Maurice Lewandowski

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 give a true idea of this power of production, it is enough to recall, with M. Emile Daireaux, who has described the great farms of the Argentine pampa, that the plough, under the most favourable of climates, meets no obstacles in the way of hills or forests; not a tree, not a rock, not even a pebble in the soil. All European crops give there an abundant harvest, without expenditure upon manure, without shelter for the stock; the colonist may even content himself with a modest wattled hut, protecting him from the mid-day sun or the cold breeze of the night. The soil is everywhere friable ”

“ So much being granted, the moment has come to present the problem: of the 22 million pounds required to pay the interest on loans, the sinking-fund charges for their redemption, and the dividends of hundreds of companies, what is the proportion which each year leaves the Argentine to become spent or invested abroad, assuring the owners of bonds and shares the best part of the revenue of a distant country, a country endowed with a fertile soil, in which industry has a great future awaiting it? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Taking a more general point of view, we are obliged to admit that if French commerce, and especially French industry, have not won the place which should be theirs in the Argentine Republic, when we consider the magnitude of Argentine exportation to France, it is because French men of business and manufacturers have started from a false principle, from whose consequences they and the Argentine are still suffering. Instead of following up the rapid evolution of the Argentine, the French have persisted in regarding it, from afar off, as a nation scarcely yet open to civilisation and progress. ”

“ Blessed with an immense area of territory, mistress of enormous and unexhausted natural wealth, and peopled by only 6 millions of inhabitants, the Argentine is a nation still in process of formation. She attracts men and money from all quarters of the globe; for she promises generous payment for initiative and for labour. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If the national revenue increases at an extraordinary rate, on account of the development of the population, it is only logical that the expenditure should increase likewise; but in a less proportion, it is true, as is proper under a good administration.
But this is not to say that it is permissible for administrators entrusted with the annual duty of presenting an estimate of public expenditure to do what is occasionally done, with such deplorable results—to estimate also in an exaggerated fashion the increase of the population, in order all the more to inflate the budget. ”

“ There is a new nation in the process of birth, possessed of the sentiment of its own greatness; either by a puerile hallucination or by the revelation of its destiny. It has barely formed a Government; but already it imagines vast schemes; it asks and obtains money from London; for capital, although she is represented as hard and having no bowels of compassion, knows often a sudden tenderness for dreams. ”

“ If the raising of stock and its dependent industries have not, in these last few years, realised a progress comparable to that of agriculture, we must by no means conclude that this department of production has ceased to be an element of national prosperity. Quite on the contrary: thanks to the efforts made to better affairs by happy selections in the breed of animals, the value of live stock has increased in surprising proportions, and the Argentine still retains its rank as second to the United States as a stock-raising country. ”

“ The Argentine Republic is a large country, containing 1,155,000 square miles of territory, and is barely peopled by its 6,000,000 inhabitants; it will therefore be understood that instead of following the population, as in Europe, in the Argentine the railway precedes the population. In the Argentine the railway is like a magic talisman, for wherever it goes it entirely transforms the economic and productive conditions of the country. ”

“ Agriculture, as compared to stock-raising, is, from the economical point of view, a source of wealth having quite a different bearing upon the general prosperity and welfare of a nation. It is the fairy which little by little transforms the vast plains of the Argentine pampas into a more animated landscape, peopled by numerous homesteads, foci of colonisation, which then develop into villages, which in a score of years may perhaps be important cities. Agriculture summons the railroad, stimulates emigration, promotes the division of the soil, creates the small proprietor ”

“ 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. ”

“ Realising that the success of a bank depends far more upon the confidence with which it inspires the public than upon its organic charter, Signor Pellegrini’s Government, together with those that followed it, took care to place at the head of the Banco del Nacion only men who were capable, by their good judgment, their technical competence in banking business, their social position, and their knowledge of the business world, of giving prestige to the establishment, and surrounding it with the atmosphere of respect and confidence which was necessary to its success. ”

“ 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? ”

“ According to the judgment of certain persons who have devoted themselves to the study of economic questions, the causes which, in the Republic, produce the double standard, are of a permanent character, proper to the period of formation through which the country is passing. It is even said that so long as Argentina has not a capital of her own with which to float herself in the full tide of affairs—such a capital as is the result of years or centuries of prosperity—so long will she be a debtor among the nations, and the system of the double currency must continue. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Turning from the shadows that obscure the picture of the financial and economic situation, we may, in spite of all, conclude that investors who have placed their capital in Argentine loans may be fully reassured that the interest will be scrupulously forthcoming. Although the majority of the loans have been employed in other ways than those intended at the time of their issue, it is none the less true that by their aid certain works of national utility have been effected, which could not have been realised without such resources. ”

“ For the exploitation of this wealth, Argentine agriculture employs the most perfect machinery to be obtained in the world, employing thousands of horses also, to drive it; while the Russian peasant has to work with his own hands, having neither machines nor horses to multiply his strength.
What shall we say of the prosperous and fortunate situation of the Argentine colonist, who is not only enabled out of the fruits of his labour to have bread and meat in abundance upon his table, but is often in process of acquiring, and that without long delay, the earth he cultivates. ”

“ For ten years now the sense of this commercial balance has been constantly in favour of the exports, and there has even been a remarkable progress, scarcely interrupted at critical moments. But ten years is only a brief period in the life of a people; and however favourable the future outlook may appear, we must always be prepared for a possible deficit, for a minus balance, as the result of a bad harvest or some grave political crisis. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The herds grazing in our pastures show the state of progress which stock-raising has attained; the harvests which cover the plains of Santa Fé and Buenos Ayres have made the name of the Argentine Republic known on the markets of Europe as that of a flourishing agricultural country; sugar, the product of the cane-fields of Tucuman, has enriched that Province and the national industry, and very shortly the vines grown in the valleys of the old Province of Cuyo will achieve a yet wider development, and will give still more abundant vintages. ”

“ It is only by applying ourselves to the work of simplifying our administrative services, by suppressing useless formalities and superfluous employments, by scrutinising the least details of the public expenditure, that we shall succeed in making large economies. It is certain that to purge the administration of its ancient vices, to sweep away all useless appointments, to refuse to find vacant places at the bidding of power and influence, and to establish the strictest rules of economy, is a task of no mean difficulty ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Argentine is a young nation, which hitherto has busied itself rather in work and production for the amelioration of its present condition, and in the preparation of its morrow by creating capital, than in giving itself to the historical study of its past. ”

“ 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. ”