Kitabı oku: «The Amazing Argentine: A New Land of Enterprise», sayfa 5

Then there are the constant labour disputes in the towns. Running along with the prosperity of the country is the trouble of repeated strikes amongst the workers. It is not my province to go into the merits of the respective disputes. But they have been so recurrent, and have so much hampered trade, that the Government has taken the most drastic measures by laying hands on the chiefs of trade unions when grievances are fomented and strikes threatened.

Although the number of the strings of commerce which are in the hands of Englishmen is gratifying, it would have been strange if I had not heard the usual complaint that the Germans are edging in, and that, if care is not taken, the British will be ousted from their pre-eminence. It was the old story that British merchants are too conservative, and do not pay sufficient heed to the personal likings of Argentine customers. It is true I saw lots of German goods. They were cheaper and not of the same quality as those of British make. Further, German houses give much longer credit than do their British rivals. Another cause of complaint is that in business disputes the long-drawn-out law's delay, and the obstacles in the path of the foreigner seeking redress, mean that justice is not always secured.

It is not to be denied that, although the returns are excellent, Britain does not retain the same proportion of the import trade which she had a few years ago. There is no disputing the superiority of the British article; but German and French merchants having a market to secure are more accommodating to their customers, whilst in regard to agricultural implements the United States makers are pushing their hardest. Their machines are more showy than the English. It seems a small point, and yet I have thought it would be well if our British manufacturers would not only turn out a serviceable tool, but bear in mind the temperament of the people who are to be the buyers. Put two threshing machines in a Buenos Aires warehouse, that from Britain painted grey, and that from the United States painted red; the Latin Argentine is naturally attracted to the red, even though its merits be inferior. Hundreds of millions sterling are to be expended in public works during the ensuing few years, and British contractors should be awake to the possibilities. Belgian contractors have already been in the field, but their work has not always been "up to sample," so that the present opportunity is considerable.

Old residents directed my attention to a great change which is taking place in the import houses of Buenos Aires. Until a few years back it could be said that the British were first and the rest nowhere. British capital has flowed abundantly into the country, but toward developing its natural resources rather than in trade. Now German houses have a strong footing in "B.A.," and, naturally enough, they are encouraging the products of their own land. Go into a German house, and it is German wares that are for sale. Go into a British house, and you find United States and German wares as well as English being offered. I was seriously convinced, whilst studying the trend of trade in Argentina, that it is absolutely necessary that the managing heads of English firms who have dealings with South America, and find they are not getting that share of the increased trade which the growth of the country warrants, should make periodic visits to Argentina to learn for themselves what is the matter.

If there is one complaint to be made against the Englishman trading with a foreign land, it is his lack of adaptability. So long as he had the manufacturing of the world in his own hands, he could do as he liked. The thing he made was good, and it was the only thing. Now he has keen competitors, and the customer has a varied choice. The Englishman has to consider whether it is worth his while to give the exaggerated credit which manufacturers elsewhere are prepared to give if they can secure the orders. The Argentine likes long credit. Then, is he prepared to make an inferior, showy article at a cheap price? These are two considerations which count enormously with the Argentine. You can purchase the best Sheffield cutlery in the best shops, for it is what the better-to-do people insist on having. But there are millions of people in the Republic who have never heard of Sheffield, and, therefore, know nothing about its reputation. What they want is cheap knives. Sheffield firms do not make these, and the consequence is the majority of the people have rubbish from elsewhere. I am not advocating that the British manufacturer should drop making the things which have won for him and his country a worthy reputation. I am pointing out some of the things which must be well thought about if Britain is going to keep its pre-eminence in the financial value of the goods imported into Argentine.

Further, an Argentine when he orders anything wants it at once. Quick delivery is an essential. Finally, all catalogues should be in Spanish, and all prices in Argentine currency. No man who goes out to "chase up business" in securing orders should be without a knowledge of Spanish. Talking through an interpreter is no good. The personal touch is lost. Spanish is a language much neglected in England. I can think of no more profitable investment for a young fellow of parts, wanting to enter commercial life, and without means to go into business as a principal, than thoroughly to master Spanish.

CHAPTER VIII
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE COUNTRY

It is well to get a bold, broad idea of the country. It covers 2,000,000 square miles. England is just about one-tenth that size. It is double the size of Mexico.

In the far north you are in the torrid tropics. In the far south you need a heavy coat, even in high summer-time. Its conditions may, therefore, be described as variable. No other country can give you such change.

The 20,000 miles of railway run through most of the flat fertile areas, and the ordinary traveller comes away with the idea it is one of the most level, featureless countries he has ever been in. The old settlers had the same idea, for their description pampa applied to a boundless stretch. You can journey for hundreds of miles and never see a tree. But up in the north, under the shadow of Brazil, are great forests which will be made useful to the world one of these days. Then you get the backbone of the continent in the west, the Andes with Aconcagua rising to 23,000 feet above sea level. In the middle land is the fruitful Argentine Mesapotamia. In the far south is the last word of desolation, the Patagonian wilderness.

Argentina has several navigable rivers, and two, the Plate and the Parana, up which it is possible, for light draft steamers, at any rate, to go hundreds of miles. If one pretends there is no Amazon in existence the Plate discharges more water into the ocean than any river from Hudson's Bay to the Magellan Straits. A learned book informs me that the volume of water rolled into the ocean is 2,150,000 cubic feet per second, which seems "prodigious." At Monte Video the width of the river is sixty-two miles; so it is no trifling creek. The Plate is the muddiest stream I have ever come across. This is not to be wondered at, considering that it and its tributaries scour many thousands of miles. As a matter of fact, the estuary is being filled up. Within knowledge, the depth opposite Monte Video has lessened by fifteen feet, and though dredgers are constantly at work, big liners moving up to Buenos Aires have sometimes to force a way through two feet of mud. It is quite likely that in the fullness of time Buenos Aires will not be a port, but an inland town.

Sometimes Argentina has floods which ruin the crops, drown thousands of cattle, break the railway banks, and reduce strong men, who thought they were rich, to tears at the prospect of poverty. Or there are droughts which shrivel everything up. Away back in the 'thirties, Buenos Aires Province had a drought which lasted for five years. Scientists, who know all about these things, say that the rainless zones are extending, and that in the far future the whole Republic will be a rainless zone, and umbrella sellers will go into the bankruptcy court. The prospect is not immediate, and if we are wise we shall not worry over a trouble which may have to be faced five hundred years hence.

Considering you can get a sweep of level country for 2,000 miles, with scarcely a hill that would make a decent bunker, when a gale gets on the rampage it runs away with itself. There is the zonda, which so disturbs the elements that the thermometer jumps fifty degrees in about as many minutes. Then, although there are those millions of cubic feet of water emptying itself out of the Plate, there comes the suestadas, which blows so hard that the water cannot get into the ocean, and, as a result, the upper streams rise and tumble over their banks. Next there are the pamperos on the plains, which either grill you with their heat or give you a chill from their rawness. I did not suffer myself; but these hateful pamperos are so charged with electricity that they give you a shock which produces a sort of paralysis, "perhaps twisting up a corner of the mouth, or half closing one eye, or causing a sudden swelling of the neck," as one authority records.

Parts of the Republic are yet to be explored. Persistent man is having a rough time in the Chaco region. When our ancestors invented hell they had no knowledge of the Chaco. It is all swamp and forest, and mammoth mosquitoes and fever, and pestiferous Indians who do not like the white man, and put a spear into his back whenever they get the chance. The Chaco Indians are amongst the few of their race who have not been subjugated. There are rivers which come trailing from goodness knows where; but when they reach the Chaco they are evidently so disgusted that they burrow underground. When it rains, fish several inches long drop from the clouds. Under a torrent a dip in the ground will become a pool, and in it will be found fish a foot long. They do not drop from the clouds. There are no little streams by which they can have arrived. Where do they come from? The easiest explanation offered is that they were formerly much smaller, did arrive on a storm cloud, and have been lying in the mud since the last storm.

I heard yarns, vouched for, but which seem like travellers' tales. There is a little bird which sits on a branch and twitters. Others come round, and are apparently mesmerised. Then the little bird attacks one, maybe much bigger than itself, and kills it without any resistance being offered. There is another bird which lives on friendly terms with the Indians, hops in and out of their mud huts, and is known as the "watch bird," because it always raises a peculiar cry when a stranger approaches.

In its physical aspects the Chaco is strange, with swamps, arid plains, and mighty clumps of forest. Here grows the quebracho, which means the break-axe; so it is a very hard wood. It is to get this wood that companies have men working in the Chaco, hundreds of miles from even a vestige of civilisation. Bullocks are employed to drag the trunks, and the poor beasts have a bad time of it. Then there are light railways to carry the trunks to the mills. Originally the quebracho was sought because it made serviceable and long lasting "sleepers" for railroads. Now it is chiefly wanted for the tannin in it; it is said to contain 50 per cent. of tannin.

Mention has been made of singular birds in the Chaco. But there are others to be found elsewhere in Argentina. W. H. Hudson, in his instructive book "The Naturalist in La Plata," describes the ypecaha, which holds public meetings and has dancing performances. "A number of ypecahas," he says, "have their assembling places on a small area of smooth, level ground, just above the water and hemmed in by dense rush beds. First one bird among the rushes emits a powerful cry, thrice repeated, and this is a note of invitation quickly responded to by other birds from all sides as they hurriedly repair to the usual place. In a few moments they appear to the number of a dozen or twenty, bursting from the rushes and rushing into the open space and instantly beginning the performance. There is a screaming concert. The screams they utter have a certain resemblance to the human voice, exerted to its utmost pitch and expressive of extreme terror, frenzy and despair. A long, piercing shriek is succeeded by a lower note as if in the first the creature had wellnigh exhausted itself. Whilst screaming, the birds rush from side to side, as if possessed by madness, the wings spread and vibrating, the long beak wide open and raised vertically. This exhibition lasts three or four minutes, after which the assembly peaceably breaks up." Quite like a political meeting at home.

European domestic animals have thrived since their introduction, though there is a tendency, checked by the constant introduction of breeding stock, to develop local characteristics. This has been particularly remarked in sheep which have strayed and have been left to themselves for several generations. They grow bigger and bonier, and with their leanness comes the power of rapid movement, so that their flesh is scant and their wool has an inclination toward growing straight and stiff like the hair of a goat. In the outlands of Argentina ostriches, jaguars, and deer may be seen; but you can live for years on the prairies – and that is where most of the colonisation is going on – and never catch a glimpse of one of these.

The thing which lays hold of the seeing man, after he has remembered the ages during which the country, suitable for maintaining innumerable millions of men and beasts, lay dormant, is the way the land has been completely transformed in its inhabitants, human and animal, and how alien vegetation has found a thriving home. The early Spanish adventurers, as has already been told, had to start their settlement by bringing animals from Spain, and it was chance, the extraordinary reproductiveness of herds which strayed or were abandoned, which taught them they had come into possession of something more valuable than gold mines. Books of history chiefly deal with the lust and the cruelty of the early Spaniards. I have nothing to do here with the story of the way in which Spain conquered the land. We have not to lose sight of the fact, however, they began settling in these parts nearly four hundred years ago, when a voyage to the Americas was like a journey to another planet, when the ships were small and incommodious and dangers were great, and the world had no experience in the science of colonisation. The authorities freely gave tracts of land, but in their wisdom they always stipulated that European domestic animals should be introduced. A settler got land for wheat and maize and an orchard, and then more land, just in proportion to how many horses, cows, sheep, pigs, and goats he would introduce. The land could be obtained for nothing, but always on condition that it was put to its full use in the maintenance of stock. That was a rough and ready, and yet very statesmanlike procedure. The best incentive was given to the agriculturist and breeder. The more cattle he introduced the more land he put to the plough, the bigger was the grant given to him by the authorities. Thus possession and prosperity advanced hand in hand. Here is a lesson which might be learnt to-day and copied by such countries as Australia, where there are millions of acres of undeveloped territory.

Time came when the wild herds waxed so numerous that the local councils proclaimed that all such cattle were the public property of their own people. To prevent those who lived under another local council taking possession, the system of branding these cattle, when they could be caught, was introduced. When the cattle thief came on the scene, and he was got hold of, he was first branded on the shoulder and for subsequent offences branded in the hand, flogged and hanged. The straying cattle in a district belonging to the public, the public soon began to appreciate that here were cheap meat and cheap hides. They were hunted as the buffalo were subsequently hunted in North America, and it really seemed as though they were going to be exterminated. Regulations had to be made limiting the number of animals to be killed every year. Though there was still great slaughter, the herds continued to multiply amazingly, and, of course, wandered hundreds of miles away from any settlements. So the tide rolled on until two hundred years ago the number of cattle had increased to many millions. Carlos Gervasini, a Jesuit missionary, writing from Buenos Aires in 1729, says, "So numerous are the cattle in the neighbouring campo here that any landlord may take from ten to twelve thousand to breed from, merely for the trouble of lassoing them and driving them home. In order to take more than this number a special licence is required from the governor. The ships returning to Spain are filled with the hides, and none but good specimens of these are troubled about. As to the flesh, each man takes what he requires and leaves the rest to the jaguars and dogs." Some years later a visitor to Argentina said there were so many cattle that the plains were covered; and had it not been for the number of dogs which devoured the young the country would have been devastated by them. There were so many cattle that when the Spaniards were at war, and invading boats appeared, their custom was to drive vast herds pell-mell down the river bank and so prevent a landing.

See the extraordinary whirligig. First no cattle. Then land granted to settlers who would introduce cattle. Then so many cattle they could be had by anyone for the asking, and this followed by wholesale slaughter, the extermination so thorough that a halt had to be called. Then further amazing multiplication, till the increasing wild dogs played havoc with the young animals. Then the dogs got so numerous, and their ravages so extensive, that soldiers were sent out to wage war on the canine pests. They killed untold thousands, but the people, instead of being grateful, chaffed the soldiers and dubbed them the "dog killers." The dogs started to increase again, faster than the cattle, but men refused to go out and kill the dogs when the only reward was to be nicknamed "dog killer." So the dogs were left alone, and they kept down the number of cattle. It was not till fifty years ago that a systematic massacre of the wild dogs took place, because just then the Argentines were beginning to settle down to scientific breeding.

It is astonishing how few dogs there are in Argentina. The dog may be the friend of man in other parts of the world, but not in Argentina. The Argentine hates the dog. In Buenos Aires the police have order to arrest every dog, whether it is with anyone or not. During the time I was in "B.A." I saw only one dog, and that was the property of Sir Reginald Tower at the British Legation.

That is not all the story. Not only did the wild dogs develop a taste for young calves, but the native Indians began to show a fondness for horseflesh. For centuries, although he could have had any number of cattle and nobody would have objected, the Indian maintained a preference for horseflesh. Then, suddenly, his fancy extended to cattle. When he started rounding up the cattle of the Spaniards there was trouble. Sheep were prolific, but mutton was contemptible food. None was so poor as to be obliged to eat mutton. The Spaniards regarded mutton much as Englishmen now regard horseflesh. The only use of a sheep was for its wool and fat. But the prejudice against mutton, after lasting for nearly three hundred years, finally disappeared.

Whilst there was an increasing carrying trade from Buenos Aires to Spain of skins, wool, and tallow – very profitable merchandise – Spain officially was not enthusiastic over this mean trading. What she wanted was gold and silver. As these came from Peru and Chili those countries were favoured whilst Argentina was the Cinderella of the family. What good was a country that had no mines but only grass to feed horses and cattle and sheep?

We think differently in these days, but in those far-off times Spain scarcely condescended to recognise Argentina. It was darling Peru that was always favoured. All regulations in regard to trade were made favourable to Peru. Spain accepted what she fancied from Argentina, and hampered her in seeking other markets.

Nothing, however, could stop the advance of Argentina. It was with reluctance that Argentina was raised to the first rank as a province, and was given liberty to export where she liked. Her trade jumped ahead. Then Argentina not only killed to get hides and wool and fat, but she had to begin breeding in order to supply the European demand. She began to dream dreams. There was little immigration; the people were the descendants of the old settlers. They knew nothing of Spain. They had no recollection of ancestors who did know anything of Spain. Spain meant nothing to them but a distant country which once lorded them and presumed to dictate to them. It was resentment at the relationship, combined with a desire to fulfil an independent destiny, that brought about the revolution and the declaration of a republic in 1810.

Since then Argentina has had many internal political troubles. She has had her set-backs. But the ebb has always been succeeded by a tumbling flow of fortune. The breed of cattle has been marvellously improved. The number of animals now runs into hundreds of millions. Vast areas now wave with wheat and maize. As you journey through Argentina, and see the land smiling with success, you know that beyond your gaze are thousands of square miles of soil as virgin as in the days when the Indians roamed free.