CHAPTER XV

THE EMIGRANT IN LIGHT AND SHADE

There is a popular story in Buenos Ayres of a Spanish emigrant who had just arrived with wife and children, and as the group was crossing the Paseo de Julio, the wife espied a silver coin in the gutter. She called to her husband to pick it up, but he disdainfully answered, “I have no concern with mere silver money, when I have come here to gather gold!” The story usually ends here, but I suspect the frugal wife of picking up that coin herself and thereby making money more easily than her husband would be like to do for some time to come. For certain it is that the Argentine is no “land of gold,” such as our world has had to marvel at in California, Australia, South Africa, and Alaska. No,—it is something better than any merely auriferous land! So rich is its soil, it returns to those who work it such wondrous increase of harvest that it is truly an inexhaustible gold mine. But the first and final essential to the winning of its gold is Labour. This, as we know, Italy has given to the Argentine in abundant measure, and those who only know the Italian by such specimens of his race as grind organs and sell ice-cream in England, have no least, small notion of what a splendid fellow he is, his many vices notwithstanding.

Before we take a look at the different classes of emigrants which the Argentine attracts and their influence on the development of the country, a word or two on the land system may be in place. The time will come, I doubt not, when some revolutionary change will be forced upon the country, as the land is too closely held by the landed aristocracy—the multitudes of small lots sold by speculative dealers notwithstanding. In this young country, with its Republican Government and its progressive ideas, we encounter the anomaly of a mere handful of fabulously wealthy proprietors owning the greatest part of a vast country—nearly eight times larger than the British Isles. Meanwhile, these prodigious tracts of territory being so tightly held by a few private owners, have the effect of increasing the values of the negotiable land, of which there is evidently still sufficient to meet the demands of the moment. Double the population, however, and such a change will pass over the scene that legislation to force the hands of private owners and loosen their grip on the lion’s share of the Republic’s soil will be inevitable.

The system on which the land is worked is also charged with danger to the social development of the community, and some day it, too, must give place to a better adjustment as between the owner and the worker. I have made frequent reference in previous chapters to the estancias, without entering into any detail as to the working of these great agricultural estates, which, curiously enough, are known by the Spanish word for a dwelling-house or a sitting-room (_estancia_ in South America means either a farm, a country house, or the whole area of landed property under one ownership). Here, however, I must explain something of the peculiar methods of working these estates.

The owner himself will cultivate at his own cost a certain portion with alfalfa, wheat, maize, or linseed, as the case may be, and will maintain immense herds of cattle, sheep, and horses, according as he specialises in agriculture or in live-stock. But the estancias are usually much too large for their owners to develop to their full extent, and thus have grown up two methods of co-operation, neither of which has in it the germ of permanency, both being based on one man’s need and another’s opportunity. The one system is worked by the _medieros_, the other by the _colonos_. The mediero is a man who has come out from Spain or Italy with some tiny capital in his pocket that enables him to purchase certain agricultural implements, seeds, and probably to knock up a shanty of corrugated iron,—wood for building purposes being a highly priced commodity. But he cannot afford to purchase agricultural land in any locality where his crop would be of adequate value to him once he had raised it, for wherever the land is within reachable distance of a railway line, it is impossible to purchase it at anything like its actual market value, the method of the Argentine land-seller being invariably to demand the price which the land may be worth in ten or fifteen years. The land-vender takes “long views,” he is big with the future, so confident of it that he values his possessions of to-day at the dream prices of a somewhat distant morrow. Now, the mediero cannot come to grips with such as he, and cap in hand he approaches the estanciero, offering in return for the right to work so many acres of his land, to “go halves” with him in expenses and in profits—hence mediero, or “halver.”

The colono (colonist) is a genuine knight of the empty purse, with nothing to offer save his labour and that of his wife and children; but _that_ is a great thing, and he is received with open arms throughout the length and breadth of the Argentine. The estanciero not only grants him as many acres of land as he may be able to work with his wife and family, but lends him cows for milk, horses for the plough, and through his _almacén_ supplies to him on credit the necessary implements, seeds, and food, as well as corrugated iron and planks of wood for the building of his _rancho_. It should be explained that the almacén on every estancia is an important institution, a sort of universal provider for the hundreds of medieros and colonos who have taken up land on the estate, selling to them all sorts of commodities at a substantial profit to the estanciero. The “colonist” is now expected to labour incessantly on the land allotted to him, so that he may repay to the almacén the pretty heavy debt he has contracted there, while an agreed percentage of his crops will go to the owner of the estate.

These medieros and colonos include all nationalities, but are chiefly drawn from the Italian emigrants, the Spaniards being more commonly tradesmen. Everything looks _couleur de rose_ to the poor toilers; they set about their task with high hope, a new feeling of freedom, little recking that they have tied themselves to a new serfdom by the bond of that initial debt with which they start. The mediero has a better chance than the colono of “turning the corner” soon, and it too often happens that the latter, after two or three years of incessant labour, has no more than cleared his feet, when comes a bad harvest, and he is back where he was at the beginning. Withered are his roses, poor fellow. Disgusted at the result, and hoping that a change to some other part of the country may turn out for the better, he disposes of the few things he owns, quits his “camp,” and shifts to some other quarter, perhaps only to repeat this chapter of his history.

Meanwhile, it will be seen the estanciero has had another corner of his estate brought into cultivation, its value considerably increased thereby, and the poor Italians have spent their strength for a bare subsistence. That many of them do succeed in earning some profit, especially those of the mediero class, and starting in some other business, is undeniable; but the roll of those who have turned over the soil of the Argentine and brought it into bearing to the great benefit of its owners, and their own non-success is, I am told, beyond reckoning. This, then, I submit, is no system that can endure. It carries its own seeds of decay. So long as the stream of immigration flows as steadily as of recent years, the system will doubtless continue, but a time will come when disappear it must, and some method of employment based on a fairer distribution of profits, or on adequate wages, take its place.

Apart from the ethics of the Argentine land system, which are clearly open to criticism, one can have nothing but praise for the manner in which emigration is officially encouraged, and the way in which the emigrants are handled on arrival at the River Plate. There is a fine saying reported of President Sáenz Peña when he represented his country at the Pan-American Congress in Washington on the occasion of the fourth centenary of the discovery of America. In the course of a speech he was making, some fervid Pan-American thought it a fit occasion to interject the watchword, “America for the Americans”! Quick as a flash Dr. Sáenz Peña retorted, “Yes, but Latin America for humanity!”

This certainly is the spirit that informs the policy of Argentine immigration. A hearty welcome is given to people of all races, whose only right of entry into this new land of promise is the possession of brawny muscles and the will to work. Every week they are arriving in ship-loads, and the manner in which these cargoes of humanity are received at the docks in Buenos Ayres and speedily transhipped by rail to different parts of the interior, according to the demand for _brazos_, is one of the most businesslike things the visitor will have an opportunity of noting in the public administration. Ship-load after ship-load of Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, and other nationalities arrives and melts away, absorbed into the thirsty country like water into sandy soil.

During our stay, a splendidly equipped hostel, or shelter, was opened for the emigrants. Erected by the riverside close to the scene of their disembarkation, this building is capable of sheltering a large number of newcomers. Sleeping-rooms fitted with wire mattresses upon which the emigrants may place their own bedding (always the most precious of their personal possessions) are provided for the men, and similar accommodation for the women and children. There is no excuse for any of them to go unbathed, lavatories specially fitted with showers being provided for those who care to use them (the superintendent told me it was seldom that an emigrant ventured on such an experiment), while in the great common dining-room they may take their meals in comparative comfort and can secure eatables at a low rate. The accommodation, if I remember correctly, is free, and the whole place is so admirably clean that it must come with something like a shock to most of the emigrants who pass through it, habituated as they have been, almost without exception, to dirty ways of life in their native lands. Many of the emigrants never see Buenos Ayres at all, as the trains that take them into the Camp pick them up at a short distance from the vessels which have borne them oversea, and at the very doors of the shelter where they may have passed the night of arrival.

Laughter and tears mingle a good deal in the landing of these poor people from the Old World. Huddled almost like cattle in the steerage of the steamers, their condition at sea presents what seems an unbridgable abyss between their lives and those of the saloon passengers. Day after day I have watched them sitting aimlessly on deck in their dirty, faded clothes, the effluvia from the mass of them, even tempered by the sea breeze, suggesting conditions of horror when they “turned in” at night, that might recall the Black Hole of Calcutta. The captain assured me it was not so very bad, but I never had the stomach to prove it for myself. Yet, on the morning of arrival at Buenos Ayres, what a transformation! Girls who have seemed the dirtiest of sluts throughout the voyage step down the gangway quite neatly attired. The married women, tricked out with little bits of finery, the men mostly in suits of black, with sombre soft hats, and every Spaniard armed with an ample umbrella, are difficult to recognise as the slovenly creatures one has seen for weeks feeding out of tins and using fingers, for lack of knives and forks. But even among the emigrants there are many grades, and not all are able to make this sudden transformation, many having no more than the soiled and shabby garments in which they have made their voyage, a little handkerchief tied at the corners being a pathetic index of their worldly gear. But even from among these, there will be some that one day shall bridge that awful gulf between the steerage and saloon, and make a voyage home as cabin passengers to advertise the magic Argentine!

Hope is the prevailing note in the demeanour of every new batch of fortune-seekers. It shines brightest, perhaps, in the eyes of the alert and wiry little Italians; the Spaniards, also, step ashore with a firm and confident tread, but mostly among the Poles, the Bulgars, and the Russians do we see the dull look of something very like despair. In discussing the character of the emigrants with M. Huret, Señor Alsina, a former Director of the Emigration Service, remarked:

What surprises one most in the careful observation of these people from the four extremes of Europe is the rapidity of their transformation, Spaniards from Galicia, brutish and wretched, sordid Jews from Russia, lift up their heads (_levantan la cabeza_) at the end of a few months. I have seen them arrive bent and downcast, with all the timidity of a dog that has been badly treated, so dejected and timorous, indeed, that I thought it necessary to engage some Russian students to lecture them on the dignity of humanity in general, and the conditions of liberty which they could enjoy in the Argentine. A few months afterwards, seeing many of them again, I could observe that they had so entirely changed that they had become argumentative, noisy, and given to discussion.

The case of the Armenians is in this respect entirely typical. Some eighteen years ago they arrived here for the first time. Becoming pedlars, they travelled all over the Pampa, some with “bundles” on their backs, others pushing before them their wares. Little by little they made money, even growing rich. Many of them went in for politics, and to-day occupy positions of influence in the public life. Very active in business, they are in a fair way to surpass the Italians in the retail trade. Proud of their title as free citizens, they refuse to sell their vote, which is the common practice among the populace, and their prosperity is so real, so positive, that the Armenian Colony is offering to the Argentine a monument which will cost them 120,000 francs.

I am afraid that appearances are very much inclined to be deceptive in studying the faces of emigrants. Surely there are none who can look more dejected than the Armenians and the Poles, who closely resemble each other in facial appearance, yet the money-making potentialities of these sad-faced emigrants are relatively much higher than those of the merry, little, guitar-strumming Italians and Spaniards.

On the arrival of every new contingent, there is always a considerable group of friends awaiting the vessel, and fortunate are they who have come out on the initiative of some relative that has gone before and prepared the way. These emigrants of yesterday, who have already come to grips with fortune and won the first bout, form one of the pleasantest features of the disembarkations, as they stand on the quayside in their “Sunday best,” with their watch chains, tie pins, finger rings, and highly polished boots to announce to all the world that they are “getting on.” This friendly co-operation is of immense service to the Emigration Bureau, and is really a sounder sort of propaganda than the familiar widecast publishing of alluring pictures of the riches of the country and the ease with which fortunes may be made. The emigrant who comes because a brother or a friend has already substantially changed his condition, and will have the advice of that friend to help him in securing employment, is at least on sure ground, and where labour is in such demand he cannot well make a mistake, provided he is willing to work.

In this way have grown up the distinctive “colonies” throughout the country, the majority of the Russians making direct for the neighbourhood of Bahía Blanca, where their services as agricultural labourers and as craftsmen are in high demand; the Turks and Syrians concentrating in a district of Buenos Ayres, where they seem to engage in every variety of occupation in which there is a minimum of creative work and the possibility of profiting as middle-men by the labour of others. A great many French find their way to Mendoza, the centre of the wine-growing, in which business not a few have become masters of millions. The German emigration is of more recent origin, and embraces, like the French, a superior class of people, as well as supplying a modicum to the toiling community. Although all the emigrants, save the Spanish, are at first conditioned in their occupations and their localities by their ignorance of the native language, so that they must needs go where they find their fellow-countrymen and more or less follow the pursuits in which these are engaged, they speedily pick up the language, and once acclimatised and furnished with the means of universal intercourse, they begin to look around, weigh up the possibilities of the country, and strike out their independent courses. In this movement, the British have practically no part whatever, and with the exceptions of the scanty Irish emigration of past years and the Welsh colony settled, with very equivocal success, on the River Chubut some twenty years ago, the annals of the British in the Argentine present no parallel whatever to those of the other European nations.

When we talk of Argentine emigration, we refer chiefly to the Italian and the Spanish, though the Basque provinces of France and Spain have probably supplied the very finest element of foreign blood in the Argentine nation to-day. Italy is sending from eighty to a hundred thousand of her sturdy sons to swell the Argentine population every year. The newcomers from Italy each year number about 200,000, but in these later years there has been a very considerable movement towards repatriation among the Italians and also among the Spaniards, so that there is an offset of at least 50 per cent. for re-emigration. The Italian who does not determine to make his home in the Argentine is quickly satisfied with a comparatively small amount of savings. Once he has netted from $1000 to $2500, he considers himself a man of independent means, and is apt to return to his native village with his tiny fortune, which will enable him there to live far more comfortably than he has been existing in the Argentine, and to enjoy a life of comparative leisure. The call of the Homeland is always very strong to the Italian, and if he acquires his little fortune quickly, before his family have become thoroughly Argentine in character and sentiment, he will almost surely go back. The hundreds of thousands of his race who are fixed and rooted in the Republic are they who, either through superior fortune have come to hold such a stake in the land, or from longer delay in “turning the corner” and the influence of their children, have become habituated to their new environment.

The quickest fortunes, the easiest gained wealth, assuredly do not come to those who take up the life of the colono or the mediero, as above described, for there are innumerable other ways in which money can be made more readily, and those who engage in shopkeeping—always a superior class to the tillers of the soil, as they require some little capital for a start—as well as the many Spaniards who enter the already established business houses, are in more immediate touch with money-making possibilities than the _braceros_. It is always thus, that they who are of least use in the economical development of the country should be most speedily rewarded.

I heard of an Italian waiter, who arrived in Buenos Ayres some time in November of 1911 and immediately went on to Mar del Plata, the fashionable seaside resort, where he readily secured a situation in one of the hotels. In one month he netted a thousand pesos in “tips,” and with this vast sum ($420) he incontinently returned to his native country in order to purchase a piece of land and set up as a small farmer! A coachman, also an Italian, whose services I occasionally employed during our stay in Buenos Ayres, informed me that he was making a clear profit of 600 pesos (or $252) per month. The coach, a very handsome one, and the horse, a splendid animal, were his own property, and so careful was he of his coach that he did not care to bring it out on very sunny days, lest the upholstery might fade, while he disliked driving on very wet days, so that he suited his own convenience as to the hours and days of work! Withal, he was speedily acquiring a competence. He assured me he drank as good wine as he got at home, and if he did not eat so well, it was because nobody did in the Argentine, owing to the difficulty of getting good food at reasonable prices. He also had been a waiter, but evidently had his eye on a higher mark than his compatriot who hastened back from Mar del Plata with his first month’s gratuities.

I do not doubt that if one had gone about, notebook in hand, collecting experiences from all sorts and conditions of people who had emigrated to the country, no end of “human interest” stories could have been obtained. Such as I came by, however, were the fruit of casual conversations, and the absence of the British and North Americans from the emigration movement was probably the reason why I did not study it in more than its broadest aspects. To follow it here in detail would involve so much in the way of comparative statistics, that I make no apology for touching the subject in the most sketchy, but I hope not unsuggestive, manner. I did receive, after leaving Buenos Ayres, some copies of the _Herald_ containing a long and interesting correspondence, originated by an Englishman in Buenos Ayres, entitled “Is Argentina as Bright as it is Painted?” Some excellent letters were written by Britishers while the correspondence continued, and although the Mr. Q’s and Mr. F’s could not allow the occasion to pass without casting a stone at the unworthy land of their birth, the whole weight of opinion was in tune with what I have written. If anything, most of the writers went further, and some even piously called upon the Almighty to protect the wretched English workman whose lot it was to live in such places as Bahía Blanca and Rosario. Personally, I must confess that I have seen worse places to live in than Rosario, and even considerably worse than Bahía Blanca. I have been in Antofagasta!

But enough of the British in this connection, for they certainly do not amount to anything of real consequence in the sum total of Argentine immigration, the Americans to still less.[2] What is to be noticed, however, is a very distinct forward movement among the Germans. The German has come rather late in the day to discover the Britisher very thoroughly established in all branches of commerce throughout the Republic. But, undismayed, the German has set himself to the task of undermining British supremacy, laying his plans to capture a large share of future business. There is, of course, no comparison in sheer bulk between the German and the Italian immigration, as the number of Germans arriving in the Argentine in 1912 was only 4,337, (to which we might add 6,545 Austrians) against 165,662 Italians. But in the smaller Teutonic group lay greater money-making possibilities than in the Latin horde.

These Germans represent all classes of the community; there are quite a few titled Teutons engaged in business in Buenos Ayres to-day. They are developing their banking connection throughout the Republic with great energy; German manufacturers are establishing branches everywhere; German clerks are flooding into all sorts of businesses, their superior working qualities to the Spaniard, their readiness to accept the lowest wages that will support an existence, and their ability to acquire speedily the language of the country, being all sound reasons for the ready demand for their services. The competition of these German clerks will soon change the complexion of the office staffs of the railways, for they are even supplanting the British employees, and, if the cold truth must be told, they are really better employees. One seldom meets a German who cannot at least contrive to make himself understood in English, and who, although seldom speaking the Spanish language with grace or correct pronunciation, will not in a few months be able to converse in it with a fair degree of fluency.

In addition to those different classes of Teutonic invaders come the hand-workers—engineers, carpenters, builders, agricultural labourers. In considerable numbers these work people, who share the ability of their compatriots in the acquiring of languages, are filtering all over the Argentine and in certain districts of the southwest, especially around the celebrated Lake Nahuel Huapi, some thirteen hundred miles distant from the capital, there are entire settlements of German farmers, with their native school-teachers and Protestant missionaries. In fine, the Germanising of the Argentine has begun, and if it is still far from attaining the dimensions it has already assumed in Chili, I do not doubt that a day is coming when the German will have ousted the British, the French, and the Italian from their present supremacy in their respective fields, although never likely to compete with Britain or France in the matter of invested capital. At the time of writing, it is evident that there is a further movement to encourage German enterprise in the Argentine. I read in the London _Times_ this morning that the Kaiser’s brother, Prince Henry of Prussia, accompanied by his Princess and suite, are sailing on an official visit to the Republic in one of the fine new passenger steamers with which the Germans are successfully competing against the British lines for South Atlantic trade.

It is not to be supposed, although I have emphasised the fact that the Italian immigration is essentially a movement of unskilled labour, that it is exclusively so. For the Argentine offers to the observer a very remarkable lesson in the industrial progress of Italy, which may entirely escape him in his travels in Italy itself. To encounter at every step, as one does wherever one goes throughout the Argentine, the most persistent evidences of Italian enterprise in every branch of commerce, is to discover the Italian in an entirely new light. Most of us are in the habit of going to Italy to look at old things, to revel in the glories of her past, and are apt to come away from Rome, or Florence, or Venice, and especially from Naples, with an impression of bygone grandeur and lingering poverty. It is true that we must set against this the evidence of her prosperity and modern activity, which we find in Milan and in Turin; but, on the whole, our popular notion of Italy is that of a country living mainly on its past.

The Italian in the Argentine will speedily dispel this. Not only does he supply the strong arms that are tilling the soil of countless leagues, but he maintains many of the great importing establishments in Buenos Ayres and the principal towns. Italian engineering agencies and workshops abound. A large proportion of the splendid motor cars that crowd the streets of the capital hail from Italy. Some of the finest chemists’ establishments are Italian. Not only are Italian workmen vastly in the majority on all building operations, but very often Italian brains are directing the whole undertaking; Italian contractors are paving the streets. In short, Italy stands forth in the life of the Argentine to-day as a magnificent industrial and commercial force, supported by the wide-spreading base of Italian emigrant labour.

There is also a very large traffic between the two countries in casual labour, ship-loads of Italians coming out each year for the harvest season—during which wages jump up from 40 to 50 pesos a month to 5 or 6 pesos a day—and return home immediately on its conclusion. The Italian steamers (the fastest that ply between Europe and South America, some of them doing the journey from Buenos Ayres to Genoa in twelve days, whereas the average of the English mail steamer from the River Plate to London or Liverpool takes nineteen to twenty-one days) provide special facilities for the shipment of these labourers at a very low head rate. To the remarkable return movement among Italian emigrants, on which I have already touched, this large element of casual labour has contributed not a little.

As regards the Spanish emigrant, I had many discussions with Spaniards settled in the Argentine, from which I gained a good deal more information than I had ever been able to acquire from any printed source. One of these gentlemen in particular had studied the question in five or six of the republics, and was engaged upon a book for circulation among his countrymen at home, putting the matter in a new light. In his estimation, the Argentine conditions represent an improvement for only the lowest class of Spaniard. This class of Spaniard I remember being very fully described in a leading article in _La Prensa_. His notions of thrift were there illustrated by his habit, when in his native country, of journeying about the countryside bare-footed, with his boots and stockings hung around his neck. When he approaches a village, he pauses by the roadside to put on his stockings and boots, and so shod traverses the village; but as soon as he has emerged on the highway again, he removes them and continues his journey with them around his neck once more! Such a custom touches the zero of social comfort and those habituated to it could scarcely fail to do better in almost any other country in the world.

According to my Spanish friend, such of his countrymen immediately become enthusiasts for the new land, and not only being able to go about permanently with their boots and stockings, but perhaps to buy a white collar for themselves and even a pair of silk stockings for their wives, feel they have suddenly made a magical transition into the very lap of luxury. But for the craftsmen, the village carpenter, the blacksmith, the modest tradesmen, he assured me the change was not always for the better. Spaniards of these classes can, thanks to the cheapness of commodities in their native country, and despite the lowness of wages, secure infinitely better household accommodation, and will eat better food, drink better wine, and altogether live a less strenuous and more satisfactory existence, than the majority, at least, will be doomed to maintain in the Argentine. As to all this, I can speak with no exact knowledge, and I do no more than report the opinion of a Spanish gentleman, confirmed to me, I may add, by several others of his race who ought to have been in positions to judge.

The gentleman in question was probably somewhat prejudiced, as he was a patriotic Spaniard, fond of elaborating his theory that Spain to-day had lost her head over the Argentine and was hastening her decay by orienting her literature and her journalism towards the lucrative market of South America instead of towards purely Spanish ideals. Looking to South America as a land of employment for her children, as in the past her kings had looked to it to fill their coffers, she was guilty of a crowning folly. If the energy she is pouring into South America were properly utilised at home, it would return far greater profit to the nation and the individual. Such, at least, was his line of reasoning, and I more than half suspect it was well based in fact.

And withal, from what I could gather, in the annals of Argentine immigration, the most interesting chapter that might be written would describe the activities and achievements of the Basques. This splendid race of people who seem to unite the finest qualities of the French and the Spanish, have distinguished themselves above all others in the making of modern Argentine. The geographical position of their homeland, enabling them to acquire, in addition to their own most difficult language—which polyglot Borrow found his hardest nut to crack—both French and Spanish, are peculiarly adapted for making their way in Latin America. But apart from the language question, their personal characteristics, in which industry joins with intelligence and imagination, would inevitably carry them to success. They stand to South American colonisation as the Scot to British Empire-making, and the peculiar custom of their country, whereby the eldest son inherits all the family goods and remains at home to maintain the family succession, while the younger sons have to fare forth into the world to seek their fortunes, marks them out for colonists.

My acquaintance with the Basques was limited to one family only—a wonderful family; they are French Basques, and some fifteen or sixteen brothers and cousins are united in a great business, which has important warehouses and distributing centres in every large town along the Atlantic and Pacific Coasts of South America, as well as in many of the business centres of the interior. But for a typical story of the Basques, I turn to the pages of M. Huret and translate what is one of the most interesting little romances of Argentine emigration:

I wish to relate in some detail the story of one of these French Basques (perhaps the most celebrated of them all), as I heard it from one of his sons. I admire and sympathise with the pride of this intelligent plebeian in a country where so many people think of little more than how to make others believe in the aristocracy of their blood, as if the most beautiful and the noblest qualities of “aristocratic” blood did not potentially exist in the blood of the people!

Pedro Luro was born in 1820 in the little town of Gamarthe, and in 1837 he arrived at Buenos Ayres with a few francs in his pocket. Entering as a labourer in a _saladero_ (beef salting establishment), he contrived to save enough to contemplate matrimony, but suffered the loss of his little savings by robbery. He applied himself with new energy to work; purchasing a horse and a tilt cart, he converted the latter into an omnibus, and with himself as driver plied between the Plaza Montserrat and the suburb of Barracas.

He then married a countrywoman, Señorita Pradere, a relative of his own, and with one of her brothers founded an _almacén_ (general store) at Dolores, some three hundred kilometres to the south. But soon this store did not suffice for his activity, and leaving his wife and her brother in charge of it, he scoured the Pampa for cattle, wool and hides. Later on, he made a proposal to a neighbouring estanciero whom he saw planting trees on his ground, and effected a contract with him, the conditions of which are famous still in the Argentine. Luro was to plant as many trees as he liked on two hundred _hectáreas_ of land, which the estanciero was to place at his disposal, and was to be paid for the work at the rate of four centimes for each common tree and twenty-five for each fruit tree of which the fruit contained stones.

Calling to his aid a number of his fellow Basques, at the end of five years, Pedro Luro had planted so many trees on these two hundred hectáreas that the proprietor owed him a sum not only superior to the value of the ground planted, but of the whole five thousand hectáreas composing his estancia (land was sold at that time in this district at 5,000 francs per league). The estanciero did not care to pay Luro, with the result that the astute Basque started an action at law and converted himself into the proprietor of the 5,000 hectáreas.

About the year 1840, the southern part of the province of Buenos Ayres was still almost desert, the land of small value. These were the times of the Rosas tyranny, and incessant revolutions. All around the abandoned estancias dogs had returned to a state of savagery, and cattle wandered free in innumerable herds across these immense spaces. It happened that Luro was assisting at a _batida_ (battue) of these animals, rendered mad by being entangled in the lassos and pricked with knives in the hocks. Pondering over the value of all that flesh and fat wasted, for it was then the custom merely to secure the skin of the animal and leave its body to decay, the idea occurred to buy from the landowner all the animals of the class that were thus to be hunted and killed, at the rate of ten pesos of the old Argentine money, equivalent to little more than one peso of the present currency. The proprietor was highly amused at the suggestion. “I quite believe I will accept,” he exclaimed, laughing, “but do you really think it would be good business?”

It was with the only system of capture known to the _gauchos_, that is to say the lasso and the _bolas_ (three balls attached by long leather thongs, which, thrown with great dexterity at the legs of an animal, entangle these and bring it to the ground), necessitating months and an enormous number of men, that he would be able to bring some thousands of cattle—and in what sad state—to the salting factory.

All the same, Luro insisted with perfect coolness, and the contract was signed.

Now the tactics conceived by the intelligent Basque were as follow: He began by prohibiting the gauchos from scouring the country in cavalcades. During three months, only two men on horseback, going slowly, were allowed to wander about the pasture ground of these wild cattle. Little by little the animals became accustomed to the sight of them and did not fly away when they approached. When some hundreds of cattle had thus been domesticated, they were taken farther away, where others were still in a wild state, and these in turn were easily reduced to the tameness of the first.

In batches of five hundred to a thousand, Luro was soon able to herd the cattle direct to the salting factories, where he sold them at 15, 20, 25, even 30 francs each. At the end of a year, he had thus secured no fewer than 35,000 head of cattle. He had made himself rich, and the proprietor of the estancia had received from him at one stroke 70,000 francs, which he had never expected, remaining enchanted with his transaction.

In 1862, Pedro Luro went still further afield, beyond Bahía Blanca, whose fort at that time constituted the frontier against the Indians. He was delayed for some time on the banks of the River Colorado, owing to the Indians having robbed him of his horses. Meanwhile, exploring the valley of the river, he quickly grasped the potentialities of the district. Returning to Buenos Ayres, he secured an interview with General Mitre, to whom he proposed to buy from the State 100 square leagues of land (250,000 hectáreas) at the rate of 1,000 francs per league, with a view to founding a colony of three hundred Basques in that region.

His scheme apparently approved by the President, he then set sail for Navarra Baja in Spain, where he recruited some fifty families, with whom he returned to the Argentine. But the Government, while agreeing to the sale of land, would not, for some unknown reason, permit the founding of the colony, so the Basques were spread over the land of their compatriot. Many of them, or their descendants, are to-day millionaires, while the land bought at the 1,000 francs the league is valued now at 200 francs the hectárea, or say 500,000 francs per league.

Meanwhile, Pedro Luro continued his active commerce in skins and wool. Ere long he had constructed the largest curing factory in all the basin of the River Plate, expending millions of francs on it. Then he set himself to the exploitation of the bathing station of Mar del Plata, which had been founded by Señor Peralta Ramos, one of the most fortunate of speculations, from which his heirs, continuing his work there, have benefited immensely. At his death he left to his fourteen children 375,000 hectáreas of land, 300,000 sheep, and 150,000 cattle, then valued at 40,000,000 francs.

Pedro Luro was a Frenchman who did honour to his country by his exceptional qualities, his spirited initiative, valour, endurance, and business intelligence. He took to the Argentine more than 2,000 of his fellow Basques, whom he employed in his many agricultural and industrial establishments, providing them with cattle, letting land to them cheaply, lending them money. Almost all of these have made their fortunes. With Luro disappeared one of those types that are almost legendary, and without doubt the most famous colonist of the epic period of Argentine immigration.

Here, then, is as fascinating a story as we shall find in the annals of colonisation, and so eminent in the life of the Argentine are the descendants of Pedro Luro to-day that the story of their origin and the achievements of their progenitor would form a splendid subject for some native writer, were not the Argentine authors too busy imitating European models to lend themselves to the simple narration of such splendid life-histories as the making of the Argentine presents. For the passage I have quoted from M. Huret is no more than the prelude to a romance which is likely yet to see its final issue in the founding of a great and prosperous town at the mouth of the River Colorado in the Bay of San Blas, southward of Bahía Blanca. The Luros are the lords of all the land in that region, and I recall the interest with which I read a series of somewhat highly coloured articles by Mr. A. G. Hales, the Anglo-Australian journalist, then attached to the staff of the Buenos Ayres _Standard_, who, in the latter part of 1912, made a journey on horseback through that district. He pictured the coming of a day when ships would sail from the city of San Blas laden with wines for the tables of European epicures, and no end of other wonders that would come to pass in the valley of the River Colorado, which fifty years ago the shrewd Pedro Luro had secured for his descendants at so small an outlay. At the present moment, there is no railway within 150 miles of San Blas, and I suppose there is no more than a paper plan of the future city, lying somewhere in the estate office of the Luros, and no ships cast anchor in its bay, but there was a time when Buenos Ayres itself, and not so many years ago Bahía Blanca, meant no more to the world than a name on a map, and who shall say what dreams may not come true?