Hides are not expensive. There are many small so-called shoe factories which in reality are but shops; the shoes manufactured in them are good and cheap, and are made by hand. They likewise have class, and a shoeman from Toronto told me that the shoes manufactured there were superior to ours, and the United States has the reputation of making the best shoes in the world. This Canadian said that he could see no reason why a fair-sized shoe factory would not pay in Buenos Aires and was very optimistic about the idea.
In the Province of Tucumán there are considerable sugar factories, some of them large ones. The cane is inferior to that of Cuba and the West Indies; most of the available land for its growing is taken up, and the sugar market is often poor. None of the sugar is refined in the district where it grows, there being only one refinery in Argentina and that is at Rosario. The product is shipped to England and France to be refined. It is doubtful if another mill would pay, but another refinery and that in the city of Tucumán might be profitable. There are no beet-sugar factories, but much of the land, especially that in Entre Rios and Corrientes, is adaptable for beet culture, so there is no reason why an establishment of that kind could not be made to pay.
Although Argentina has a great network of railways running throughout the republic so that practically no place of any importance is in lack of transportation facilities, yet interurban street-car lines are nonexistent. The only one in operation is that which runs between Buenos Aires and Quilmes, a distance of fourteen miles. One is being built to Tigre, twenty-two miles from Buenos Aires, but is not yet in operation. There should be electric lines between Buenos Aires and La Plata, Buenos Aires and Rosario, either via San Nicolás or Pergamino, Buenos Aires and Mercedes, Bahia Blanca and Puerto Belgrano, Mendoza and San Rafael, Tucumán and Tafí Viejo, and also a network of lines of which Tucumán should be the center of the hub.
There are quite a few cigarette and a few cigar factories. The cigarettes manufactured are vile, likewise the cigars. This trade is in the hands of Turks, Spaniards, and Italians, and the tobacco used is grown in Brazil. There are good tobacco lands in the provinces of Salta, Jujuy, Corrientes, and in the Territory of Misiones, but none is grown excepting in gardens from which the owner makes cigars for his own personal use. The price paid for cigars is exorbitant and a good live factory well capitalized might pay. Nobody smokes a pipe nor chews tobacco, therefore a tobacco factory would be unsuitable.
There is no field in the newspaper or periodical line in all South America. This and the publishing business is overdone. Some towns of ten thousand people have four or five daily papers. Every politician that can afford it is the proprietor of his own newspaper, in whose columns he attacks everybody who does not hold his own political views. These newspapers often run foul of the government and wind up by having their publications suppressed and the editor thrown in jail.
Paraguay, on account of its small population and scarcity of money, offers a much less diversified variety for future enterprises than does Argentina. The leading industry is the culture of yerba maté, and the exportation of its leaves. This republic lies close to the tropics and is covered with a dense vegetation. In the southeastern part of the country in the neighborhood of the Alto Paraná River, there grows in its native state the plant yerba maté, from whose leaves from time immemorial the Indians brewed a tea. The leaves are first dried, and then steeped in a kettle or pot. Calabash gourds grow wild in abundance. These are dried, the top is cut off, and the insides scooped out. The hot tea is poured into these gourds which every individual possesses, and the infusion is sucked from them by means of straws and reeds, by the poorer classes, and by bombillas by the upper and middle classes. A bombilla is a metal tube with a small covered spoonlike head which is perforated with small holes. This maté drinking habit, which is considered beneficial, is indulged in universally by everybody in Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay, and southern Brazil. There are several different varieties of yerba maté, and it has been found that that which is cultivated is better than that which grows wild. Hence there are enormous plantations for its culture which are called yerbales. Large companies have been formed for its production and exportation, that of Domingo Barthe being the best known. His brand is named Asuncion. The next best-known firm is the Industriel Paraguaya. Both are capitalized heavily and have their main offices in Asuncion and Villa Encarnacion with branch offices throughout Argentina. Barthe is a very wealthy man; he was formerly a French adventurer who struck it rich through none too scrupulous means. His latest trick was to sell a lot of his maté under the trademark of the Industriel Paraguaya. This was done at Rosario. He was tried there and found guilty. He was sentenced to one year in jail and to pay a fine of two hundred thousand dollars. Before they could get him, he got into Paraguay where he is immune from the Argentine law. He owns a fleet of steamers plying between Montevideo and Asuncion which touch at Argentine ports. On these he is safe since his steamship line is not incorporated in Argentina. Nevertheless Barthe has helped advance progress and industry in Argentina and this should not have been overlooked when sentence was pronounced upon him. At that time he was about to build a million-dollar hotel at Posadas. Although what he did was unprincipled, his sentence was twenty-fold too severe, and shows plainly that the Argentine bloodsuckers are out to exploit the foreigners for every cent they can get out of them.
There are in Paraguay boundless tracks of virgin soil suitable for yerbales. It requires but little expense to work them and there is an unlimited market for Paraguayan tea. It is said that the Argentine army is going to adopt yerba maté to be distributed among the soldiers for their daily rations. This tea-drinking craze among the natives is uncanny. To many of them it is life; the foreigner, however, rarely acquires the habit, although he partakes of it for the sake of sociability while in Paraguay.
Next in line among Paraguay's industries is the saladerias. The whole country covered with a thick matting of grasses is a paradise for cattle. Land is inexpensive, the pasturage is better than in Argentina, and more stock can be raised to the acre. Here and in Matto Grosso, a future stock country, the grazing lands come down to the great waterways, and although the river boats are of low draught necessitating a rehandling at the seaport towns, canned beef can be shipped direct from the saladerias in the stock country.
Tannin is a more staple industry than in Argentina although it is still in embryo. The writer had an opportunity to engage in this manufacture, which he nearly took up; in ordinary times it would have been all right, but at this particular time there was a change in Paraguayan politics and the manufacture of tannic acid was handicapped by the European War. A Barcelona Spaniard, Señor Andres Pujol, president of the Banco Constructador del Paraguay and a friend of the writer, was held in high esteem by the then dictator, Señor Eduardo Schaerer. One of the large brick buildings owned by the Hernandarias and Frias Brewery at Puerto Sajonia, on the outskirts of Asuncion, was vacated in favor of a modern brewery plant in the city. Its machinery could be used in the manufacture of tannic acid and the plant could have been bought for a song. It was the idea of Señor Pujol for he and myself to buy this building and erect, in connection with it, a sawmill. We were to pay for quebracho logs delivered at the plant from which we were to strip the bark, from which we were to extract the tannin. At that time Asuncion was having most of its new streets paved with quebracho blocks. We were to give Señor Schaerer stock in the company and in return he was to give us a franchise to furnish the paving material which we would manufacture by cutting up the logs at the sawmill. We were also to be exempt from taxes for a number of years. Soon after this Schaerer was succeeded in the presidency by Dr. Manuel Franco, a native, and it was likely that he would undo everything that Schaerer did, in which case our franchise would not amount to a picayune. This combined with the present prospects of no shipment of tannic acid to foreign parts caused me not to inaugurate this enterprise, which will still be open to anybody. The best time to start this is soon after the election of a popular president, because in the four years during which he will hold office, there will be plenty of time in which to accumulate a fortune.
The future manufacturing and commercial opportunities in Chile is utterly different and far brighter than in any other South American country. Chile has a decidedly bright future and at the present time only lacks capital to develop her resources. Business conditions are much better; there is more snap to her people; there is less graft and it is a cheaper country to live in. To this is added the fact that the climate is good. Topographically and geographically this republic can be divided into three distinct zones. Beginning at its extreme north and running down the coast one-third of its whole longitude is the rainless zone. This is a vast forbidding desert, interspersed at varying distances by a few oases. The mountains begin at the ocean and gradually rise in steep ranges until a maximum of twenty thousand feet is attained in a hundred and fifty miles at the eastern boundary which is the Argentine frontier. Twenty miles back from the ocean are plateaus averaging from two thousand to five thousand feet high which furnish most of the world's nitrate supply. This nitrate is from two to six feet underneath the surface of the soil and is supposed to be the manure of birds that infested this region in pre-glacial periods. From these fields is derived much of the wealth of the country. Many of the older nitrate fields have become exhausted, especially those farthest north on the Iquique Pampa, but new ones are constantly being opened up to the south of the old workings and from them is due the importance of Antofagasta. It was to acquire these nitrate deposits that Chile declared war upon Bolivia and Peru in 1879 which caused them to change hands. It is a blessing to that part of the country that it never rains, because if it did, the nitrate deposits would be washed away. This zone is hot.