Chapter VI: The Plain of the Pampas (2)

Cattle-breeding was restricted for a long time by the difficulty of disposing of its products. The hides alone found ready buyers. The making and export of salt beef dates from the eighteenth century, and it was to help this industry that the expeditions to the salt-beds of the Pampa and the journeys of salters to the Patagonian coast were organized. From 1792 to 1796 no less than 39,000 quintals of jerked beef were sent from the Rio de la Plata to Havana. But the market for salt meat (_tasajo_) was always limited. It consisted only of the Antilles and Brazil, and the _saladeros_ never fully exploited the meat-producing capacity of the Argentine herds. The crisis of the _saladeros_ occurred before the time when the refrigerators began to compete with them. By 1889 there were only three left in the province of Buenos Aires.

Although the price of cattle was not very remunerative, and provided no incentive to improve the breeding; although the _saladero_ was not at all exorbitant, merely asking for animals in good condition, the improvement of the herd by introducing selected pedigree-breeders had begun about the middle of the nineteenth century. The Basque dairies established in the district near Buenos Aires sold pedigree-calves to the ranches, and these were used for breeding purposes.[93] About 1880 the advance of sheep-breeding pressed the cattle-ranches back and disputed the space with them more and more, within the ancient Indian frontier. The smallness of the market for cattle and their slight mercantile value were very favourable circumstances for the occupation of the new lands, thrown open at this date by the submission of the Indians. The herds which found no buyers were sent to the _campos de afuera_. The ranches developed very rapidly. Daireaux has very accurately described this period of pastoral colonization, and the starting of convoys that were intended to give a population to the west of the Pampa. Cattle were there several years before sheep. As a matter of fact, breeders do not regard cattle as having a value of their own. They are merely auxiliaries that must improve the pasture and prepare the ground for sheep. The cattle themselves are preceded by troops of half-wild horses which first take possession of the virgin field and begin the transformation of it.

[93] This is, in a special form, the first instance of
specialization, in the cantons of the Pampean region, in the
breeding industry, properly so called (producing breeders).

The number of cattle increases rapidly. In 1875 it was estimated that there were 5,000,000 head of cattle in the province of Buenos Aires. In 1889 there were 8,500,000. Since that date the variations have been comparatively slight. The Census of 1895 gives 7,700,000; that of 1908 gives 10,300,000; that of 1914 gives 9,000,000; and that of 1915 gives 11,300,000.[94] But the value of the cattle has gone up rapidly. The exports of live meat, which lasted from 1889 to 1900, were the beginning of the rise. It was strengthened when the refrigerators ceased to confine themselves to killing sheep and began to buy cattle. The exports of chilled or frozen beef increased after 1898. The value of them rose to 10,000,000 gold piastres in 1904, double that in 1909, and more than quadruple in 1914.

[94] The variations in number are less considerable for the
Pampean region than for the whole of Argentina. It is better
supplied with capital than the other breeding districts, and
can rapidly replace the losses caused by excessive export by
buying cattle in the adjoining provinces.

The difference between the price paid by the refrigerators for pedigree-cattle and the price of animals of creole blood, which the local market takes, hurries up the transformation of the herd. In order to watch reproduction and nurse the pasture, the ranches put up wire-fences. But the breeding methods are especially modified by the introduction of lucerne. It spread in the south of Córdoba and west of the Buenos Aires province from 1895 onward, and from 1905 onward in part of the San Luis province. There were already small lucerne farms in the Buenos Aires province. A description that was written at the end of the eighteenth century speaks of lucerne farms round the town which were reserved for feeding draught cattle.[95] But the area from which the cultivation of lucerne started at the close of the nineteenth century is the district of the Córdoba province that is crossed by the line from Rosario to Córdoba, completed about 1870 to Bellville and Villa Marina. The lucerne farms there were not created by the breeders, and the lucerne was at first intended for export to Rosario and Buenos Aires in the form of dry fodder. The trade in dry fodder has remained good there. The 1908 Census gives 128 square kilometres of lucerne for cutting in the Tercero Abajo department (Villa Maria) and 267 square kilometres in the Union department (Bellville).[96]

[95] Fernando Barrero, _Descripción de las provincias del Rio
de la Plata_ (published by the Argentine Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, Buenos Aires, 1911).

[96] Amongst the specialized industries connected with the
development of the lucerne farms we must mention the growing
of lucerne for seed, which has settled in the dry zones, where
the lucerne is not so much invaded by other species; for
instance, the district of Madanos, west of Bahía Blanca.

The lucerne spread southward and south-westward from this point; and the improvement of the herds kept pace with it. I have shown elsewhere how this improvement was checked north of a line along the course of the Paraná, the northern frontier of the Constitución and General Lopez departments, in the province of Santa Fé and on the Rio Cuarto, and in the Córdoba province, by the presence of the _garrapate_, which inoculates the cattle with a dreaded disease, Texas fever. The creole cattle are immunized against the _garrapate_, but pedigree cattle quickly succumb to it. In order to protect the southern zone, where the _garrapate_ does not reproduce, the Argentine Government imposes severe restrictions on the transport of cattle from north to south; the cattle have to have disinfectant baths at the frontier-stations. This cuts pastoral Argentina in two. While the Durham cattle of the south are intended for the refrigerators, the creole cattle of the north still supply the _saladeros_, which have disappeared from Buenos Aires, but survive on the Uruguay. Yet the advantages of crossing with European breeds are such that the northern breeders, in spite of the risk and the expense, have not given up all hope of accomplishing it. The transformation of the herd, however, is bound to be very slow. Pedigree breeders are brought from the south and kept in the stable. Their progeny, born on the spot, resist Texas fever better and can be put out to pasture. There has been more progress in the contaminated zone on the right bank of the Paraná than in Entre Rios and Corrientes. Pedigree animals have been introduced at Santa Fé, not only in the region of the colonies, but further north, in the extreme northern corner of the Pampa (San Cristobal department), colonized by ranchers from the north of Buenos Aires and the south of Santa Fé, who were ousted by the progress of maize. They have brought with them to the new lands the cultivation of lucerne and the methods they followed on their former property. At Corrientes, on the other hand, breeding is an historic industry. The staff of the ranches is indigenous. The pastoral traditions are unchanged.

When we study the variations in the numbers of cattle in different parts of the Pampa, by comparing the results of recent Censuses we find that the number has risen rapidly since 1895 in the whole of the eastern area, north of the Sierra de Tandil. The increase is particularly conspicuous north of the Rio Salado, in the dairy district. (Mean density in 1915, 40 to 60 horned cattle per square kilometre.) In the south-west region (wheat belt) the density has always been low (12 per square kilometre), and it shows no tendency to increase. In the north and western region of Buenos Aires (lucerne belt) there has been a rapid increase, especially between 1895 and 1908 (creation of the lucerne farms), and it has not been interrupted since (density 50 to the square kilometre). There is the same increase in the whole area of the lucerne farms in the Córdoba, Santa Fé, and San Luis provinces, where the herds doubled between 1895 and 1908. Only two regions have suffered a reduction: the agricultural area of the centre (Chacabuco, Chivilcoy), where there has been a decrease since 1895, and the maize district (north of Buenos Aires), where cattle-rearing did not diminish until after 1908.

* * * * *

Agriculture had begun to develop by the end of the eighteenth century in the district round Buenos Aires. D'Azara admits the enormous preponderance of breeding, but mentions that the right bank of the Paraná exported flour to the left bank, which was exclusively pastoral. Barrero also observes that between the belt of orchards and lucerne fields, about a league in width, which surrounded Buenos Aires, and the area of the ranches, which did not begin for six or eight leagues, there was an agricultural belt, the district of the _chacras de pan llevar_. The main crop was wheat, and the tillage was chiefly done in the rich soils at the bottom of the valleys, which are called _cañadas_ in the local dialect (cañada de Moron, cañada du Rio Lujan, etc.).

It was, however, not at Buenos Aires, but in the Santa Fé province, that modern agricultural colonization began in the nineteenth century. It goes back to the foundation (in 1854) of the colony of Esperanza, west of Santa Fé, from which it was separated by the strip of forest which follows the course of the Salado. European immigrants--Swiss, French, and Piedmontese--had settled there. The early years of colonization at Santa Fé were difficult, and the colonies did not begin to develop rapidly until after 1870. About that date we can distinguish three nuclei of agricultural colonization at Santa Fé. The first group of colonies was settled in the north, on the bank of the Paraná. In the centre the Esperanza group advanced steadily westward. A third group of colonies lay along the Central Argentine railway from Rosario to Córdoba.

The Esperanza colonists had at first grown maize, but the prosperity of the colonies was mainly due to wheat. Zeballos, who visited the colonies in 1882, describes them as a vast lake of wheat. Wheat predominates, not only in the department of Las Colonias, west of Santa Fé, where it survives in full strength, but further north, at Garay, whence it has since been displaced by flax and earth-nuts, and in the south, round Rosario, in the belt which is now given up to maize. It is for the wheat that the mills of Carcaraña and the granaries of Rosario have been built. The land sown with wheat at Santa Fé rose in 1882 to 102,000 hectares out of a total of 127,000 hectares of cultivated land.[97] By 1889 the area of wheat was quadrupled. It spread like a drop of oil, reaching Rafäela and Castellanos on the west. In 1895 the advance was still more rapid. Wheat-growing has crossed the Córdoba frontier, and spread round San Francisco and east of Mar Chiquita (departments of San Justo and Marcos Juarez). The agricultural regions in the centre of the Santa Fé province and those of the Central Argentine have met, and the wheat has invaded the whole of the San Martin department. It extends even south of the old colonies of the Central Argentine toward the south-west of Santa Fé, in the General Lopez department.

[97] The population of the Santa Fé colonies in 1882 was
52,000, of whom 12,000 were in the colonies of the San Javier,
north of the town of Santa Fé.

The 1908 Census shows a very different state of things. The density of the wheat-cultivation has continued to grow appreciably in the whole of the northern region, and also in the south-west of the province, at some distance from the Paraná (General Lopez department). On the other hand, it has been reduced in the adjoining district of Rosario (departments of Iriondo, Belgrana, Caseros, and Constitución), where maize-growing has developed. Maize has won part of the wheat belt.

----------------+----------------------+---------------------
| Wheat Area | Maize Area
| (in kilometres). | (in kilometers).
Departments.[98]|------+-------+-------+------+------+-------
| 1889 | 1895 | 1908 | 1889 | 1895 | 1908
----------------+------+-------+-------+------+------+-------
Las Colonias }|1,623{| 1,307 | 1,621 |} 82 |{ 24 | 31
Castillanos }| {| 1,845 | 3,425 |} |{ 4 | 7
S. Jeronimo }| 664{| 854 | 849 |} 65 |{ 15 | 264
S. Martin }| {| 964 | 1,884 |} |{ 22 | 35
_Iriondo_ }| 971{| 929 | 442 |} 65 |{ 81 | 641
_Belgrano_ }| {| 1,137 | 638 |} |{ 37 | 296
_S. Lorenzo_ }| 652{| 387 | 1,390 |} 178 |{ 150 | 1,169
_Caseros_ }| {| 1,139 | 468 |} |{ 83 | 970
Gal. Lopez }| 12{| 888 | 1,370 |} 51 |{ 373 | 1,558
_Constitución_ }| {| 227 | 165 |} |{ 575 | 736
S. Justo }| 12{| 732 | 2,345 |} 48 |{ 7 | 34
M. Juarez }| {| 1,504 | 1,442 |} |{ 53 | 92
----------------+------+-------+-------+------+------+-------

Restricted in the south by the extension of the maize belt, the region of the colonies has now a very distinctive character amongst the agricultural areas of the Pampa.

[98] The names of departments which belong in their entirety
to the maize region are given in italics. The department of
San Jeronimo straddles the maize region and the region of the
colonies. The General Lopez territory also extends, in the
south-west, far beyond the limit of the maize belt.

This originality is not so much in virtue of its crops (hard wheat and flax) as on account of the age of colonization and the division of property. Most of the colonists are owners, and estates of 50 to 200 hectares are the rule. The houses are comfortable; they are surrounded by orchards and kitchen-gardens. Moreover, the rural economy has been complicated, and it has assumed a familiar aspect for the European observer, owing to the introduction of cattle-rearing on a small scale by the farmers. The number of horned cattle doubled between 1908 and 1914 in the Castellanos department, and increased by a third in Las Colonias. The area of lucerne has extended in proportion. The farms have been multiplied on the low lands (_cañadas_), unsuitable for wheat, which the older colonists had disdained; but they are now regarded as the best bits of land. The recent rise in the value of land in the region of the colonies is connected, not with an increase of agricultural production, but a development of breeding. A few co-operative dairy societies have been established. In general, however, breeding is solely for the meat-market. The cattle-trade goes on very different lines from those of the large estates and ranches. It has remained in the hands of small dealers (Jews of Moïsesville).

Agricultural colonization in the Buenos Aires province was at first entirely independent of the Santa Fé colonization. The crops of the adjoining region of Buenos Aires never disappeared altogether. In the period to which Daireaux's description of the economic life of the Pampa refers (1880-89), the farmers disputed with the breeders a belt some ten leagues broad round the capital. But sheep-breeding left no place for agriculture in the next belt, which enclosed the first on every side, and extended almost as far as the Salado. Agricultural colonization had found free land only beyond the sheep-farm area, 170 miles west of Buenos Aires, round Chivilcoy, Chacabuco, and Bragado. As early as 1872 the Chivilcoy district produced 130,000 hectolitres of wheat; or nearly half the total production of the Buenos Aires province. In 1889 it formed a comparatively dense agricultural patch, the cultivated area being devoted half to wheat and half to maize.

Wheat. Maize.

Chivilcoy 307 kms. 399 kms.

Chacabuco 155 " 164 "

Bragado 147 " 261 "

At that date the whole west and south of the Buenos Aires province was exclusively pastoral. There were only two isolated nuclei of agricultural colonization. The first was round Olavarria, on the old Indian frontier, where Russo-German colonies had been established in 1878. The second was in the Suarez department, at the extreme north of the Sierra de la Ventana, where a group of French colonists settled five years later, at Pigüe.[99] The opening of the line from Buenos Aires to Bahía Blanca ought, one would think, to have prepared the way for agricultural colonization in this section. However, the 1895 Census shows a check to these first attempts at tillage in the south. It fell by one half at Suarez, and by three-fourths at Olavarria. The Pigüe colonists have succeeded in keeping to their lands, but those of Olavarria have abandoned them, and most of them have emigrated to the Entre Rios province.

[99] Wheat-area in 1889 in the Olavarria department, 319
square kilometres; in the Suarez department, 118 square
kilometres.

On the other hand, colonization has kept the land won in the district of the middle Salado, and it extends in a sporadic way toward the south-west and west. (Nueve de Julio, 252 square kilometres of wheat and 400 of maize: Veinte Cinco de Mayo, 84 square kilometres of wheat and 218 of maize: Junin, 197 square kilometres of wheat and 204 of maize in 1895). It has been maintained ever since, with slow progress, but without being ousted by breeding. This is one of the regions of the Pampa where the most different types of rural exploitation are mingled together. Agricultural colonization has been carried on both by small proprietors and farmers or tenants. Wheat and maize seem to be permanently associated, and the climate is equally good for both; the maize crop being the better if the summer is wet, and the wheat crop when the summer is dry. The two cereals follow each other on the same land, in rotation, the wheat being helped by the constant weeding and clearing which the maize requires. The colonists use oxen in the work, and fatten them afterwards.[100]

[100] Draught animals in 1908: at Chivilcoy, 17,000 cattle
and 10,000 horses; at Junin, 15,000 cattle and 6,000 horses;
at Nueve de Julio, 15,000 cattle and 6,000 horses. In the
region of the Santa Fé colonies: at Castellanos, 17,000 cattle
and 54,000 horses; at Las Colonias, 6,000 cattle and 35,000
horses. In the wheat belt (South of Buenos Aires): at Puan,
(no cattle) 29,000 horses. At the sierras (no cattle), 14,000
horses.

Agricultural colonization in the lucerne region dates from 1895 to 1905:

------------------+----------------+----------------
| Wheat Area | Flax Area
|(in kilometres).|(in kilometres).
+-------+--------+-------+--------
| 1895 | 1908 | 1895 | 1908
------------------+-------+--------+-------+--------
Buenos Aires: | | | |
Lincoln | 152 | 819 | -- | 100
Pehuajo | 106 | 727 | -- | --
Guamini | 20 | 528 | -- | --
Trenque Lauquen | 100 | 1,439 | -- | 59
Villegas | 4 | 812 | 1 | 84
Pinto | -- | 469 | -- | 60
Córdoba: | | | |
Gal. Roca | -- | 1,009 | -- | 89
Rio Quarto | 5 | 1,156 | -- | 172
Juarez Celman | 144 | 1,679 | -- | 183
Union | 373 | 2,548 | 12 | 316
------------------+-------+--------+-------+--------

Ihave shown how this was bound up with the development of the lucerne farms themselves. The extreme west of the lucerne belt (Pedernera department and San Luis) is the only place where the cultivated area was reduced. The contracts by which the ranchers entrust their lands to the colonists, on condition of returning them sown with lucerne, were gradually modified as the stream of colonization developed. The land was at first left to the colonist rent free, the rancher being paid by the creation of the lucerne fields. But in proportion to the increasing volume of the stream of immigrants, and the keener competition of the colonists, the rancher asked better terms. There are similar contracts in regard to the restoration of lucerne fields which have been worn out by pasturage, so that the land has to be ploughed up periodically. The men who clear the land in the lucerne belt have mostly been recruited in the district of the old colonies of Santa Fé, where the new generation had begun to feel the pinch. The crops which they raise during the four or five years of their lease are chosen without any idea of sparing lands which they are not to keep. Wheat succeeds wheat, and the first and last crop is often flax. The proportion of flax is lower only in the southern part of the lucerne belt. In the Buenos Aires province the colonist grows lucerne on his own account, either to sell as dry fodder or for breeding or fattening.

Colonization does not in these parts correspond with the division of property. Not only does the farmer not become the owner of the soil, but he does not live on it permanently; he is a veritable nomad. His house has a temporary look that strikes one at the first glance. The area cultivated is almost stable, if the region is considered as a whole. But cultivation passes periodically from one section to another, and its removals cause sudden alterations or crises in the railway traffic and the development of the urban centres.

The lucerne belt has been peopled by Santafecinos, and it has in turn sent colonists to the western agricultural belt at the foot of the Sierras de San Luis and de Córdoba. They have less suitable climatological conditions, but they have the advantage of greater stability, as the breeders do not dispute the land with them.

While agricultural colonization has been an aid to pastoral colonization in the north-west of Buenos Aires, it tends to displace breeding, or restrict its sphere, in the north-east and the south. Maize-growing started on the banks of the Paraná, where it was already paramount in 1889, between Campana (north of Buenos Aires) and San Nicolas. In 1895 it advanced up the Paraná as far as the Santa Fé province (Constitución) and spread over the interior for some sixty miles in the Salto department. In the next few years it made rapid progress toward the west and north-west, covering the departments of Pergamino, Rojas, and Colon, and part of General Lopez, San Lorenzo, and Constitución in the province of Santa Fé.

---------------+-----------------+------------------
| Maize Area. | Flax Area.
|-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+------
| 1889| 1895| 1908| 1889| 1895| 1908
---------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+------
Campana | 67 | 45 | 22| 15 | 31 | 17
Baradero | 339 | 260 | 291| 26 | 78 | 173
S. Pedro | 398 | 353 | 420| 5 | 73 | 235
Arrecifes | 124 | 126 | 155| 15 | 50 | 265
Salto | 16 | 326 | 236| 13 | 3 | 75
Gal. Lopez } | 51 |{373 |1,538| -- | 70 | 752
Constitución } | |{575 | 736| -- | 270 | 404
Pergamino | 168 | 160 | 340| 50 | 30 | 275
Rojas | 86 | 81 | 247| 4 | 23 | 275
Colon | -- | 44 | 126| -- | 14 | 78
S. Lorenzo | 178 | 150 |1,169| 11 | 36 | 450
Caseros | -- | 83 | 990| -- | 13 | 319
---------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+------

Export of Argentine maize on a large scale began in 1895. Flax-growing was not added to maize until 1900.

The heavy land requires a good deal of harrowing, and the weeding and harvesting of the maize give employment to a comparatively large staff. The estates are of moderate size, often only 50 hectares. Ownership was not divided at the period of colonization, the land, thanks to the breeders, having already acquired so high a value that the colonists could not buy it. On the lands which have been farmed out there has developed a rural, and often far from docile, proletariat. It is in the maize region that the worst agricultural strikes have taken place. The struggles of the owners and the colonists are the more prolonged because the sowing of the maize can be put back to the end of the spring without much harm being done. The adjoining zone of the Paraná produced some of the _maiseros_ who have scattered over the north-west. But the modern colonies include, in addition, a large proportion of immigrants who have recently landed from Italy and Spain. The maize growers do not mix with the wheat-growers. Each group has its own area.

The increase of wheat-growing in the south dates only from 1898:

------------------+----------------------------
| Wheat Area (in kilometres).
|------------+---------------
| 1895 | 1908
------------------+------------+---------------
Alsina | 45 | 1,296
Puan | 52 | 1,321
Suarez | 104 | 978
La Madrid | 75 | 249
Pringles | 13 | 724
Darrego | -- | 885
Terr. de la Pampa | -- | 1,731
------------------+------------+----------------

Wheat first spread along the line from Buenos Aires to Bahía Blanca, west of the Sierra de la Ventana, then in the coastal district, east of Bahía Blanca. These two wheat-areas became connected after 1904, when the opening of the direct line from Olavarria to Buenos Aires facilitated the development of the intermediate region (Pringles-Laprida). From Bahía Blanca it spread to the west and north-west along the Toay line, and southward as far as Colorado on the coast. In the whole area of the Central Pampa it is still possible to distinguish two strata of immigrants, of different dates, one superimposed upon the other: the sheep-breeders and the farmers. Round Toay the contrast between the two elements of the population is even more striking, because the first pastoral colonization, which dates from 1890, was to a great extent the work of creole _puntanos_ (from the San Luis province). The actual agricultural colonies, on the other hand, include recent European immigrants and colonists from other parts of the provinces of Buenos Aires and Entre Rios.

The yield of the wheat grows less and less as one goes westward. The harvest may be injured either by late frost or drought, or, especially, by hot winds which scorch the plants and blight the half-realized hopes of the farmers in the weeks just before the harvest. But the relative poorness of the return is compensated by the extent of the farms and the cheapness of labour. The harvest is often done with machines that peel and pack the wheat, and the workers are not compelled, as they are at Santa Fé, to wait for the threshing machine. The aridity does not permit flax-growing, but oats can be grown, especially between the Sierra de la Ventana and the Sierra de Tandil; and it is good to sow oats when the land has been impoverished by consecutive crops of wheat. Exports of oats through Bahía Blanca began in 1906.

The displacement of breeding by farming is less thorough than in the maize belt. Oats, sown about the beginning of autumn, serve for fodder. The animals are kept in the fields during the winter, and the oats are cut and put into the mill, without being threshed, as a reserve fodder. Moreover, the wheat farmers have themselves taken to rearing sheep, and the sheep feed in the stubble and fallow.

* * * * *

From this short account of the history of colonization we draw certain important conclusions. At the time when agricultural colonization began, it was admitted that farming was the best way to exploit the soil, and that the Pampa would sooner or later pass from the pastoral to the agricultural cycle; or, to use the local phraseology, that the "colony" would replace the ranch everywhere. This idea was wrong. The only area in which the facts seem to give it any support is the corn belt. The general rule is, on the contrary, that in its progress colonization develops a mixed type of exploitation, combining farming and breeding; either one alternates with the other in a sort of periodic rotation, as in the lucerne area, or both proceed together, the farmers including breeding amongst their occupations, as in the district of the Santa Fé colonies or in the wheat area in the south of the Buenos Aires province.

It seems, moreover, that the development of colonization depends not only upon physical conditions, but upon factors of a purely economic or social character, which the geographer must not overlook. It will be enough here to indicate the chief of these.

We have seen the part that has been played in the exploitation of the soil by groups of colonists who swarm from one area to another. Whether we think of the ranchers of the eastern part of Buenos Aires transplanting themselves to Córdoba or north of Santa Fé, the sheep-breeders moving westward, or the Santa Fé colonists settling in the lucerne area, they all take with them their own habits and methods of work, and they take time to adjust them to a new environment.

The colonist, whether breeder or farmer, is not left to himself. Colonization is sustained and directed by speculation in land, and is influenced by it. Speculation discounts the work of the colonist, and attaches to the land a value which is not based upon the revenue it has produced, but upon that which the speculator calculates that it may produce in the future. If the speculator is audacious, he does not let himself be discouraged by initial bad experiences; it takes repeated checks to exhaust his optimism. The colonist, even if his farming accounts do not show a profit, may nevertheless gain something if the value of his land goes up. The increase of his capital conceals from him the smallness of his returns, especially as he can easily get advances on the value of his property from the banks, and this enables him to draw upon his wealth every year.

Speculation is concerned with new lands on the fringe of the area already colonized, where the soil is, as a general rule, already in the hands of the exploiters themselves. The speculators, having paid a high price for these lands, try to organize the development of them. It is partly owing to their influence that colonization continuously enlarges its domain, instead of concentrating its labour in the older districts where it might sometimes be more productive. In fine, speculation in land has a profound influence on the conditions of colonization, making it more difficult for the colonist to buy the land he is developing. The owner who grants him the use of the land means to keep for himself any increment of its value. He rents, but he will not sell.

Thus the history of colonization cannot be separated from the traffic in land. The special features of this traffic in the Pampean region--its concentration at Buenos Aires; the creation of a land-market resembling a stock market; the practice of selling on the instalment plan, which enables small capitalists to enter the market; the repeated transfers of pieces of land which the buyers have never seen and which they know only from plans--are one of the most original aspects of modern Argentina. They are partly due to a fact of a geographical nature--the uniformity of the Pampean plain, on which every piece of land is worth about as much as the adjoining piece.

Colonization is easy and rapid in proportion as it requires less capital and labour. The expansion of breeding in the west between 1880 and 1890 was facilitated by the low market price of cattle at that time. Breeding has the advantage over farming of not needing so large a staff, but it requires a larger capital. Of the crops, assuming that the conditions of soil and climate are equally favourable, wheat is better than maize for colonization, because the preparing of the soil and the harvest can be done more speedily, and the same number of hands can plant a larger area with wheat than with maize.

The action of the Argentine Government and the provincial authorities has been restrained, apart from the earliest period of the establishment of the Santa Fé colonies, both as regards the securing of immigrants, the distribution of lands, and the administration of the colonies.[101] Colonization has been, on the whole, a private affair. The work of organizing colonization has at times been undertaken by the proprietors themselves; they leased pieces of land and got a good price for them, at the same time increasing the surplus value of the plots they kept for themselves by promoting the increase of population. Sometimes it was undertaken by Colonization Companies, which bought land to divide and sell. More frequently it was undertaken by merchants who advanced credit to the colonists they settled, on condition that the colonists bought what they needed of the merchants, and entrusted them with the sale of their crops. The migration of the Santa Fé colonists was partly due to, and sustained by, a corresponding migration of merchants who had acquired wealth in the older colonies, and who thus got a larger body of customers. The merchant who organizes colonization often acts as the intermediary between the owner and the colonist, guaranteeing the owner a fixed rent for his land and receiving so much per cent. of his harvest from the farmer. This system is very widespread in the corn belt, but it is found all over the plain of the Pampas. It tends to disappear when the colony is older and deeper-rooted, as the colonist gradually earns his independence; he buys his lease, his equipment, and his furniture, and controls the sale of his own crops. In the districts where he has not become owner, the leases are generally variations of two types: farming leases, where the colonist has capital enough for working, and renting leases, where the capital is provided by the owner or the middleman.

[101] The Agricultural Centres Law, passed in 1887 by the
province of Buenos Aires to encourage colonization, has
not had good results. By the terms of this law, owners
who professed themselves willing to devote their lands to
colonization received an advance on the value of the lands
in the form of mortgages, the interest and repayment of the
mortgage being charged to the colonists. Many owners took
advantage of the law, but, after a pretence of colonization,
kept the ownership of their lands.

Lastly, colonization can make no progress unless it finds markets on which it can put its produce. Up to the present western Europe has been the chief market for the wool, leather, meat, and cereals of the Pampean region; tropical America absorbs part of the output of the _saladeros_, flour, and dry fodder; and North America has recently begun to compete with Europe for wool, leather, and frozen meat. The facility with which the products of the Pampa have found their way into the world's markets, as is seen in the comparative stability of the returns, explains the continuous advance of colonization and the short duration of the crises which have disturbed it.

The home market, however, has had an importance in connection with colonization that must not be overlooked. When wheat-growing spread at Santa Fé the crop was at first devoted to supplying Buenos Aires, and as late as 1883 Zeballos thought that the essential result of agricultural colonization was the fact that Chilean flour was beaten off the Argentine market. Even to-day the districts on the outskirts of the cereal area depend upon the home market. The Villa Mercedes mill supplies Mendoza. Córdoba and Santa Fé send their flour to Tucumán. The price of cereals still shows slight fluctuations in these parts as compared with prices in Buenos Aires.

_Table of Exports of the Chief Products of the Pampean region_ (_in thousands of tons_):

---------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------
| 1901 | 1905 | 1910 | 1913 | 1914
---------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------
Wheat | 904 | 2,868 | 1,883 | 2,812 | 980
Maize | 1,112 | 2,222 | 2,660 | 4,806 | 3,542
Flax | 338 | 654 | 604 | 1,016 | 841
Flour | 71 | 144 | 115 | 124 | 67
Wool | 228 | 191 | 150 | 120 | 117
Salted hides | 28 | 40 | 61 | 65 | 63
Dried hides | 26 | 24 | 29 | 21 | 14
Chilled beef | 44 | 152 | 253 | 306 | 368
Chilled mutton | 63 | 78 | 75 | 45 | 58
---------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------

The heading "cereals" appears in the statistics of Argentine
exports in 1882. In 1900 the value of the agricultural produce
exported is equal to that of the products of breeding. In 1904
it is higher.

Pastoral colonization, again, has not been entirely independent of the home market. Martin de Moussy says, it is true, that the area which sent the products of breeding to Europe in 1865 extended as far as the Sierra de Córdoba. But this statement needs correction. The hides from the whole of this zone were, in point of fact, sent down to the ports on the Rio de la Plata, but live animals were sent to Chile from the whole of the north-west of the Pampean region. It was for the purpose of selling cattle to Chile that ranches were multiplied about 1860 in the neighbourhood of Villa Mercedes and lower down, on the Rio Quinto. Jegou's description shows that even in 1883 the breeders of the San Luis province devoted themselves exclusively to supplying the Chilean market.[102] Buyers from Chile and the Andean provinces still visit Villa Mercedes, and until a recent date they came to Villa Maria, in the province of Córdoba. The Santa Fé ranches found their customers, until the opening of the Córdoba line (1870) amongst the _troperos_, who bought draught oxen for their waggons. The loss of these customers and the crisis that followed are one of the reasons why agricultural colonization met with so little resistance on the part of the breeders, and was able to take root so easily at Santa Fé. In the San Cristobal department the breeders who settled there after 1890 found their first market in the _obrajes_ of the neighbouring forest. The opening of the railway to Tucumán afterwards enabled them to send their cattle to the provinces of the north-west. The Buenos Aires buyers were late in this remote canton of the Pampean plain. They did not arrive until 1911.

[102] A. Jegou, "Informe sobre la provincia de San Luis,"
_Ann. Soc. Cientifica Argentina_, xvi. 1883, pp. 140-152,
192-200, and 223-230.

The importance of the Pampean region itself as a market of consumption grew in proportion to the increase of its population. The extent to which it absorbs the products of breeding and agriculture varies a good deal. For some of them it is paramount. Horse-breeding, for instance, which is still one of the great industries of the Pampa, has never contributed to the export trade. It is the same with regard to potatoes, which are concentrated in two strictly limited districts, round Rosario and north of the Sierra de Tandil. Only a small part of the dry fodder is exported. As regards cereals, a comparison of the statistics of production with the statistics of export shows that the home consumption is about one-third of the production. It is almost nil for flax, and nearly fifty per cent for wheat.

The average of production and export for the years 1912, 1913, and 1914, in thousands of tons, is:

------------+--------+--------+-------+-----------------
| | | | Total
| Wheat. | Maize. | Flax. |(including Oats).
------------+--------+--------+-------+-----------------
Production | 4,241 | 6,398 | 931 | 12,662
Export | 2,140 | 4,227 | 790 | 8,038
------------+--------+--------+-------+-----------------

As the chief centres of consumption are the ports themselves, it follows that the commercial currents that have to supply them are confused with the currents which maintain the exports. The exchanges between the various regions of the Pampa are more interesting to the geographer. In their tendency to specialize, these regions have ceased to be self-contained, and they have to look to adjoining regions. The feeding of the mills necessitates the transport of wheat in different directions. The chief mills are at Buenos Aires, where they are suitably located to work both for the home market and for export; and the mills in the interior have some difficulty in competing with them. Some of these, however, are still active. They mix hard wheat, bought in the district of the Santa Fé colonies, with the soft wheat that is grown in the middle and south of Buenos Aires province.

But this inter-regional transport of cereals is a small thing in comparison with the transport of cattle. The extension of the lucerne farms has developed the fattening industry in many districts, while others still confine themselves to breeding in the ordinary sense, and they feed the other centres. The most specialized fattening district is that of Villa Mercedes and the western part of the lucerne belt, while the eastern part of the province of Buenos Aires and Entre Rios are still areas of production. The differentiation of the pastoral zones can be gathered from a study of the statistics. According to the 1908 Census, milch cows represent 53 per cent. of the whole of the cattle in all the departments which form the heart of the breeding area east of Buenos Aires, and only 45 per cent. in the departments of the north-west of Buenos Aires and south of Córdoba and in the Pedernera department of San Luis, where fattening is common.

According to the 1914 Census oxen are 24 per cent. of the herd in the same departments of eastern Buenos Aires; 24 per cent. also in Entre Rios; and the proportion rises to 31 per cent. in the lucerne area. Dolores department (eastern Buenos Aires) has 64 per cent. milch cows and 21 per cent. oxen. Pedernera department (San Luis, in the lucerne area) has 49 per cent. cows and 38 per cent. oxen. General Roca department (Córdoba) has 48 per cent. cows and 34 per cent. oxen. Arenales (Buenos Aires) has 39 per cent. cows and 46 per cent. oxen.[103]

[103] For Argentina as a whole the percentage is: milch cows,
55 per cent.; oxen, 26 per cent.

Oxen intended for the refrigerators are bought either on the ranches or at Buenos Aires, where beasts in good condition are consigned to buyers, but oxen for fattening are bought at fairs which are held periodically in the towns of the interior. Another transaction at these fairs is the trade in pedigree breeders. The best known of them is held at Villa Mercedes (province of San Luis), where 8,000 oxen are sold every month. At the Mercedes fairs one may see Durham steers from the east of Buenos Aires which are to be fattened and sent back to the refrigerators or the slaughter-houses of Buenos Aires. There are also creole cattle from the north of the San Luis province and Rioja which will later be eaten in Mendoza or in Chile. There is, in fact, on the western frontier of the Pampa no line of demarcation corresponding to that set up in the north by the limit of the area contaminated by the _garrapate_, separating the district of creole breeding from that of selective breeding. There is free communication here between the two zones, and the lucerne fields for fattening at Villa Mercedes are used in common by the breeders of the Pampa and of the bush.[104]

[104] A large number of the cattle which are to be fattened
are bought at the market in Buenos Aires; but these do not, as
a rule, come from the Pampean region.

_Cultivated Areas in the Argentine Republic_ (_in square kilometres, almost exclusively in the Pampean region_).

-----+--------+--------+--------+--------+---------
| Wheat. | Maize. | Oats. | Flax. | Lucerne.
-----+--------+--------+--------+--------+---------
1896 | 25,000 | 14,000 | -- | 5,600 | 8,000
1900 | 33,000 | 12,000 | -- | 6,000 | 15,000
1902 | 36,000 | 18,000 | -- | 15,000 | 17,000
1905 | 56,000 | 22,000 | 700 | 10,000 | 29,000
1910 | 62,000 | 32,000 | 8,000 | 15,000 | 54,000
1912 | 69,000 | 38,000 | 12,000 | 17,000 | 59,000
1913 | 65,000 | 41,000 | 11,600 | 17,000 | 66,000
1914 | 62,000 | 42,000 | 11,400 | 17,000 | --
-----+--------+--------+--------+--------+---------

_Exports for 1913, 1914, and 1915 at each port._

--------------+------+-------+-----+-----+-------+--------
|Wheat.| Maize.|Flax.|Oats.|Totals.|Average.
--------------+------+-------+-----+-----+-------+--------
{| 782 | 1,757 | 275 | 13 | 2,829 |}
Rosario {| 242 | 1,952 | 248 | 1 | 2,445 |} 2,716
{| 717 | 1,790 | 366 | -- | 2,875 |}
| | | | | |
{| 441 | 1,389 | 246 | 240 | 2,318 |}
Buenos Aires {| 297 | 906 | 55 | 78 | 1,537 |} 2,051
{| 511 | 1,349 | 342 | 96 | 2,299 |}
| | | | | |
{| 927 | 2 | -- | 462 | 1,393 |}
Bahía Blanca {| 241 | -- | -- | 222 | 463 |} 1,075
{| 921 | -- | -- | 442 | 1,364 |}
| | | | | |
{| 5 | 910 | 74 | -- | 989 |}
S. Nicolas {| 1 | 430 | 60 | -- | 492 |} 651
{| 5 | 420 | 48 | -- | 474 |}
| | | | | |
{| 333 | 358 | 14 | 170 | 876 |}
La Plata {| 160 | 51 | 16 | 49 | 278 |} 459
{| 152 | 45 | 6 | 16 | 222 |}
| | | | | |
{| 265 | 51 | 158 | -- | 476 |}
Santa Fé {| 7 | 23 | 128 | -- | 159 |} 278
{| 114 | 7 | 77 | -- | 199 |}
--------------+------+-------+-----+-----+-------+--------