[33] The term used, fléaux, would probably include yellow fever, drought, locusts, cattle disease, bad harvests, etc., etc.—[Trans.]
The public administration did not take the trouble to keep an exact record of the number of immigrants before the year 1853; and between 1854 and 1870 we have simply the number of new arrivals, without any further details. Only since 1870 have the official statistics classed the immigrants according to nationality, and only since 1881 have they recorded other details, such as sex, age, profession, education, etc.
During the last six months of 1854, 2524 persons entered the country; in 1855, 5912; in 1856, 4672; in 1857, 4951, in 1858, 4658; and in 1859, 4735; or 27,452 in six years: that is, far more than had entered during two centuries of colonial life.
In the decade formed by the years 1860-1869, the number of immigrants increased to 134,325; in the years 1870-1879, to 264,869; but the highest figures, no less than 1,020,907, were reached between 1880 and 1889. But we must confess that during this decade certain artificial means were employed to recruit the population in Europe; such means as gratuitous passages, which brought to the Argentine a number of useless people, unfitted for any productive task whatever.
During the following decade, 1890-1899, which saw the terrible banking smash and the loss of public credit, as a result of every kind of excess, the immigration diminished slightly—to 928,000 persons—and at certain moments emigration also made itself felt, in such proportions that it amounted to a veritable exodus. The departure of those who failed to make money in the Argentine or find the work they sought amounted to 552,172, the largest figures that have so far been recorded.
Unhappily this double stream of immigration and emigration has continued up to the present. Thus, in 1900-1904, 601,682 immigrants entered the country; but, on the other hand, 384,000 emigrants left it. Such figures as these denote a grave disorder in the assimilative faculty of a nation. Matters were no better in the three years 1905-1907, since although 781,796 immigrants entered from Europe and from Montevideo, 324,687 emigrants left during the same period, leaving a total of only 457,108 in three years.
In the previous period, from 1900-1904, the diminution of the current of immigration was explained by various causes: in the first place, by bad harvests, the suspension of important public and private undertakings, the fear of war over the frontier question, the dearness of living, the difficulties experienced by the immigrant in settling in the national or private colonies: the excessive price of land and the high rents in the more promising agricultural districts, the insecurity of life for man and beast, the abuses of the authorities, especially in districts remote from the centres of population, and the tardy, costly, and faulty nature of justice.
But since this period many of these causes have disappeared, thanks to the splendid harvests of the last few years, and to the period of rapid economic expansion upon which the Republic has entered. It is difficult, under these conditions, to explain the still existing lack of immigration, which denotes a disorder of the assimilative faculties of the country.
Among the causes likely to prevent immigration there is one which must not be too closely insisted upon: the increasing cost of living. But it is the European mode of
life that is dear, while in the country districts existence costs next to nothing, as the colonist himself produces practically every alimentary necessity.