Every man has a perfect right to abandon the country in which his means of existence cannot be guaranteed. Emigration is, after all, a lesser evil than starvation; but, alas! it is not as a rule the most necessitous who emigrate, but the most energetic, the most ambitious, the most capable. We have only to turn our eyes in the direction of Ireland to see this truth exemplified. Norway is another country that complains bitterly of the emigration of her most stalwart sons.[194] The man who is worth his salt does not leave without regret, without sorrow, the land of his birth; nearly all who go cherish the hope that they may some day return. It is not en masse, like the Tartars described by De Quincey, but drop by drop, that the country’s life-blood ebbs away. “Emigration is a poison which prolongs our life upon the borders of the tomb.” No, it can never be favourable to Galicia, it can never be anything better than a harmful alternative. “At any rate,” wrote the above-quoted writer, “if Gallegans must emigrate, let them choose South America—a country where men are wanted, where there is room for all. When they emigrated to other parts of Spain, they only took the bread from other mouths to put it in their own. South America is the land of the future; it will leave Europe behind as surely as Europe did Asia.”
And truly the economical progress that has been made during recent years by the Argentine Republic alone is more than surprising. Prodigious progress has been made in that country,[195] which, with its two inhabitants to the square mile, occupies the first rank among all the South American nations as regards its economic activity. The greater part of the Republic is situated within the temperate zone à l’extrémeté méridional de l’Amérique du Sud. It is divided into fourteen provinces and ten territories, an extent of 2,950,520 square kilometres, with a total population of 5,672,191. With the same density as that with which Germany is populated, the Argentine Republic could accommodate three hundred million inhabitants. The emigrants thither in
| 1857 | = | 4,951; |
| 1905 | = | 221,622. |
The cultivable lands can be cultivated as soon as the emigrants take possession of them. There are 104,300,000 hectares available. Railways are in course of construction. Wool and frozen mutton are two of the principal exports.
Of every twenty-five Gallegans who emigrate to South America, twenty are usually simple villagers from mountain villages, and the remaining five are young men from the towns who have received a fairly good education. The twenty villagers will live in South America as simply as they have been accustomed to live from their childhood, earning, let us say, five pesetas a day; they will put by four, and live on one, and at the end of each year they invest the little sum which has accrued, and it brings them in some fifty per cent.: thus, after a few years, they find themselves in comfortable circumstances, and soon they are comparatively rich men. But the five town-bred youths, on the contrary, having been accustomed to more expensive living and better clothes at home, continue to require the same luxuries abroad: they find themselves compelled to use up every penny of the five pesetas they earn in a day, and, having nothing to put by, they do not grow rich. The twenty villagers are quite content with vegetable soups, maize bread, no beverage but water, and simple pleasures that cost them nothing, but the five town-bred men would be miserable on such fare.
Land is given to the emigrants on their arrival, and all the necessary implements are supplied to them by Government on a five years’ hire system. The soil is so rich that no manuring is wanted, and it can be sown fourteen years in succession without need of rest. The Government of Chili is so desirous of increasing its industrial and agricultural population, that it gives the peasants of Galicia their passages free to Valparaiso, and in order to get the people to go it employs agents to talk to them and persuade them to embark. The agents get a commission on every passenger they book. Formerly it was only the men who emigrated, but now it is becoming quite a common thing for their wives and children to accompany them.
One morning I took a walk outside the town of Santiago beside a stream where several women were washing clothes at a public wash-shelter, with stone slabs along the banks, on which to rub their clothes. They were on their knees, and with sleeves up above the elbow, energetically kneading away at the linen they had brought with them. I stood beside them, silently listening to their conversation.
First Woman: “Yes, he went to Buenos Ayres.”
Second Woman: “How did he like it?”
First Woman: “Oh, he found that if you wanted to eat you had to work, just the same as here.”