizen of the United States.

To give expression to these loyalist tendencies, we will confine ourselves to quoting the memorable words which were spoken in the Congress of Wisconsin, by an American congressman, born in Germany, the Hon. Richard Günther; words which were equally applauded and approved in Latin America. We shall perceive, through the very exaltation of his phrases, what unreserved devotion a naturalised foreigner may bring to his new country:

“We know as well as any other class of American citizens where our duty lies. We labour for our country in times of peace, and we shall fight for her in time of war, if ever such time arrive. When I say our country, I naturally mean our country of adoption, the United States of America. After passing through the alembic of naturalisation we are no longer Germans; we are Americans. Our attachment to America cannot be measured by the length of our residence here. We are Americans from the moment when we reach the American shore, until the day when we are laid to rest in an American grave.”