John Foster Fraser

“ At a distance of one hundred miles before arrival at Mendoza the interminable chain of the Andes, with its snow-capped peaks mingling with the clouds, is distinguishable. As the train approaches their imposing grandeur becomes more and more evident. Another of the views which delights the tourist, and makes the business man think, is that of the smiling vineyards extending on both sides of the line in a delightful prospect until lost on the horizon. ”

“ It is not my wish to accentuate the point, but open-handed extravagance is one of the traits of the people. It is a fault of democratic countries that, having no aristocracy of birth, they proceed to create one of wealth. Argentina has fine old Spanish families; but, though esteemed, they are in the background. In the wrangle-jangle of frenzied progress they are not to be counted amongst the moderns. So garish is the display of money that the idea left is that you have had your attention called to it by the constant blaring of a bugle. ”

“ Yet, though it is apparent to the most casual observer of the world's conditions that Argentina must wax in strength and become increasingly independent, it is clear that were she to attempt to stand, far less run, alone she would come a tremendous cropper.
The pride of the Argentine has to be reckoned upon. The nation recalls its decrepit past; it sees the abundant blossom of the present; it eyes are large when viewing the future. ”

“ The only thing that ever pierces the sky on the Argentine pampas is the zinc American water-wheel. The Argentine estanciero thinks a water-wheel is of more use to him than a church.
All over this land, zigzagging, curving, intersecting, sometimes running in an absolutely straight line for a hundred and fifty miles, is the greatest length of railway lines in the world for a population of seven millions. The towns are far apart; villages are few. You journey half a day, and, except at the little wayside stations, do not see more than half a dozen folk on the land. ”

“ When the immigrant, after his long train journey, arrives at some station on the plains he finds that the centre of life is the camp town. Whether he comes from Italy or Spain, Syria or Bulgaria, he will probably consider the camp towns are the ugliest he has ever seen, unless he arrives at sunset, when the glow and colour turn everything to beauty. The roads are about as bad as roads can be. There is no stone anywhere, and if holes are filled up it is with earth which brings mud to mud and dust to dust. ”

“ But as living beneath the sun brings early old age to men and women, so cities which have had a few centuries of constant sun glare get a drowsy mediævalism which sister cities in more temperate climes must have long ages to acquire. The aroma of the Church and of scholasticism permeates Cordoba. In many respects it is quite modern, with its big new hotel, where the band plays in the restaurant whilst you are dining, and its streets lit with electricity and electric tramcars jangling their way through the squares and plenty of taxi-cabs on the ranks. ”

“ When the sun is up, and blazes from a sky with all the blue burnt out of it, a sort of oppressive hot hush rests upon the world. The long grass seems to drowse beneath the pitiless glare. You can travel for hundreds of miles and never see a hillock or a tree or a beast, or hear a bird. But into this land man is slowly but persistently penetrating. To folk who live at home the life seems deadening. ”

“ A drive through Palermo at the fashionable hour causes one to gasp at the thought that one is six thousand miles from Europe. Nowhere in the world have I seen such a display of expensive motor-cars, thousands of them. Ostentation is one of the stars of life in the Argentine. Appearances count for everything. You must have a motor-car, even though you have not the money to pay for it, and you owe the landlord of your flat a year's rent. ”

“ Argentina is a land without ideals. Religion is at a discount, and as yet nothing worthy of the world's note has been produced in art or literature. There is no national conscience. It is a country for money-making, and, although I may have been unfortunate in the men I met, I encountered few Argentines who had thought beyond money.
The Argentines are a people numbering seven millions—drawn from the sturdier sections of the Latin race, reinforced by adventurous spirits from other races, and backed by the finance of London—and their ambitions are large. ”

“ It is enterprise and development which appeal. There are cattle to be reared on the ranches of Mexico; there is rubber in Peru; there are nitrates and fabulous mineral wealth in Chili and the neighbouring lands; there are cotton and sugar and coffee in the mighty sweep of Brazil; there are the illimitable wheat areas of Argentina, and cattle rearing and the giant possibilities in supplying Europe with frozen meat; there is the opening up of immense areas by networks of railroads.
"The stuff is there; it has only to be got," says the man who knows and talks with the fire of enthusiasm. ”

“ Money has come to lots of these people, shrewd and lucky, as though they held the key to a cave of jewels. Some have remained modest in spite of possessions; others look upon gold as the only god, and their blatant display at Mar del Plata, and on the steamers of the Royal Mail Company, is something which would make the conduct of the new rich of Chicago Quakerish by comparison.
The cry of Argentina, like that of all new lands, is for population. ”

“ An Argentine seldom introduces a friend to his wife. Except amongst the poorest a woman scarcely ever goes into the streets alone. If she does she runs risk of being insulted. There are Argentines, who would be offended if refused the name of gentlemen, who think it excellent sport to walk in the Florida in the evening and mutter obscenities to every unprotected woman who passes. Buenos Aires is the most immoral city in the world. So the Argentine guards his women-folk from contact with other men. His attitude is a relic of the days when the Moors had possession of Spain. ”

“ The confusion, the barbarism, the love of beauty and the display of dollars, the inflow of invested gold, the coming of [Pg 42] the immigrant, the whirl of business, the big deals, the gambling, the making of fortunes and the losing of fortunes, dazzle the mind. But you feel the fascination of Buenos Aires. It has grown so astonishingly in so short a time that you gasp when you contemplate how much more it is likely to grow. ”

“ Hundreds of thousands of immigrants pour into the Republic every year. They come from every land on earth. Mostly do they come from Spain and Italy. Italy provides the greatest number, and splendid colonists they are. Though the language will always be Spanish, the race is rapidly becoming Italianised. There is a commingling of the sterner stuff from Europe. So in this rich land—rivalling Canada and Australia in productiveness—there is being blended a new people, keen, alert, successful, ostentatious, pagan—a people that has a destiny and knows it. ”

“ There is no man so conservative in this world as the British working man. He has an inherent contempt for all foreigners when he gets close to them, chiefly because their ways are not his ways. So the working man who went out to Argentina would be handicapped by not knowing the language; he would be confused with the money; he would dislike the food; the [Pg 114] way in which the working class lives out there would disgust him. At the other end of the string is the great capitalist. Capital knows no language, and owes allegiance to no country. ”

“ As work is assured, Argentina is a land where there are no unemployed—except amongst the dissolute, who are to be found in all countries. I saw these immigrants on the Avon gathered at Vigo, and I saw them in distant provinces, and I was struck with their sturdiness and health. I place on record that I never saw a drunken man during all my wanderings in the Republic. Blessed with a fine climate, and the winter so temperate that fires are not necessary, life is easy, and there is no crushing into towns for work, as is usual in Canada during the frozen months. ”

“ As a small instance, in Buenos Aires the habit of the Spanish siesta is abandoned. There is no pulling down of business shutters between noon and three o'clock. The climate is enervating, but be the day never so steamy, with hot gusts panting from the north, the city is early alive with commerce, the suburban trains are packed, the Stock Exchange is a babble of excitement—and there never seems to be any drawing of rein till five or six in the afternoon. ”

“ The coffee trade of Brazil is immense. But all merchants do not make their incomes by watching and nursing the market. That is too slow. Transactions are decided quite as often by the throw of the dice as by negotiation and bargaining. Reckless, far removed from business principles, all this is; but it bespeaks a buoyancy of belief that, notwithstanding the lapse of luck, there is a bottomless well of prosperity to be dipped into in the natural productions of the country. It is scarcity which breeds timidity; it is the confidence of affluence which occasions waste. ”

“ You insult an Argentine if you mix him up with Chilians, Brazilians, and other South Americans. He does not thank you for being reminded his father sailed from Italy, or his grandfather from Spain. He has no affection for any old land from which his sires came. The beginning of the world for Argentina was in May, 1810, when the Republic was set up.
He has no pride of historic race. When he makes money and visits Europe it is not to find the ancestral home in Spain or Italy. ”

“ But this territory has a special fascination of its own. There is a bigness, an immensity, an unendingness which lays hold of the imagination. The great silence, save for the play of the wind amongst the long grass, seizes the fancy. Sunrise and sunset come and go in a wonderful glory. At the birth of day all the grass sparkles with dew; the softest colours seem to brush the world. ”

“ As I have shown in the preceding chapter, the Argentine Government—which, like all Governments, is open to criticism—has done a great deal in advancing legislation for the solid benefit of the country. There cannot be said to be government on party principles, but the Government is maintained by the followers of particular men. Politicians in Argentina, as elsewhere, have their enemies, and when a man has been elected to Congress he sometimes dare not attend, for that would mean leaving the constituency, and there would always be some rival busy sapping his influence. ”

“ In alluding to the immigration in a former chapter I mentioned that a number of Italians and Spaniards return to their own countries. The migrated Latin always finds the old country pulling at his heart-strings—a feeling, however, which completely disappears in succeeding generations. But the immigrants who go to Argentina to make money rather than to settle are inclined to be reckless concerning care for the soil. The rough-and-ready, haphazard, careless farming is, of course, understandable in a new and fertile country. ”

“ And when one remembers the growing Latin population, and listens to captivating explanations about potentialities and hears what has been accomplished—more wonderful in the making of cities than a tale out of the Thousand and One Nights—there is the fact in the background that all this continent must long have continued to lie undeveloped if it had not been for the constant and confident inflow of British money. ”

“ Anybody who hints a doubt is scowled upon. And the buoyancy of spirit, a sort of rampant optimism about themselves, is fostered by a bent of mind to read about what goes on in "rotten old Europe." A gracious Providence helps them to take notice only of the good things in their own country, and to have a quick eye for the bad things in other countries. Further, as all new lands need settlers, the official flag-waving and trumpet-blowing to attract immigrants is garish. ”

“ But, though naturally enough the average passenger considers a railway line from the way it ministers to his needs, it is the goods traffic which is of first importance to railways in a country like Argentina. I went on the Central Argentine line as far north as Tucuman, and as far west as Cordoba and Rio Cuarto, and beheld the richness of the plains. There were endless miles of wheat and maize and linseed; there were the great herds of cattle and sheep. I witnessed the sugar cane harvest in the north in full swing. ”

“ It is labour the country needs to-day more than capital. In the spring of the southern hemisphere the Atlantic is trailed with ships packed with Italians, Spaniards, and Portuguese. The continent swallows them. They are men of courage, or they would never have gone forth. They take with them their fiery Latin temperament and fierce political, frequently anarchist views. The native Indians are mostly too cow-like to be of much use in industry. The millions of negroes in tropical Brazil are too lazy to be relied upon. Labour is the need, the ever-pressing need. ”

“ The people have driven a magnificent Avenida right through the heart of the city, and hang the expense! The piles of buildings, hotels, public offices, great stores along this Avenida are generally eccentric in architecture—and there comes the feeling that here these transplanted Latins, with a strain of negro in their veins, are struggling to express themselves as a new people. ”

“ North Americans are few, though within recent years much United States capital has quietly taken hold of certain industries. Argentina is capable of carrying a population of fifty millions, and it will secure them within the next half-century. In race, language, customs, religion, it is especially favourable to folk from the thronged Latin countries of Europe.
Every settler becomes a violent Argentine. The emphatic patriotism of the American is tepid alongside the hot-blooded nationality of Argentina. It is daily inculcated in the schools. ”

“ The chilled meat trade—a later development than the frozen trade—has sprung into existence in Argentina mainly during the last dozen years. That which we get in London, whether from La Plata, Buenos Aires, or Chicago, is of better quality than the meat the Argentine or the American gets. The explanation is that the best meat is exported because it has to come into competition with British beef, which admittedly is the best in the world. The question, however, arises, what real detriment is there to meat as the result of freezing? ”

“ But all foreigners, be they British, German, French, or belonging to the United States, must recognise the ambition of the Argentines ultimately to do without them and to "run the show" for themselves.
The nationality of Argentina is not founded on tradition; it comes from the fervour of self-appreciation. Despite the growth of Socialism in the ports the country gives unprecedented scope for individual daring—gambling on the future if you like. The doors are open to all the races of Europe to become Argentines. ”