On the other hand, fiscal agreements, commercial treaties, and railways must contribute to the solidarity of these nations among themselves. Europe has invested vast sums of capital in America; she sends thither large quantities of the products of her industries, but there are peoples more favoured than others by this invasion of capital. It should be possible by a series of practical conventions to lay the foundations of a Zollverein. The dependence of certain republics as compared with others should tend to make them commercially independent of Europe. Already a number of industries are being developed in America; in Brazil their yield attains the annual value of 46 million pounds; in 1909 the imports were diminished by 3 million pounds in consequence of this new economic factor. It may be supposed that in the still distant future the agricultural peoples of America will buy the products of their industrial neighbours, the Argentine, Brazil, and Uruguay. The unification of the monetary system will still further facilitate the development of this inter-state commerce, this trade between zones almost exclusively agricultural, and other regions both agricultural and industrial; thus closer economic relations will be the basis of a lasting political understanding. No American republic has yet reached the term of its economic development.
We may distinguish three periods in the evolution of the nations towards autonomy; during the first their dependence is absolute, in respect of ideas as much as of men and capital; such is the present situation of the majority of the Latin democracies. During the second period agriculture suffices for the national necessities and industry develops; the Argentine, Brazil, and Mexico are already in this state of partial liberty. Finally, the period of agricultural and industrial exportation commences, and the intellectual influence of the country makes itself felt beyond the frontiers. After France and England, Germany and the United States reached this glorious phase. Neither Mexico nor the Argentine nor Brazil is as yet flooding the world with its industrial products nor affecting it by its original intellectual activities; there is no culture or philosophy that we can properly term Argentine or Chilian. Europe is tributary to the Argentine for her wheat and meats, and to Brazil for her coffee, but ideas and machines come from Paris, London, and New York.
M. Limantour, who tried to save the Mexican railways from the Yankee capitalists, and the Argentine economists, who endeavoured to convert the foreign into a national debt, are preparing the way for the future reign of financial liberty; but this transformation depends on the increase of public or private wealth and the activity of immigrants, who in hospitable America soon become landed proprietors or merchants.
In the country districts, as in the cities, which are every day more numerous, the common wealth and the fiscal revenues are increasing, owing to the efforts of industrious men. Not only are foreign industrial undertakings being founded, but national institutions also, fed by national capital. When the necessary loans can be subscribed in the country itself, when railways and ports are constructed with State or private capital, or with the financial aid of other South American governments; when American multi-millionaires (there are already plenty of them in the Argentine) have effected the nationalisation of the public works now in the hands of foreigners, then the economic ideal of these democracies will be realised.
Latin America may already be considered as independent from the agricultural point of view; it possesses riches which are peculiar to it: coffee to Brazil, wheat to the Argentine, sugar to Peru, fruits and rubber to the Tropics. Its productive capacity is considerable. It may rule the markets of the world. The systematic exploitation of its mines will reveal treasures which are not even suspected. We may say, then, that even without great industries the American continent, independent in the agricultural domain, and an exporter of precious metals, may win a doubtless precarious economic liberty.
[[1]] Cited by F. Bulnes, El Verdadero Juarez, Paris, 1904, p. 29.
CONCLUSION
AMERICA AND THE FUTURE OF THE LATIN PEOPLES
The Panama Canal and the two Americas—The future conflicts between Slavs, Germans, Anglo-Saxons, and Latins—The role of Latin America.