The Argentine in the Twentieth Century

by Alberto B. Martínez; Maurice Lewandowski

[39] Speech delivered on 21st September 1903.

The principal author of this deep-rooted evil is incontestably the Argentine State, which has squandered its rich inheritance, by allowing it to pass into the hands of speculators, instead of dividing it equitably among the new colonists. The subdivision of these great tracts of land, now concentrated in the hands of a few large proprietors, is, to-day, one of the necessary conditions of the development of the country, and it is with reason that influential voices are raising themselves, in Parliament and in the Press, to proclaim this economic truth.

The great “estancias” of 180 square miles in area, covered by immense herds of cattle, must finally, says M. F. Segni, author of an Investigacion agricola, be divided into small concerns of from 4000 to 12,000 acres, which would, with fewer animals but a better system, yield a greater profit both to the owner and to the country. The old system of large ranching must gradually give way to an intensive system, when stock-raising, combined with agriculture, will employ a larger population, attract more capital, and realise better results.

There is happily no need to be greatly pessimistic on this point, as we can already perceive a tendency to the subdivision of property, which comes from the powers of the State as well as from land-owners or commercial companies. Thus the land law of 1907 was passed solely with the object of preventing large monopolies; it prohibits the acquisition for the benefit of a single person of any portion of the national domains of greater area than 6170 acres. The importance of this step will be understood, when we remember that the State has still to dispose of 212 millions of acres of desert land, suitable for agriculture, and situated in territories which are rapidly becoming peopled.

On the other hand, there are certain business concerns which, as owners of enormous tracts of land, are dividing them into small lots, which they are offering freehold to prospective farmers at fairly moderate prices, and facilities

of payment are offered at the same time. Among these firms we may mention the “Sociedad Anonima la Curumalan,” owning some 600,000 acres of land in the southern portion of the Province of Buenos Ayres, suitable both for cattle-raising and for agriculture, which is selling land at from £2, 2s. to £3 per acre, according to the quality and the situation, payable in three or four years; the payment by instalments being increased by an interest varying from 7 to 9 percent. yearly. The “Stroeder Colonisation Society,” which has exploited a large belt of agricultural country; the “Compañia de Colonisation del Rio de la Plata;” the “Estancia y Colonia Trenel,” founded by the great Argentine land-owner, Antonio Devoto, and a large number of other companies and syndicates are working on the basis of enabling the colonist to acquire his own land, and are doing successful business.

A striking example of progress in this matter of the subdivision of property is furnished by the statistics of the Province of Córdoba for the years between 1898-1899 and 1905-1906. During this period 3,193,600 acres of land, out of a total of 9,823,300 acres, which represent the colonies and settled land of the province, have been sold to farmers; that is, nearly a third. Thanks to this subdivision, the number of colonists in this province who have become the actual proprietors of larger or smaller holdings has risen to 4568. What is happening in Córdoba is also happening more or less rapidly in the other agricultural provinces; and it is by this method that the Argentine will one day succeed in abolishing the latifundia, whose progressive disappearance is a condition of further development.

We might multiply the instances of land-owners or commercial enterprises which are helping the labourer to buy land, for the system of dividing the land into small allotments, selling it at a cheap price, and allowing payment by instalments, is every day becoming more widespread. The journals are full of announcements of the sale by auction of lands which, until to-day, have never felt the ploughshare, and are now given over to colonisation. One also hears men speak, as of an accomplished fact, of the method initiated by several railway-companies which propose,

by means of their own capital, to bring into the market and increase the value of the vast tracts of uncultivated land which they own on the outskirts of their systems.

Unhappily, in spite of this tendency to the subdivision of the soil, the most usual system of working the land is still that of letting it at a fixed rent, or for a certain proportion of the yield in place of rent, or by a profit-sharing system, under which the tenant receives 50, 40, or 30 per cent, of the harvest. The large land-owners, who are the most numerous, prefer the former method, and often impose on the farmer the obligation of leaving a crop of lucerne on the land in the last year of the tenancy.