There is much controversy in Brazil on the subject of national manufactures. I have heard extremists declare roundly that Brazil ought not to manufacture anything at all, because each mill-hand is one more person taken away from the fields to which all Brazilian attention should be given.
“Brazil is an agricultural country,” a cotton planter said to the writer. “She cannot legitimately compete with the manufactured products of great industrial countries because the price of living is too high here. To obtain large revenues from the import taxes which are the Federal Government’s source of support we have heavy duties against large classes of goods entering the country; the barrier has been so high that it has been worth while for factories to be started here, sometimes making things from material produced in the country, which is not bad policy when we have enough labour, but often making goods every separate item of which is imported, an absurdity.”
He went on to say that there is a considerable manufacture of matches in Brazil, but that the igniting chemicals, the little sticks, and the boxes were all imported; nothing was done but the mere putting together. “It is only remunerative because the tax on imported matches is so high, and in many districts owing to want of communication the match factory has a monopoly of local trade—a purely artificial condition.” This fazendeiro was equally opposed to the silk and velvet factories of Petropolis, declaring that “every item, raw silk, colours, machinery, even the skilled weavers, are imported” and that until Brazil produces national silk—a beginning has been made—she should not have silk factories.
Coffee-loading equipment at the port of Santos, State of São Paulo.
Sugar lands In Pernambuco.
This view was that of the agriculturist who sees a menace to labour supplies in the growing manufactures of Brazil: I give it for what it is worth, as an interesting view point with force in some of the argument. But there are industries in Brazil which the agriculturist will admit to be legitimate in themselves and helpful to himself in that they tend to raise prices for his raw products. Of this class the most shining example is the list of cotton mills. They are already so active that the national supply of raw cotton is not sufficient for their needs, demand being so acute in 1919 that the price in Brazil rose to forty cents a pound. The output is sold in Brazil, supplying over eighty per cent of the fabrics used, with a surplus for export since 1918.
It is not generally recognized to what extent Brazilian manufactures have developed. The great industrial region is Rio de Janeiro. Her industrial advance has been made possible in this direction, as in agriculture, by the influx of sturdy Italians, Portuguese and Spanish workers.
At the same time the manufacturing section is not confined to S. Paulo; it is notably active in Minas and Rio, especially where electric power derived from waterfalls is employed, and in Bahia and Pernambuco where tobacco and sugar create legitimate home industries, and where there is a sufficiency of native and negro labour, the latter an inheritance from slavery days.
The total value of the products of Brazilian factories is about 2,000,000 contos of reis, equal at twelve pence exchange to £100,000,000 or in U. S. currency, $500,000,000 mais ou menos. This is a larger sum than the value of Brazil’s exported agricultural and forestal products, which was about 1,811,000 contos in 1919, and 1,464,000 contos in 1920.
This calculation, however, is not quite fair because it does not take into consideration the agricultural produce consumed in the country; there are no figures available on this subject.