Furniture. The construction of furniture has attained large proportions, a great part of what is sold in the country being made in Buenos Aires though often bearing foreign names. Wood is imported, even $25,000,000 worth in one year, while the finest woods grow in the country. Of 305 saw mills, 134, the most important, are in the City and Province of Buenos Aires far from the forests. The small mills near the woods merely chop off the branches for transport or prepare firewood. Cut wood from Buenos Aires is returned to Misiones and Corrientes for construction, a terrible waste. A change has begun; the mills near the forests are being enlarged and equipped with machinery, so an evolution of the industry is under way.
Paper. Eight paper factories with capital of $8,000,000 employing 1500 persons produce 40,000,000 pounds of paper, 28,000,000 for packing, the rest for newspapers, books, and other things. A great quantity is still imported, formerly from Germany, lately much from the United States. The paper is made of rags, shreds of paper, and pasteboard, the consumption of pulp being small, hardly 200,000 pounds. One factory at Barranqueras, on the Paraná River in the Chaco, employs a kind of bog grass to make three tons of straw board a day.
Flour. The flour mills are of great importance, supplying in 1919, 850,000 tons of flour for home use and some for export. In 1918, 176,445 tons were exported. With fewer mills than formerly, the 400 existing are more productive. The 79 in Buenos Aires, 47 in Santa Fé, 44 in Entre Rios, and 26 in Córdoba produce 95 per cent of the total. Sixty-one per cent of the mills are Argentine owned. One hundred and fifty two are steam mills, 156 hydraulic. They have 25,000-30,000 horse power and employ 10,000 persons. About $34,000,000 are invested in the industry while the production is $100,000,000. However the farmers have trouble, as the fee for hauling grain has increased 60 per cent, and cartage 25 miles to a station is as much as the freight from Buenos Aires to New York. A flour mill in Mendoza and in other western cities of the wheat belt would undoubtedly pay handsomely, saving expensive transport. A new flour mill at La Plata to cost $500,000 is to turn out a quantity sufficient to fill 1000 bags a day.
Beer is made in 25 factories for the consumption of the entire country, a quantity of 80,000,000 litres worth $12,000,000. To produce the 7000 horse power needed, thousands of tons of coal, wood, and petroleum are consumed.
Other Manufactures. Factories making shoes, said to be of the best quality, underwear, umbrellas, acids, perfume, and many other articles are found. Vegetable oils are extracted from peanuts, linseed, rape, cotton seed, and other articles, in establishments in Buenos Aires and Santa Fé.
Altogether there are about 50,000 industrial establishments with a capital of $800,000,000 using 678,000 horse power, employing 500,000 persons, consuming nearly $500,000,000 worth of material, and producing nearly $1,000,000,000 worth of goods. About half of these are extractive or manufacturing. One-third belong to the Argentines who supply 18.67 per cent of the capital.
Developing Industries. The Government is interested in the establishment of other factories and construction work; a cement factory in Buenos Aires to make 300,000 tons per annum is considered, the Government now using 700,000 tons a year. Ship building is encouraged; a steel ship of 1250 tons was launched at Riachuelo; yards are to be constructed at the port of Carmen de Patagones on the Rio Negro by an Argentine company with capital of 50,000,000 pesos. Some armored cement oil-tanks of 6000 tons capacity are to be made for Comodoro Rivadavia, and a depot for petroleum and naphtha at the port of Mar del Plata. Also for the former, port works, a breakwater, a mole for loading, and houses for workmen at a cost of 17,000,000 pesos. Sanitary works for 16 towns at a cost of 9,800,000 pesos are provided for, 22,000,000 pesos are to be spent in three years for machinery and tank steamers to develop the Government oil wells, the exploitation of which will cost 45,000,000 pesos; present production is yet insufficient.
A Spanish Argentine Corporation with a capital of $10,000,000 is to build two large frigorificos at Buenos Aires and Santa Fé, with steamers to transport beef to Spain. Another frigorifico is designed for Puerto Deseado in the south to coöperate with local ranchmen.
The lack of combustibles has for many years been a great and embarrassing problem, an early solution of which is now hoped for. Importation of coal from England and of petroleum from the United States has been carried on at great cost. In five years, 1912-16, $190,000,000 was spent for such articles, while as they say petroleum ran into the sea and wood rotted at the railway stations. In 1919 coal was $26 a ton. The forests of the north have an inexhaustible supply of wood; the charcoal industry is quite well developed in the Chaco, north Santa Fé, Tucumán, and Santiago. Many woods are appropriate, but high freights have impeded their use. A large deposit of coal is recently reported in Tucumán. A new railway to the firewood region of Santiago del Estero will save a 100 mile haul. A splendid source of electric power are the Iguassú Falls with 275 cascades, the greatest with a height of 213 feet. Investigation shows that 500,000 horse power is easily available, one half each for Brazil and Argentina. Ten thousand horse power would be sent 800 miles to Buenos Aires, the rest used in Misiones, Corrientes, and Entre Rios. From the Salto Grande Falls on the Uruguay 50,000 horse power might be available for Argentina and Uruguay each.