BUENOS AYRES AT THE PRESENT TIME.
Perhaps no city of the world has grown and progressed more during this last decade than the city of Buenos Ayres. To-day passengers land in the centre of the city and step on "the most expensive system of artificial docks in all America, representing an expenditure of seventy million dollars."
To this city there is a large emigration. It has grown at the rate of 4,000 adults a week, with a birthrate of 1,000 a week added. The population is now fast climbing up to 1 1-2 millions of inhabitants. There are 300,000 Italians, 100,000 Spaniards, a colony of 20,000 Britishers, and, of course, Jews and other foreigners in proportion. "Buenos Ayres is one of the most cosmopolitan cities of the world. There are 189 newspapers, printed in almost every language of the globe. Probably the only Syrian newspaper in America, The Assudk, is issued in this city." To keep pace with the rush of newcomers has necessitated the building of 30,000 houses every year. There is here "the finest and costliest structure ever built, used exclusively by one newspaper, the home of La Prensa; the most magnificent opera house of the western hemisphere, erected by the government at the cost of ten million dollars; one of the largest banks in the world, and the handsomest and largest clubhouse in the world." [Footnote: John Barrett, In Munsey's Magazine.] The entrance fee to this club is $1,500. The Y.M.C.A. is now erecting a commodious building, for which $200,000 has already been raised, and there is a Y.W.C.A., with a membership of five hundred. Dr. Clark, in "The Continent of Opportunity," says, "More millionaires live in Buenos Ayres than in any other city of the world of its size. The proportion of well-clothed, well-fed people is greater than in American cities, the slums are smaller, and the submerged classes less in proportion. The constant movement of carriages and automobiles here quite surpasses that of Fifth Avenue." The street cars are of the latest and most improved electric types, equal to any seen in New York or London, and seat one hundred people, inside and out. Besides these there is an excellent service of motor cabs, and tubes are being commenced. Level crossings for the steam roads are not permitted in the city limits, so all trains run over or under the streets.
"The Post Office handles 40,000,000 pieces of mail and 125,000 parcel post packages a month. The city has 1,209 automobiles, 27 theatres and 50 moving picture shows. Five thousand vessels enter the port of Buenos Ayres every year, and the export of meat in 1910 was valued at $31,000,000. No other section of the world shows such growth." [Footnote: C. H. Furlong, in The World's Work.]
The city, once so unhealthy, is now, through proper drainage, "the second healthiest large city of the world." The streets, as I first saw them, were roughly cobbled, now they are asphalt paved, and made into beautiful avenues, such as would grace any capital of the world. Avenida de Mayo, cut right through the old city, is famed as being one of the most costly and beautiful avenues of the world.
On those streets the equestrian milkman is no longer seen. Beautiful sanitary white-tiled tambos, where pure milk and butter are sold, have taken his place. The old has been transformed and PROGRESS is written everywhere.
CHAPTER II.
REVOLUTION.
South America, of all lands, has been most torn asunder by war. Revolutions may be numbered by hundreds, and the slaughter has been incredible. Even since the opening of the year 1900, thirty thousand Colombians have been slain and there have been dozens of revolutions. Darwin relates the fact that in 1832 Argentina underwent fifteen changes of government in nine months, owing to internal strife, and since then Argentina has had its full share.
During my residence in Buenos Ayres there occurred one of those disastrous revolutions which have from time to time shaken the whole Republic. The President, Don Juarez Celman, had long been unpopular, and, the mass of the people being against him, as well as nearly half of the standing army, and all the fleet then anchored in the river, the time was considered ripe to strike a blow.