Gordon Ross

“ Without the aid of domestic live stock the colonist can neither profit from the by-products and fallow of the land, nor can he restore to the soil the factors necessary to yield crops that are of themselves profitable.
Neither have we been careful to conserve and stimulate the settlement of a truly agricultural population on the land. We have exported the cult of sterility from the old world to the new. We have measured in this new world a field of production, not for the labourers, but for their European mandatories. ”

“ The matter is not that such silly methods of rack-renting, bonanza farming, land gutting and money lending have wrought their own confusion. It is the loss to the industrial community, to the rural population, and to the national thrift that lays bare the defects of the system. These are the fruits. We have to look into the ordering of our agricultural industry, not as determined by a “good year” or “bad year,” a “dry” or “wet” year, but by such a readjustment of our rural economy that the soil shall be no longer cultivated at a loss. It is necessary to unmuzzle the ox. ”

“ It is only in the theatre that the true native genius is allowed full play. Some of the real Argentine dramas and comedies are refreshingly delightful in their truth of characterization, sentiment and humour. All is of the soil, true to type and racy. But such things are only played at minor houses and in rural districts. Fashion knows them not, nor desires to know them, while Italian and French operatic and dramatic companies hold the boards of the leading theatres at prices which make it quite obligatory for all the best people to be seen frequently in their boxes or stalls. ”

“ We have built upon this most uncertain apex as a base, an inverted pyramid by which ocean and land carriers, merchants, brokers, speculators, and every branch of parasite commerce were to wax lustily. We may devise as we will rural credits, schools of agriculture, prophets of agrarian science, bellowing from the tail-end of peripatetic railway coaches, grants of seed, warrants, elevators, labour-saving machinery, and every other panacea to nurse the sick field labourer. ”

“ If they do not want new business or wish that old business should come back to them, there is no more to be said. And no more grumbling to be indulged in about the proportionate falling back of British trade in South America.
It may be objected that the United States, the full manufacturing activities of which remain unimpaired by the withdrawal of labour for military purposes and the output of which is not absorbed to so great an extent as it is with us for war material, have for that reason already a great start of Great Britain in all foreign markets. ”

“ Both Argentine and Uruguayan financial policies and methods are now sound. Argentina is prosperous with great future increase of prosperity before her, and Uruguay is now well on the high road to similar prosperity and as brilliant a future. Both are at peace with one another and their neighbouring Republics; all of whom are much too busy with their own interests and too democratic in spirit to dream of aggressive war. Added to which only Uruguay and Paraguay are small enough to need ever to covet further territory. ”

“ Europe needs bread and meat not only to fulfil her normal needs but also to replace her own interrupted production of these prime necessities of life. The River Plate countries can produce both in practically unlimited quantities; provided only that they can obtain the necessary labour a ghastly wastage of which is going on daily in Europe, some parts of which are consequently threatened with famine.
Surely if civilization be anything but a mere theoretic expression there will never be another great war! ”

“ A fashion which, if it last, will not be the least of the good which has come to Argentina from the European upheaval which has forced the River Plate countries to learn to rely on their own resources and individual efforts. Gone, already, are the battalions of motor-cars of very latest pattern with which every wealthy Argentine family has hitherto thought it necessary to its dignity to be provided—one each for father, mother and each son and daughter—economy is now “De Moda” and ostentation therefore become old-fashioned and bad taste. ”

“ The Belgian is a good worker, but he is much more “insular” than the British in his scorn of ways of living which differ from his own. He is not adaptable enough, in any way, to be put to live or work among the composite Spanish-Italian-American rural classes of the River Plate.
Probably both Argentine and Uruguayan will continue to work out his own salvation in this vital matter of attracting agricultural colonists to his land. Already the spirit of democratic unrest menaces privilege in Argentina, privilege which has already been destroyed in Uruguay. ”

“ In dealing with all the yet little known outlying parts of the vast Argentine Republic one is apt to become wearisomely tautological in one’s endeavours to give some true idea of their enormous latent natural wealth. Yet if one set out, ever so modestly, to bring some conception of them home to the Northern Hemisphere, one must tell the truth even at the risk of reiteration. And the truth is that for the future wealth of all these regions there is only one word, Incalculable.
The Territories of Neuquen and the Rio Negro will soon have irrigation on a vast scale and of most modern design. ”

“ Not without regret and tender reminiscences must we take farewell of a period of pastoral life, from whose remembrance all the hardships and bitterness have disappeared, only leaving to us the recollection of that patriarchal and wholesome life which the late Hernandez has so skilfully depicted in the picturesque language of the gaucho who tells his story by the fitful light of the fire on the kitchen hearth while his fingers caress the melancholy strings of the guitar. ”

“ Argentina knows her best interests much too well to seem even to offend against European ethical standards in anything which touches external policy or Foreign interests, however remote.
As for her internal politics, these have been, until very recently, at all events, left by common consent of foreigner [4] and native alike to the sweet will of the caste of professional politicians. These people intrigue for place and profit and have vicissitudes, triumphs and defeats, without the real wealth-producers of the country knowing or caring one way or another. ”

“ It is a very interesting fact for ourselves that after all large wars or revolutions in Europe in modern times there has been an enormous increase of good immigration in new countries, and especially to America, from which the United States has been the first to benefit, because in that epoch the future of South America was based solely on the gold mines of Peru and the coffee and diamonds of Brazil, whilst the Argentine Republic was only known by its “sterile Pampa and Patagonia,” and its internal revolutions. ”

“ Capital will always be forthcoming for profitable enterprise; as will Labour if that enterprise be made profitable to the worker—a good and useful class of whom can only be induced to emigrate by the prospect of permanent betterment of the conditions of life. The natural ambition of every man is to work for himself, to be the master of the results of his own efforts and to possess those results as a provision for his old age and his children. This a new country or colony must offer if it would obtain the high level of intelligent labour which it needs for its fullest and best development. ”

“ Nowadays, a denizen of Buenos Aires who scents a good stroke of business will pursue and capture it with a rapidity and real vigour which would not shame a citizen of the United States. Only, the Argentine will always conceal his haste under an affected outburst of boisterous humour or an equally assumed dilatoriness of manner. ”

“ It is regrettable, from several points of view, that the National Statistics of Uruguay are not kept and published with the same promptitude and regularity as those of Argentina, to say nothing of the admirable clearness of the forms in which the latter are issued. The Uruguayan authorities should really know that the absence of any complete scheme of statistical information regarding their country is more than apt to preserve a very common though erroneous impression that Uruguay can be of but little account since so little is known or heard of it. ”

“ Anyone weary of the crowded world and its busy ways might live and die under the shadow of the ever-lessening, as one gets south, heights of the Andine range, in some snug, sheltered valley through which a rippling stream runs close to where he would sit on a green sward in the shade of his own orchard. ”

“ A great deception is always in store for those who do not appreciate the fact that the most boisterously extravagant Argentine never really loses sight of the fact that 2 and 2 make 4 and no more and no less. Yet this should be apparent in a nation which has known so well during the fifty or sixty years of its real development how to let the foreigner work out that development at a good profit for himself, of course, but at a much greater one for them. ”

“ The “chacarero” does not grow barley for the same reason that he neglects or ignores almost every branch of agriculture except wheat, maize and linseed. For the same reason that he neglects rotation, fallow and weeds; vegetables and small fruits; live-stock breeding and feeding; poultry, dairy, and bee-hiving, tree planting; and the greatest of all cultures—home culture. He has no fixity of tenure. There is no other reason.
It is said of the Argentine “chacarero” that he is ignorant and incapable of good husbandry. ”

“ The Argentine, while availing himself of every advantage derivable from the influx into his country of foreign Capital and Labour, has never really loosed his hold on his own independent Government nor the land. His land is and has always been the source of his fortune, and to his land he clings with unrelaxing tenacity. If there is a good bargain to be made in real property, it is an Argentine who immediately takes advantage of it to increase his probably already large holding. ”

“ With a charmingly cynical indifference, which is all his own but which it does not at all times suit his interests to manifest, he goes on piling up colossal fortunes amid surroundings much more congenial to his nature than even the European Grand Hotels or Cafés in which he likes from time to time to disport himself and display his wealth. His estancia always remains his home, in which he spends the best and greatest portion of his life, surrounded by the peons whose great-grandfathers were vassals of his own. ”

“ The world wants meat, but it must have bread, the true staff of human life. Signs are not wanting of the coming of a day when the majority of the human race will be forced into vegetarianism by the growing scarcity of meat; but the time when wheat shall be no longer obtainable by the multitude is so much farther off on the speculative horizon as to be a negligible factor in any but abstract contemplation. ”

“ As a fact, no stranger ever becomes a member of the best Argentine Society; he may find himself in it at brief, fleeting moments, but he is never of it. As in the aristocracies of the old world, all its members are connected more or less remotely by blood or marriage, usually both, with one another. One may know intimately many men prominent in Argentine Society, may be received by them at their houses now and again and mingle there with other men, their kindred ”

“ The future of both Argentina and (later on) Uruguay appears to be bound up in their cereal production (of which wheat, maize, linseed and oats are now the chief elements) .
I say appears, because the Andes may yet yield marvellous mineral treasure; good coal may yet be discovered; it and the petroleum deposits of Comodoro Rivadavia and elsewhere may yet provide fuel for manufacturing industry; and the River Plate Republics may yet become the great pig-producing countries of the world, as a United States expert once prophesied to the present writer that one day they would be. ”

“ Durhams and Lincolns are the favourite breeds of cattle and sheep, though many fine strains of Herefords, Polled Angus, Merinos, Romney Marsh and Shropshires abound. No price is too high for the Argentine estanciero to pay for imported animals for the still greater perfection of his stock, and the great Show held under the auspices of the Rural Society at Palermo, a park-like suburb of the city of Buenos Aires, comes as a revelation to each expert breeder who travels, as many do every year, from Europe to the River Plate to see it. ”

“ Agricultural enterprise he understands and daily appreciates more and more its scientific working. Intensive farming is already practised by him in those parts of the country where land is most valuable. He breeds as fine cattle and sheep as any foreign breeder or colonizing company.
But for commerce other than purely agricultural he has no bent. So he wisely leaves it in the hands of the stranger, who thereby develops his towns, and builds railways and tramways; all of which go to the enhancement of the values of Argentine real property. ”

“ Institutions still occupy space as curious lumber somewhere in the cellars and garrets of Government House. Valueless and best forgotten by a prosperous and enlightened nation which no longer needs any such awful examples to deter it from lapse into irregular finance.
Uruguay has a gold, silver and nickel coinage, but, as in Argentina, notes are the most common tokens, especially for amounts of $1 and upwards. As will have been understood, Uruguay has no Caja de Conversión, her currency being and always having been on a direct gold basis. ”

“ They are true sons of a Republic, though holding school-learning in the deep respect observable in peasantry almost all the world over.
The Argentine peon inherits much of the ready wit and extraordinary gift of repartee of his immediate ancestor the GAUCHO; of whom he is the modern representative. With whom, however, a concertina has most unfortunately taken the place of the guitar. But as a bachelor he is the same flirtatious, lady-killing scamp; loving often and riding away from, most frequently instead of with, the lady of his ephemeral choice. ”

“ Now, a National revolution has become a thing unthinkable in Argentina; while it grows every day less likely for responsible or influential men in Uruguay to instigate or encourage aught that might impede her triumphal march to rivalry with the prosperity of the great sister Republic on the Southern bank of the River Plate.
The recent death of Dr. Saenz Peña, an Argentine President whose high personal character and statesmanlike rule fully entitled him to the respect he received from all parties and classes throughout the Republic, is a serious loss to his country. ”

“ It is, of course, self-evident that no new railway enterprise will get a huge grant of land; as did the Central Argentine Company as an inducement to construct. The attitude of the Argentine to-day to all foreigners is that they may come to his country and there enjoy similar rights and liberties with himself coupled with rather less than his own responsibilities. They may keep the profits they make, and very good profits are obtainable by well-conducted, necessary enterprise, after deduction of certain percentage by way of rent for their concessions or licences ”