Preparing the Picnic Meal—“Un Asado” in the Argentine.
The staple fare of the “Gaucho” is roasted beef, and at picnic parties a whole animal is often roasted, in the manner above illustrated.
The laxity of business morality is, of course, a concomitant of the laxity of general morals, or an effect of the latter, most of the commercial obliquity that exists having a first cause in the immoral life of the offenders. Just as it is the fashion of many Argentines, in addition to maintaining their legitimate wives and families, to possess openly two or three queridas; so among those who are financially ill equipped to play the pasha, the imitative spirit asserts itself, and even down to the office boys, it will be found when things go wrong with them there is “a woman in the case.” This, and gambling, account for probably two-thirds of the commercial dishonesty, and the remaining third has its most likely source in a pitiful effort to imitate their betters in the matter of high living, where the plainest of fare and the humblest accommodation cost more than genuine luxury does with us. Drinking enters very slightly into the account, as it would be difficult to find a large community where less tippling exists than in Buenos Ayres. Whatever there is of that will be found chiefly among British and German residents, so that any anti-temperance partisan desirous of proving that a temperate public is not necessarily a moral one, will find abundant argument ready to his hand in the life of the Argentine.
Turning from this unpleasant aspect of the business life, which is, after all, only one phase of it, and must not be allowed to darken completely our view of the commercial Argentine, there are several other aspects that must engage our attention, and perhaps to more profit. British readers especially will rejoice to know that their own country and its manufacturers occupy a pre-eminent position in the affections of the Argentine people. While on every hand there is evidence of great activity on the part of the Germans, who have laid themselves out, and with fair measure of success, to secure a large slice of the Argentine import trade, there is not only in the Argentine but throughout all South America a widespread distrust of the German. He is noted for commercial methods that are no more praiseworthy than many that prevail locally. His propensity for showing samples that are much superior to the goods supplied is notorious, and such progress as he has made may be regarded as largely the result of a readiness to flatter the native buyer by speaking the language of the country and dealing with him in terms of local usage. The Britisher, on the other hand, is guilty of the coldest indifference to the convenience of the Argentine consumer.
I have, for instance, met more than one traveller for a British house who has been visiting all the South American capitals and the great centres of population with samples of goods, and has not been able even to ask for a glass of beer in Spanish. I recall one gentleman in particular who, by the sheer merit of the goods he was offering, had done a very considerable business, and yet was so hopelessly ignorant of the native tongue that he could not even pronounce the names of the firms who had bought from him, or the streets in which their offices were situated! This never happens with a German traveller. He may make the most atrocious mistakes with the language, but he at least does attempt, and usually succeeds, to explain himself without the aid of an interpreter, and the Spanish American accepts any effort on the part of a foreigner to speak his native tongue as a compliment to himself and strives valiantly to understand what the foreigner is endeavouring to express.
Then again, British manufacturers show an unruffled disdain for local conditions in many of the articles they supply. Take, for instance, the sailors’ hats so much worn by children in England, and even more in vogue with the niños of the Argentine, where everything that touches their naval aspirations is highly popular. Thousands of these are imported from England, and it always struck me as ludicrous to witness little Argentines going about with “H. M. S. Redoubtable,” “H. M. S. Dreadnought,” “H. M. S. Benbow,” or some such peculiarly British name, on their hats. Why on earth do not the British manufacturers have the common-sense to ascertain the names of the principal vessels in the Argentine Navy, and use these for the hats they export to the republic? Evidently the Germans are doing so, as occasionally you will see “Sarmiento,” “Belgrano,” “San Martín,” in place of the meaningless British names, and I was told these did not come from England. The patriotism of the Argentine and of every other South American is such that he would undoubtedly buy an inferior hat for his boy if it bore the name of a national warship, and even pay more for it than for a superior British-made hat with the name of a British man-of-war thereon.
All sorts of sanitary appliances are also imported from Great Britain, with the instructions for their use painted or engraved in the English language. Take “geysers” as an example. It often occurred to me in using bathrooms in various part of the country, where the geyser is an inevitable fitting, that it was not only bad business, but very dangerous for these appliances to be in use with English instructions engraved upon them. The working of a geyser is at best none too simple, and when every detail of its manipulation is explained on the machine in a language of which nine-tenths of the users are totally ignorant, the possibility of putting it out of order or of setting the place on fire, is considerable. Lavatory basins with “Hot” and “Cold” mean nothing to a native, who can only think of caliente or of fria. The same applies to proprietary medicines imported from Great Britain and the United States (though American exporters are waking up to the need of printing instructions in Spanish), whereas German, French and Italian medicines are invariably supplied with Spanish directions.