[50] The Rio press is not so fully equipped for news items as the European or American papers, but it is literary in tone and occupies a worthy place in the Corporation. The largest circulation is claimed by El Commercio. The Imprenso, whose editor is Alcindo Guanabara, Member of the Brazilian Academy and deputy, is, with El Pais, one of the most important party sheets.
[51] We must do justice to the effort made by the Brazilian Government to extend education. According to an article in their Constitution, the "unlettered cannot vote," but I will not swear that the rule is severely applied. In each State the primary schools are supported by the municipalities and States themselves, as are also the training colleges. There are too many calls on the strength of the youth of a new country for secondary education to be very enthusiastically welcomed. On the other hand, the different institutions of higher education attract the rising talent of the land.
[52] At Santos, one of the most severely tried, yellow fever was entirely stamped out by the building of the quays, which drained off the marshes.
[CHAPTER XIII]
BRAZILIAN SOCIETY AND SCENERY
I have already jotted down a few characteristics that struck me in the people of Brazil, and these will form a sort of prelude to what I am now about to say. For a traveller who claims to convey only first-hand information, the difficulty, of course, is to make any definite statements when aware that his observations were all too hasty and brief to warrant generalities.
Brazilian society is very different from that of the Argentine, its elements being more distinct and more complex, while equally European in trend, and with the same immutably American base; the strain of French culture is more attenuated, the impulsive temperament more apparent, but for steady perseverance and capacity for hard work the Brazilians cannot be surpassed. In criticising the social conditions in Brazil, it must be borne in mind that the abolition of slavery dates only twenty years back. I do not think the slave-owner was systematically cruel, but slavery does not precisely rest on any inducement to kindliness. Certain buildings that I came across and the explanation of their use that was given to me showed plainly enough, what we already knew, that the blacks were treated like cattle, with just as much consideration as was dictated by self-interest. Since man is almost as humane as he is cruel, no doubt the masters had their benevolent moments, but the institution was, nevertheless, fully as demoralising for owners as owned. The blacks multiplied, however, [53] and if the abolition of slavery was not accompanied here as in the United States by acts of violence, the reason is that, to the everlasting honour of the white man, the institution had been universally condemned before emancipation was proclaimed.
It has been said that in Brazil slavery was buried beneath flowers. The fact is it had become practically impossible when its disappearance was publicly and officially acknowledged. And as, happily, there was no race hatred between whites and blacks, these two elements of the population were able to continue to live peaceably side by side in a necessary collaboration. They went farther than this, as a matter of fact, and the races mixed with a freedom that I noticed everywhere. From the point of view of social concord, this is cause for rejoicing, while it must be left to time to correct any lowering of the intellectual standard. Every one knows that the principal feature of a slave-owning community is the absence of a middle class whose mission it must be to hold the balance in an oligarchy and prepare the way for the emancipation of the oppressed.