The Argentine Republic, where the harvest is due in January, so that its wheat arrives in the European markets by March, is the country destined to profit the most by these advantages. It must learn how to make use of them wisely, practising a policy of peace and concord, increasing its powers of stability by the development of the sentiment of nationality,
and by inspiring confidence both in foreign capitalists and in immigrants by accumulating capital of its own, and by learning to retain, in spite of success, the foresight which warns of perils and the prudence which avoids them.
E. LEVASSEUR,
Member of the Institute,
Administrator of the College of France.
INTRODUCTION
This book, intended to make known in Europe the present situation and the economic future of the Argentine Republic, comes at an opportune moment to fulfil its mission of popularisation.
During the last ten years of the nineteenth century the Argentine has suffered all the misfortunes and known all the disasters that can affect a rural and agricultural people. The locust, coming from the Tropics, devoured the crops; anthrax, imported from Europe, decimated the cattle; the threats of a war with Chili imposed enormous expenses and exhausted the national revenue; finally, a commercial and industrial crisis, and domestic disturbances, consequent upon the general misfortune, completed the tale of calamities which put the vitality of the nation to the test.
But as there is no night so long that it has no dawn, all these shadows fled away. Our quarrel with Chili was submitted to arbitration, and the decision of His Majesty the King of Great Britain not only terminated a cause of difference of fifteen years’ duration, but re-established fraternal relations between the two Republics. The rural plagues were attacked and vanquished by measures which experience indicated as preventive of recurrence; commercial and industrial prosperity returned; the tranquillity of the interior was assured; and the general welfare increased. To accentuate still further this beneficent reaction, the immense and fertile plains of the pampa, open to the activities of the agriculturalists, began to produce abundant harvests, which struck the European markets with amazement, and diverted towards the Argentine a current of gold which was estimated at more than £20,000,000, and a stream of immigration, which, in the year 1904, brought 125,000 workers, and which promises to be even greater in the present year.
The Argentine Republic has issued triumphantly from its lengthy and severe ordeal; it has emerged richer, stronger