We find the same ups and downs in the figures of the Budget, the contributive powers of the country being influenced by the same causes as its consumption. If the crops are poor, the Budget of the following year shows immediate traces of the fact. Thus in 1902, the year of the bad harvest, the total receipts were estimated at £5,534,000 in paper, and £9,486,669 in gold; but the actual receipts were only £5,221,000 in paper, and £8,047,755 in gold; a deficit of £1,438,913 in gold.
At the same time the Customs receipts, which are the most variable item of the revenue, on account of their direct relation to consumption, have fallen from one year to another (as in 1903 compared with 1902), as much as £1,200,000 in consequence of the agricultural crisis.
There is an equally direct relation between the financial situation and the results of the harvest. If the commercial balance is favourable, the Argentine becomes a creditor of foreign countries by the excess of its exportations, and the
resulting payments in gold, after the deductions of the interest on the foreign debt, increase the proportion between the metallic currency and the monetary circulation in general.
As these few examples prove, the prosperity of the country is subordinated to the result of the harvest; the latter gives the measure of all improvement, all progress of a financial and economic order. Unlike the ancient European nations, the Argentine Republic has no reserves of accumulated capital behind it, so that it can live on its own savings in times of crisis. Its commerce and its industries depend almost exclusively upon its agricultural yield, and share all the latter’s vicissitudes.
All depends on the value of the soil, the basis of public and private wealth. The power of expenditure which follows a good harvest may contribute towards proving personal property, but the latter remains always strictly related to the agricultural yield and general produce of the soil, and does not constitute an easily-realised reserve.
For the rest, we must recognise that, as a rule, this capital does not remain inactive, and is as little as possible sterilised by investment in the public funds. Those who possess available cash, in the shape of revenue from a large estate, usually employ it by increasing their stock of cattle, or in reclaiming more land, or by investing it in other estates; so that all that comes from the earth returns to the earth, and goes to increase its yield.
The peculiar situation of this great agricultural country, which constitutes at once the strength and the instability of the Republic, shows us in what spirit and by what method it should be studied. All depends upon the yield of the soil, for this is the great dispenser of the national wealth; it is therefore the agricultural system that we must examine first of all, if we wish to arrive at a solution of the problems arising from the present condition of the Argentine or predict its future.
To follow out this general plan, we must consider the country first of all from two standpoints: we must examine into its production and its markets or outlets, in order to learn the true conditions of its existence, the value of its soil, and its sources of revenue.
We shall then proceed to examine its administrative machinery, showing how the Argentine lives and progresses as a nation, and to analyse its financial and monetary organisation with reference to the economic situation.