There are, in the Argentine Republic, 3097 establishments devoted to the exploitation of the vineyards and the making of wine, disposing of a total capital of some £4,320,000. Their products amount to 66,762,000 gallons of wine, representing a value of £4,720,000.
If we compare the production of the Argentine with that of the principal nations of the two Americas, we obtain, for the year 1907, the following table:—
| Argentine Republic | 556,096,000 | pints |
| Chili | 475,200,000 | ” |
| United States | 281,160,000 | ” |
| Brazil | 56,320,000 | ” |
| Peru | 17,248,000 | ” |
| Uruguay | 16,192,000 | ” |
| Bolivia | 5,576,000 | ” |
| Mexico | 3,168,000 | ” |
The Argentine wine industry, in which millions have been engaged, is, as we see, on the road of progress. It has to-day accomplished a rapid and a very considerable development, which might well, in the near future, eliminate the imported product from the market, at least in the case of wines for ordinary consumption.
Like the sugar industry, the wine-growing industry has gone through its crisis. On the one hand the abuse made of credit in establishing warehouses, cellars, and costly plant, and on the other defective methods of manufacture which brought the product into discredit, produced a deep-rooted depression, from which the industry has hardly yet emerged. It cannot look to the future until it perfects its means of
preparation, working out its brands with the aid of time and patience.
This industry, says an eminent writer, gives work to more than 100,000 inhabitants, and represents, as a matter of national wealth, a value in vineyards and factories of some £19,000,000; it produces annually £4,840,000 worth of merchandise, contributes £6,950,000 to the general trade, and surpasses in importance, both in the capital employed and in its products, the sugar industry of the country, which in 1907 manufactured sugar only to the value of £2,772,000.[68]
[68] See l’Industrie viti-vinicole de la République Argentine, by Ricardo Palencia, an essay published in the Recensement de l’agriculture et de l’élevage de la Nation. Vol. I. Buenos Ayres.
Tobacco.—For a long time the tobacco-plant has been cultivated in the Argentine; for we find, in various zones, conditions very favourable to its production; but its culture has by no means as yet acquired the importance of which it is capable, and is very far from satisfying the needs of national consumption.
The exports are insignificant: 37,983 lb. in 1906, and 16,612 lb. in 1907, of the respective values of £539 and £226. The lack of care brought to the cultivation of the plant and to the preparation of the leaf, together with incomplete experience from the industrial point of view, have contributed to check the increase of plantations, which ought to occupy a far larger area than they do.