The part that the railway has played in colonization is plainly seen in the present completion of the system which has developed freely on the even surface of the Pampean plain. The lines radiate round the port of Buenos Aires and, in a less degree, round the ports of Rosario and Bahía Blanca. What seems at first sight to be the symmetry of the railway map will be found on closer examination to be less perfect; while the Atlantic coast between La Plata and Bahía Blanca has no ports, the Paraná has quite a number of suitable places for shipping cereals. La Plata, San Nicolas and Villa Constitución are served by lines which cut across the lines going to Rosario and Buenos Aires. This complexity of the system west of the Paraná continues to the north of Rosario, where the lines that go to Santa Fé cut across all the lines going to Rosario. The lines which run along the southern frontier of the province of Buenos Aires (at Juancho, Necochea, etc.) have, unlike the lines serving the secondary parts of the Paraná, all their traffic directed toward the interior, and they serve only to bring to Buenos Aires and Bahía Blanco the crops of the districts they cross. They are dependencies of the main lines of the southern system, and not rival lines.

When the most fertile part of the Pampean plain, on which there is a regular rainfall to guarantee the crops, had been completely colonized and covered with railways, the national Government took up the policy of colonization by rail in the national territories. The minister Ramos Mejia has attached his name to this work. It has been suspended since the beginning of the war, but it filled the last period of construction of the Argentine railways. Ramos Mejia's railways include the lines penetrating the Chaco opened toward the north-west from Resistencia and Formosa, and the lines leading to the interior of Patagonia from the ports of San Antonio, Puerto Deseado, and Rivadavia. We must add the line from Neuquen to the Andes, made by the Southern Company, but with a Government subvention.[113] These lines, serving districts with little population and inadequate resources, will not for a long time make any profit.[114]

Hence railway construction must be regarded in modern Argentina as one of the aspects of the problem of developing the soil. The railway companies have been compelled to intervene directly in the work of colonization. In 1863 the Central Argentine received from the Government a strip of land three miles wide on each side of the line it was making, between Rosario and Córdoba, on condition that it colonized the land. The company had its own immigration agents and its colonizing staff, and it opened its first colonies west of Rosario between 1870 and 1872. This kind of concession is exceptional in Argentina. On the other hand, the irrigation law of 1909 obliges the railway companies to undertake, on behalf of the Government, the work that is necessary to develop irrigation in the areas they serve, such work being immediately reflected in an increase of population and traffic. In compliance with this law the Southern railway is constructing a canal which will water the whole valley of the Rio Negro below the confluence of the Neuquen. The Central Argentine and the Pacific also have undertaken to construct dams on the Rio Tercero and Rio Quinto, in the provinces of Córdoba and San Luis.

As it is the essential function of a railway to convey the produce of the area it serves to the exporting port, the problem of the relations between the administration of railways and the administration of ports is of primary importance. The chief ports served by different companies, such as Rosario and Buenos Aires, may maintain their independence, but a secondary port will be at the mercy of the single line which conveys goods to it. In such circumstances the ports have become, in many cases, mere dependencies of the railways. The port of Colastiné belongs to the railways of the Santa Fé province. The port of Bahía Blanca consists of a number of distinct ports constructed by the different railway companies, and run by them. Each of them ships the goods which it brings. The port Ingeniero White, which belongs to the Southern Company, was constructed in 1885, immediately after the opening of the line from Buenos Aires to Bahía Blanca. Puerto Galvan belongs to the Pacific Company. Puerto Belgrano is the port of the line from Rosario to Bahía Blanca. At Buenos Aires the Southern Railway Company has acquired control of the Buenos Aires Southern Dock Company. At La Plata it manages the docks.

The spread of agricultural colonization was at first hampered by the cost of freightage which cereals could bear over an area with a radius of about 200 miles from the ports. That is the figure given by Girola in the Investigación Agricola of 1904. The period 1895-1905 saw the birth of a series of plans for making canals in the Pampean region for the purpose of transporting grain in the area which the railway did not seem able to serve economically. Not one of them was carried out, but the railways quickly enlarged their sphere of influence in the interior. There is, however, a reminiscence of this pause in colonization in what Argentinians call "the parabolic tariffs." The Argentine railways practically, apart from cases of competition with rival lines, use proportional tariffs up to a distance of 218 miles, and degressive tariffs beyond that limit. In this way the railways have helped in the conquest of the west. Degressive tariffs have certainly played a part in the spread of colonization during the years antecedent to 1912. They have helped to mask the inferiority of the new land to the better land in the east.[115]

MAP VI.—THE RAILWAYS.

It is impossible to give the entire system. Only the main lines are given. Of the narrow-gauge lines of the Pampean region only those which connect the system of northern Argentina with Buenos Aires are given. The map shows the double direction of the Pacific system from Villa Mercedes, to Buenos Aires and Bahía Blanca. It gives only an imperfect idea of the way in which the lines ending at the ports of the Paraná and the Rio de la Plata (Santa Fé, Rosario, San Nicolas, Buenos Aires and La Plata) overlap and cross each other.

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