One of the leading manufacturing industries in Argentina is that of the beef-canning factories, here called saladerias. This is the chief industry of Uruguay, and the second in importance in Paraguay, and the state of Matto Grosso, Brazil. These saladerias not only can beef, but they manufacture beef extract, tallow, and the by-products of the hides and fat. They likewise ship cold-storage beef to Europe and even to the United States. The River Plate basin is where these factories are situated, and in no other parts of South America are they to be found. Armour & Company, and Swift have large ones at La Plata. At Fray Bentos, in Uruguay, on the Uruguay River a short distance above where it flows into the River Plate is the great establishment and headquarters of the Liebig Company, the largest of its kind in South America and one of the largest in the world. There are beef-canning plants at Montevideo, at Colon, Argentina, and at many of the ports on the Uruguay, Paraná, and Paraguay Rivers. These plants require much capital, especially in Argentina, because here the river is at quite a distance from the stock country, necessitating the shipment of cattle by rail. It would be prohibitory as far as expense goes to establish a beef-canning enterprise inland; by having them at the seaports, ocean-going freighters can anchor at the docks and be loaded there. This is true about many of the river ports owing to the depth of the water which permits ocean steamers to reach them. None of the Argentina and Uruguayan saladerias are far enough up the rivers to be beyond ocean navigation. The Uruguayan plants have it on those of Argentina, because the stock country of the former republic lies directly behind the saladerias and is contingent to the river. In Argentina the stock have to be transported to the seaboard upwards of one hundred miles, and in most cases from two to four hundred miles.
Regarding stock-raising, it is done in Argentina on a large scale. The large estancias are owned by people who have inherited their lands through several generations and have in the past decades accumulated great fortunes which have been sufficient to well stock their estates with cattle, sheep, and other live stock. The stock roam the prairies the year around, are not winter fed, and require but little care. As many of these estancias are forty miles square, the only expense incurred are the wages of the herders. Land is held high in Argentina, from $15 an acre upwards in the stock country, the average being $35 an acre. It would require much capital to buy enough of it for a fair-sized ranch. Fifteen hundred acres would cost $45,000. If he put 1000 head of stock on it, which would be a small ranch, his outlay for the investment would be about $90,000. A drought would be likely to occur and he would be up against it. The man, however, who has a 50,000-acre ranch could make money. He could have 10,000 head of cattle and if there was a drought he could keep moving them about. Twenty thousand acres is but a medium-sized ranch in Argentina and Uruguay. It is not uncommon for a man to have 100,000 acres, while in Patagonia there are ranches of 1,000,000 acres. Stock-raising is the most important industry in Argentina, but the men who have made a success of it and those at present engaged in it, started this business years ago. Excepting in the Province of Salta, it is well for a company or an individual to keep out of this line of business unless he has enough money to buy a large tract of land. The figures here are the average for estancias contiguous to the average plains towns.
| Town | Ranch | Acres | Horses | Sheep | Cattle |
| Olavarría | Santo Domingo | 12,500 | 1,000 | 3,000 | 700 |
| La Victoria | 18,375 | 1,700 | 17,000 | 6,000 | |
| San Antonio | 12,500 | 700 | 2,500 | 1,500 | |
| Coronel Suarez | La Curamalan | 43,750 | 4,000 | 8,000 | 5,000 |
| San Jose | 25,000 | 400 | 10,000 | 300 | |
| General La Madrid | La Colina | 80,000 | 400 | 60,000 | 20,000 |
| El Huascar | 31,250 | 200 | 5,000 | 3,000 | |
| La Fe | 31,250 | 300 | 6,000 | 15,000 | |
| Saavedra | La Turigueta | 30,000 | 5,000 | ||
| La Landade | 12,500 | 2,000 | |||
| Dorrego | Tres de Febrero | 37,500 | 16,000 | 3,000 | |
| Las Cortaderas | 52,500 | 13,500 | 15,000 | ||
| La Sirena | 50,000 | 20,000 | 16,000 | ||
| Lobos | La Florida | 3,750 | 3,000 | 1,000 | |
| La Morada | 18,750 | 7,000 | 3,000 | ||
| 25 de Mayo | Huetel | 162,500 | 2,000 | 10,000 | 15,000 |
| Santa Clara | 100,000 | 1,000 | 10,000 | 1,500 | |
| Bolivar | La Carmelita | 87,500 | 80 | 17,000 | 14,000 |
| La Florida | 43,750 | 1,000 | 12,000 | 5,000 | |
| Miramar | 25,000 | 150 | 2,000 | 600 | |
| El Cardon | 18,750 | 250 | 7,000 | 3,000 | |
| Bella Vista | 12,500 | 300 | 5,000 | 2,000 | |
| Junin | La Pastoril | 37,500 | 15,000 | ||
| El Cisne | 75,000 | 25,000 | |||
| Las Dos Marias | 6,250 | 4,000 |
The Province of Salta is about one thousand miles from Buenos Aires and the seaport towns. On account of its distance and nature of its land it has nothing in common with the provinces farther south. It is a hilly and mountainous region bordering on the tropics abounding in forests which have a thick matting of grasses. The cattle are large and lean, and although their beef is rather tough, there is plenty of it, and there is but little shrinkage in transportation. The market for this stock is the nitrate region of Chile. The cattle are driven across the Andes and lose but little weight on the way. In Antofagasta they bring a good price. There are no large ranches in the province and there is not much capital. Here a man with moderate means could raise stock at a profit, if he dealt only with the Chilean market. If he shipped them to the saladerias in the Province of Buenos Aires he would lose money on account of the freight.
An embryo industry in Argentina is that of tannin or tannic acid, used for dyeing and tanning. The northern part of the provinces of Santiago del Estero and Santa Fé, and the greater part of the territories of Formosa and the Chaco, are covered with a forest of small trees, named quebracho. They are too small for saw logs, their wood is hard and is used for fuel on the railroads, and they have a reddish bark. This bark before the European War was shipped to Germany in great quantities where its extract was used in dye stuffs. Unfortunately but little of it was exported to other countries. Some tannin factories were inaugurated in the Province of Santa Fé, but those controlled by foreign capital went haywire. This was due mainly to grafting provincial officials who put these companies out of commission by their annoyances. A tannin factory would pay in Argentina if the government would give it protection. It is a deplorable fact that in many new industries in Argentina, they are induced to locate there. Once established, the manufacturer is subjected to a burdening taxation from the federal government, the province, and the district. There is a continuous drain of contributions which have to be handed to congressmen, and their henchmen; titles are found to be imperfect; law suits are started; the outcome is that the company is apt to go into insolvency. This once happened to a large tannin factory that started in the Province of Santa Fé. A Buenos Aires bank loaned them money; but the owners ran up against so many snags when they started to operate, that they were unable to pay their indebtedness and the bank had to foreclose. It would be a different story if the company was Argentine owned. The Argentino from the highest to the lowest looks upon the North American as a person to exploit from. They welcome him mainly to relieve him of his money. When we talk about grafting in our American cities we do not know what grafting is; one must come to Latin America to get the interpretation. George W. Crichfield in his two volumes, American Supremacy (Brentano's 1908), gives the true version. He says that our best diplomats are to the South American ones in comparison as what jackasses are to foxes. This is particularly true about Argentina and could apply to the grafting officials as well. Although under proper government protection, a tannin factory in Argentina would pay, it would be useless to wait for that protection to come, and the manufacturer would be far better off if he would start his factory in poor, benighted Paraguay where the grafting would be much less than in Argentina.
In Argentina there is no such thing as prohibition and local option, and there probably never will be. Such issues are not in common with the Latin make-up, and the long-haired stump orators and hypocrites who advocate this question in the United States for their own personal enrichment, would undoubtedly land in insane asylums if they started this propaganda anywhere in South America. One might think it strange that there is no whiskey distillery there, yet such is the fact, and I do not know of any in entire South America. Whiskey is not consumed there in anywhere near the quantity that it is consumed in the United States and Great Britain, yet enough is indulged in by the higher stratum of society who ape the North Americans and the British to warrant the establishment of one. There is plenty of grain and there is no competition. There are several liqueur factories which seem to pay, one of which at Buenos Aires puts out a cordial named Aperital, which has a great sale.
There are thirteen breweries in the republic, but lest a person should think of starting another one, he should forget the idea at the same time that he conceives it. There is a brewery trust heavily capitalized, composed of Argentine and British stockholders. Much of this stock is in the hands of senators and congressmen, who see to it that laws are made which protect them and work to the detriment of their competitors. The Argentine Brewing Company at Quilmes, a suburb of Buenos Aires, heads this trust, the other members of which are the Bieckert Brewing Company at Llavallol, another suburb of Buenos Aires, the Palermo Brewery at Buenos Aires, the San Carlos Brewery at San Carlos, and the Del Norte Brewery at Tucumán. Those not belonging to the trust are the Córdoba Brewing Company at Córdoba, the Rio Segundo Brewing Company with breweries both at Córdoba and at Rio Segundo, the Ahrens Brewery at Córdoba, the Santa Fé Brewing Company at Santa Fé, the Schlau and the Germania Brewery at Rosario, and the Correntino Brewery at Corrientes. Both the Ahrens and the Correntino breweries are small establishments and only cater to local and family trade and therefore have not fell foul of the trust.
Since much beer is drunk in Argentina I have often wondered why there were no more breweries. I wondered why Mendoza, Salta, Bahia Blanca, Mercedes, Pergamino, Paraná, Concordia, and other towns did not have any. I mentioned this fact to the mayor of Salta. "It would not pay," said he. "An old German named Glueck once had a brewery in this town, whose product took well with the public. His was a small brewery with limited capital. The Quilmes Company, through their representatives in congress, had taxes formulated so that only those breweries with much capital could stand up under them. Glueck had to go out of business. The trust then built the Del Norte Brewery in Tucumán which is so large that if all the other breweries in Argentina should shut down, it could supply the whole republic with beer. The trust also bought a piece of property in Salta and threaten if another brewery starts up in this city to put up one that will swamp it. The trust has millions of pesos capital, so what can one do?"
While in Córdoba I was a guest of Mr. Douglas, president of the Rio Segundo Brewing Company. This company started a brewery on a small scale at the town of Rio Segundo, hence the name. The water used for the manufacture of its beer came from an artesian well, and the product was so superior to that of the other breweries that it was necessary to build another brewery, which was done at Córdoba, twenty-three miles away. The water in this is also artesian. The output of the Rio Segundo Brewery at Córdoba is only sixty thousand barrels a year, but it is taxed more than those whose output is six hundred thousand barrels in the United States. It has kept its head above water on account of the quality of the beer. A former brewmaster of this company started a small brewery in Corrientes, the Correntino, but this like that of Ahrens at Córdoba have not been molested by the trust because they are too small to interfere with the business of the Quilmes Company. With the exception of the output of the Rio Segundo breweries, all the Argentine beer is vile and not fit to drink. Hops are difficult to get, and injurious chemicals are used for its preservation.
Two automobile factories have been started in Buenos Aires but their existence was of but a short duration. The parts were shipped there to be assembled, but the stockholders thought that it would be more lucrative if they manufactured their own parts. Since there is no iron in the republic, it was found that its importation was too expensive to allow the companies to ship it in, therefore they went out of business.