Laughter and tears mingle a good deal in the landing of these poor people from the Old World. Huddled almost like cattle in the steerage of the steamers, their condition at sea presents what seems an unbridgable abyss between their lives and those of the saloon passengers. Day after day I have watched them sitting aimlessly on deck in their dirty, faded clothes, the effluvia from the mass of them, even tempered by the sea breeze, suggesting conditions of horror when they “turned in” at night, that might recall the Black Hole of Calcutta. The captain assured me it was not so very bad, but I never had the stomach to prove it for myself. Yet, on the morning of arrival at Buenos Ayres, what a transformation! Girls who have seemed the dirtiest of sluts throughout the voyage step down the gangway quite neatly attired. The married women, tricked out with little bits of finery, the men mostly in suits of black, with sombre soft hats, and every Spaniard armed with an ample umbrella, are difficult to recognise as the slovenly creatures one has seen for weeks feeding out of tins and using fingers, for lack of knives and forks. But even among the emigrants there are many grades, and not all are able to make this sudden transformation, many having no more than the soiled and shabby garments in which they have made their voyage, a little handkerchief tied at the corners being a pathetic index of their worldly gear. But even from among these, there will be some that one day shall bridge that awful gulf between the steerage and saloon, and make a voyage home as cabin passengers to advertise the magic Argentine!
Hope is the prevailing note in the demeanour of every new batch of fortune-seekers. It shines brightest, perhaps, in the eyes of the alert and wiry little Italians; the Spaniards, also, step ashore with a firm and confident tread, but mostly among the Poles, the Bulgars, and the Russians do we see the dull look of something very like despair. In discussing the character of the emigrants with M. Huret, Señor Alsina, a former Director of the Emigration Service, remarked:
What surprises one most in the careful observation of these people from the four extremes of Europe is the rapidity of their transformation, Spaniards from Galicia, brutish and wretched, sordid Jews from Russia, lift up their heads (levantan la cabeza) at the end of a few months. I have seen them arrive bent and downcast, with all the timidity of a dog that has been badly treated, so dejected and timorous, indeed, that I thought it necessary to engage some Russian students to lecture them on the dignity of humanity in general, and the conditions of liberty which they could enjoy in the Argentine. A few months afterwards, seeing many of them again, I could observe that they had so entirely changed that they had become argumentative, noisy, and given to discussion.
The case of the Armenians is in this respect entirely typical. Some eighteen years ago they arrived here for the first time. Becoming pedlars, they travelled all over the Pampa, some with “bundles” on their backs, others pushing before them their wares. Little by little they made money, even growing rich. Many of them went in for politics, and to-day occupy positions of influence in the public life. Very active in business, they are in a fair way to surpass the Italians in the retail trade. Proud of their title as free citizens, they refuse to sell their vote, which is the common practice among the populace, and their prosperity is so real, so positive, that the Armenian Colony is offering to the Argentine a monument which will cost them 120,000 francs.
I am afraid that appearances are very much inclined to be deceptive in studying the faces of emigrants. Surely there are none who can look more dejected than the Armenians and the Poles, who closely resemble each other in facial appearance, yet the money-making potentialities of these sad-faced emigrants are relatively much higher than those of the merry, little, guitar-strumming Italians and Spaniards.
On the arrival of every new contingent, there is always a considerable group of friends awaiting the vessel, and fortunate are they who have come out on the initiative of some relative that has gone before and prepared the way. These emigrants of yesterday, who have already come to grips with fortune and won the first bout, form one of the pleasantest features of the disembarkations, as they stand on the quayside in their “Sunday best,” with their watch chains, tie pins, finger rings, and highly polished boots to announce to all the world that they are “getting on.” This friendly co-operation is of immense service to the Emigration Bureau, and is really a sounder sort of propaganda than the familiar widecast publishing of alluring pictures of the riches of the country and the ease with which fortunes may be made. The emigrant who comes because a brother or a friend has already substantially changed his condition, and will have the advice of that friend to help him in securing employment, is at least on sure ground, and where labour is in such demand he cannot well make a mistake, provided he is willing to work.
In this way have grown up the distinctive “colonies” throughout the country, the majority of the Russians making direct for the neighbourhood of Bahía Blanca, where their services as agricultural labourers and as craftsmen are in high demand; the Turks and Syrians concentrating in a district of Buenos Ayres, where they seem to engage in every variety of occupation in which there is a minimum of creative work and the possibility of profiting as middle-men by the labour of others. A great many French find their way to Mendoza, the centre of the wine-growing, in which business not a few have become masters of millions. The German emigration is of more recent origin, and embraces, like the French, a superior class of people, as well as supplying a modicum to the toiling community. Although all the emigrants, save the Spanish, are at first conditioned in their occupations and their localities by their ignorance of the native language, so that they must needs go where they find their fellow-countrymen and more or less follow the pursuits in which these are engaged, they speedily pick up the language, and once acclimatised and furnished with the means of universal intercourse, they begin to look around, weigh up the possibilities of the country, and strike out their independent courses. In this movement, the British have practically no part whatever, and with the exceptions of the scanty Irish emigration of past years and the Welsh colony settled, with very equivocal success, on the River Chubut some twenty years ago, the annals of the British in the Argentine present no parallel whatever to those of the other European nations.
When we talk of Argentine emigration, we refer chiefly to the Italian and the Spanish, though the Basque provinces of France and Spain have probably supplied the very finest element of foreign blood in the Argentine nation to-day. Italy is sending from eighty to a hundred thousand of her sturdy sons to swell the Argentine population every year. The newcomers from Italy each year number about 200,000, but in these later years there has been a very considerable movement towards repatriation among the Italians and also among the Spaniards, so that there is an offset of at least 50 per cent. for re-emigration. The Italian who does not determine to make his home in the Argentine is quickly satisfied with a comparatively small amount of savings. Once he has netted from $1000 to $2500, he considers himself a man of independent means, and is apt to return to his native village with his tiny fortune, which will enable him there to live far more comfortably than he has been existing in the Argentine, and to enjoy a life of comparative leisure. The call of the Homeland is always very strong to the Italian, and if he acquires his little fortune quickly, before his family have become thoroughly Argentine in character and sentiment, he will almost surely go back. The hundreds of thousands of his race who are fixed and rooted in the Republic are they who, either through superior fortune have come to hold such a stake in the land, or from longer delay in “turning the corner” and the influence of their children, have become habituated to their new environment.
The quickest fortunes, the easiest gained wealth, assuredly do not come to those who take up the life of the colono or the mediero, as above described, for there are innumerable other ways in which money can be made more readily, and those who engage in shopkeeping—always a superior class to the tillers of the soil, as they require some little capital for a start—as well as the many Spaniards who enter the already established business houses, are in more immediate touch with money-making possibilities than the braceros. It is always thus, that they who are of least use in the economical development of the country should be most speedily rewarded.
I heard of an Italian waiter, who arrived in Buenos Ayres some time in November of 1911 and immediately went on to Mar del Plata, the fashionable seaside resort, where he readily secured a situation in one of the hotels. In one month he netted a thousand pesos in “tips,” and with this vast sum ($420) he incontinently returned to his native country in order to purchase a piece of land and set up as a small farmer! A coachman, also an Italian, whose services I occasionally employed during our stay in Buenos Ayres, informed me that he was making a clear profit of 600 pesos (or $252) per month. The coach, a very handsome one, and the horse, a splendid animal, were his own property, and so careful was he of his coach that he did not care to bring it out on very sunny days, lest the upholstery might fade, while he disliked driving on very wet days, so that he suited his own convenience as to the hours and days of work! Withal, he was speedily acquiring a competence. He assured me he drank as good wine as he got at home, and if he did not eat so well, it was because nobody did in the Argentine, owing to the difficulty of getting good food at reasonable prices. He also had been a waiter, but evidently had his eye on a higher mark than his compatriot who hastened back from Mar del Plata with his first month’s gratuities.