In 1914 the density was more than fifteen in the whole of the maize area in the Buenos Aires and Santa Fé provinces, and it approached this figure in the departments of the old agricultural colonies on the middle Salado. In the region of the lucerne farms it was three to five, except in the south-east (departments of Veinte Cinco de Mayo, Nueve de Julio and Bolivia), where it rose, thanks to the co-existence of ranches and of wheat and maize. It sank to between two and three in the wheat area in the south and south-east of Buenos Aires. At Santa Fé the district of the colonies had seven to the square kilometre.
The growth of the population is partly explained by immigration from Europe. Foreigners were, in 1914, 30 per cent. of the total population.[137] The proportion of foreigners to the total population is one of the indications by which we can best follow the advance of colonization. As soon as it relaxes in any region, the number of immigrants diminishes. (The children born of foreign colonists in Argentina are considered indigenous in Argentine statistics.) In 1869 the proportion of foreigners rose to 417 per 1,000 in the province of Buenos Aires (without the capital). This was the great period of pastoral colonization and the development of sheep-breeding. It was then only 156 per 1,000 at Santa Fé. In 1895 the proportion of foreigners sank to 309 per 1,000 at Buenos Aires, but rose to 419 at Santa Fé, where the date almost marks the end of the great period of agricultural colonization. In 1914 the proportion of foreigners at Buenos Aires rose to 340 per 1,000 (development of the maize region and the southern wheat area). It sank at Santa Fé (350 per 1,000), in spite of considerable immigration in the southern maize-growing departments. At the same time there was a great influx of foreign population in the province of Córdoba (200 per 1,000) and in the area of the Central Pampa (360 per 1,000).[138]
The recent enumerations also enable us to follow the displacements of the indigenous population on Argentine territory and the part this has had in colonization. Outside the Pampean region the parts of the country which have proved centres of attraction for the Argentine population are the sugar provinces of Tucumán and Jujuy and the province of Mendoza. In 1895 Tucumán had 40,000 inhabitants who had been born in other provinces, Jujuy 15,000 and Mendoza 19,000. The attraction of Tucumán was mainly felt in the adjoining province of Santiago (12,000 immigrants) and Catamarca (12,000). At Mendoza the immigrants came mainly from San Juan (7,000) and San Luis (3,000). The attraction of the timber region is more difficult to estimate, because most of the obrajes are in the province of Santiago, which found the workers itself, and the enumerations have not taken into account displacements within each province. Nevertheless, immigration into the land of the quebracho Chaqueño, along the Paraná, can be recognised from 1895 onward. It was maintained by the Corrientes province. Santa Fé has 10,000 immigrants from Corrientes, of whom 6,500 are in the forestry departments of Reconquista and Vera. The Chaco region maintains 2,000 Corrientes wood-cutters and several hundred from Santiago and Salta. Corrientes has also sent 5,000 emigrants to Misiones.
In the Pampean region the population of Buenos Aires in 1895 included very few who came from other provinces. The population of Santa Fé was more mixed. The attraction of the agricultural colonies had brought 65,000 Argentine immigrants. They came mainly from the left bank of the Paraná and Córdoba. The immigrants from Córdoba are localized along the railway from Rosario to Córdoba, in the Belgrano and Iriondo departments and the town of Rosario. The migration of the Santa Fé colonists to the new lands in the west had scarcely begun at that time. They were still only 3,000 in the Buenos Aires province, and 5,000 at Córdoba; most of them were in departments adjacent to the old colony area. The colonization of Córdoba began simultaneously in the east, toward Santa Fé, and in the south-west, in the Rio Cuarto department, to which the breeders from San Luis went. Similarly, the Argentine population of the Central Pampa includes elements from the east as well as European colonists and elements from the north-west (10,000 immigrants from the Buenos Aires province, 3,000 from San Luis).
The 1914 Census has less complete details in regard to interior immigration than its predecessor. The migrations had not ceased. The attraction of Tucumán and Mendoza had, in fact, decreased. The province of Tucumán had 55,000 Argentine immigrants, the province of Jujuy 15,000, the province of Mendoza 34,000. The provinces of Mendoza and Corrientes remained nuclei of considerable immigration (38,000 and 63,000 immigrants). At Santa Fé the number of emigrants who left the province to settle at Córdoba and in the remainder of the Pampean region rose from 14,000 to 87,000. The Patagonian territory also had a large excess of immigrants from other provinces.
Periodic migrations with no definitive change of residence are not given in the official statistics. The importance of these migrations in northern Argentina has been noted in the chapters we devoted to Tucumán and the forestry industry. They occur also in the Pampean region, where they are due chiefly to he the need of labour for the harvest and the threshing of wheat and flax, and for reaping the maize. Miatello has given us a detailed analysis of the phenomenon for the province of Santa Fé in 1904. The period when the wheat and flax growers need help is from November to February. It begins in March for the maize farmers, and lasts so much longer when the harvest is good. The temporary immigrants come partly from Europe. Not only is the stream of immigration to Argentina fuller during the months which precede the harvests, while the stream of re-emigration to Europe is greatest in the autumn, but it is not a rare thing for Italians to go every year to Argentina merely to stay there during the harvest, when wages are high. This seasonal immigration from Italy is of long standing; it is mentioned by Daireaux in 1889. These foreigners, however, are only part of the adventurous crowd enlisted for the harvests on the Pampean plain. Seasonal migration is everywhere a national practice. The labour employed in reaping the maize includes elements borrowed from the towns near the maize belt. But all the provinces round the Pampean region send their contingent of temporary immigrants. Some even come from the valley of the Rio Negro at Bahía Blanca, from San Luis, and even from Mendoza to the Central Pampa and the Córdoba province.
The oldest, and still the largest, stream is that which comes from the Santiago province. D'Orbigny notices in 1827 the temporary streaming of Santiagueños to the coast. In that year slow progress was made with the wheat-harvest of Buenos Aires because of the shortage of labour. "The forced levies for the army prevented the Santiagueños from going to hire themselves, as was their custom, in fear lest they should be compelled to serve."[139]
Temporary emigration began, no doubt, with the journeys which brought the northerners to Buenos Aires as drivers of convoys of wagons. Santiagueños were numerous amongst these troperos. Lorenzo Fazio collected reminiscences of these journeys in the land of the bañados.[140] They go back to the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the period before the diversion of the Rio Dulce and the ruin of Salavina and Atamisqui. "My father," said one of his informants, "drove wagons of wheat to Córdoba, and sometimes to Buenos Aires, where he sold them and bought goods-stuffs in exchange. He bought the wheat at Loreto, Atamisqui or Salavina. It was a year before he got back, because it was necessary to wait for the rain and the growth of the vegetation, otherwise his animals would have died of thirst or hunger on the road." The journeys of the troperos meant a long spell of idleness in the Pampean region, precisely at the harvest season. Naturally, they would lend a hand in it.