Apart from these causes already enumerated there is yet one other which deserves to be taken into account; it consists of the sums which Europeans who are established or have become enriched in the Argentine send each year to their families abroad. We have, unhappily, no means of estimating the importance of this sum.
Finally, a cause of inaccuracy which is felt at present as it never has been before, has its rise in the ever-increasing number of natives of the Argentine who leave their country for Europe, their purses well lined, and themselves ready to spend their money in superfluities or luxuries, or in travelling from place to place.
According to the information furnished us by the agents of various steamship companies, 10,805 first-class passengers left the Argentine for Europe in 1908, in search of more or less costly amusement.
What will one of these rich South Americans spend abroad? How far do the mass of them contribute to increase the sum which the country pays out across the ocean every year? It is difficult to guess; but if we estimate, as we moderately may, that each of them spends about £1000, we may add on this count only a sum of £1,080,500 to the debit side of the Argentine balance. On the other hand, we have not included among the yearly liabilities the enormous sums which the country pays each year in ocean freight charges, because in fixing the sale price of exported products the freight has already been deducted, as well as insurance, brokerage, commissions, the cost of wharfage, etc., etc. But to give some idea of the importance of these sums it is enough to say that, according to estimates worthy of evidence, the Argentine Republic paid in freight, in the year 1908, for the transport of some 6 million tons of linseed, wheat, and maize, at the rate of £1 per ton of grain, a sum of about £6,500,000.
These figures having been considered, we may now establish as follows the basis of the economic balance of the Argentine:—
The Credit side is formed in the first place by the value of the exports, which in 1908 increased to £73,200,000; then by the great and incessant consignments of capital on the part of already existing companies, or new ones which are formed to exploit railways, tramways, or other industrial undertakings, or to undertake the mortgaging of landed property. An economic journal, much valued in Buenos Ayres, the Buenos-Aires Handels Zeitung, estimates at £8,000,000 the amount of fresh capital which enters the
country each year. The third class of assets is constituted by the sums brought into the country by immigrants, which are estimated at £1,800,000. The total of all these sums amounts to the considerable figure of £83,000,000.
On the Debit side we must first of all place the value of imports, which in 1908 amounted to £54,600,000, including the large arrivals of railway and tramway material which the country has not to pay for immediately, as it obtains them upon long credit; this item is consequently much smaller in reality than it appears at first sight. Then comes the interest on the foreign capital invested in the Argentine Republic in bonds of the National Debt, in railway shares, tramway shares, and various other undertakings.
We have seen that the revenue of all these securities issued by or in direct relation with the Argentine Republic amounts to £22,000,000, and that of this sum £4,300,000 remains in the Argentine; we therefore conclude that £18,000,000 leaves the country each year as remuneration for investments.
Then we have also to enter upon the debit side a total of £84,400,000 which “seems to leave the country” each year in payment of the debts contracted with foreign countries. But in reality this sum is perceptibly less, for the reasons we have mentioned above, so that we may reduce it to £80,000,000.