CHAPTER III
MINES, ELECTRICAL AND OTHER INDUSTRIES
The Argentine has not entered the industrial age—She has no coal-mines in operation, no natural motive forces of any importance.
Mines—Symptoms of the awakening of the mining industry—Numerous lodes in the Andes—The mines of La Rioja and Catamarca—Mines in other provinces and territories—Mining legislation.
Electric Industries—Tramways; their development, their perfected equipment, and their profits—Progress of electric lighting—Telegraphs—Telephones.
Various Industries—List of various industries established in Buenos Ayres, according to the last census, with the value of their products.
Comparison between the statistics of 1895 and those of 1904—Progress realised in 1908—Workshops and factories.
The Argentine Republic, as we have already on various occasions explained, has not yet entered upon the industrial phase. All its capital and all its energies tend toward the exploitation of the soil, and as the results are greater than the boldest speculator could have predicted, the country has no need at present, with its small population, to launch itself into the unknown by entering the province of industry.
Moreover, the Argentine does not so far possess coal or iron measures easily workable, and has very little labour at its disposal, and therefore should not disperse its activities among too many objects. It is its best policy to limit itself to producing articles that it can make more cheaply than the foreigner; not artificially to develop its industries in the shelter of an ultra-protectionist tariff. It would fall to the consumer to pay for such products of the national industry, and the state would lose a serious portion of its revenues.