What then of South America? Before dealing with it, let me advert to two considerations which may modify the conclusions suggested by any review of the total area now available to meet a continued growth of population.
May not intensive cultivation and the further developments of chemical science greatly increase the food-producing power of lands already occupied? Doubtless they may. They are doing so already. But such an increase cannot be expected to go on indefinitely. The urgency of the problem may be postponed, but the problem will remain ahead of us.
May not the rate of increase of the world's population decline, and perhaps go on declining until an equilibrium between that increase and food production has been reached? This is possible. Observations made during the last thirty years have already thrown grave doubts upon the propositions advanced by Malthus three generations ago which were for a long time taken as irrefragable. That the signs of decreasing birth-rate are so far visible only among some of the most advanced peoples is not a cheering circumstance, for what we must desire in the interests of mankind at large is that the more highly civilized races should increase faster than the more backward, so as to enable the former to prevail not merely by force, but by numbers and amicable influence. All these considerations, however, regarding birth-rate are still too uncertain to be allowed to affect any enquiries regarding future food supply and the regions from which it is to come. Whatever light the next few decades may throw upon the former question, the latter deserves to be investigated as a subject of growing significance.
And now we may return to South America, the only continent containing both a large temperate and a large tropical area capable of cultivation which still remains greatly underpeopled. It is, therefore, the chief resource to which the overpeopled countries may look as providing a field for their emigration, and to which the world at large may look as capable of reinforcing its food supply. That it has not been sooner occupied is due partly to the political disorders which have given it a bad name, partly to its being less accessible than North America. Both these adverse conditions no longer apply to its temperate regions.
Considered as a field for emigration, South America may be divided into three sections. There are, first, the tropical and forest-covered regions of Colombia, Venezuela, Guiana, and eastern Brazil; secondly, the temperate and grassy or wooded regions of Argentina, Uruguay, and southern Brazil outside the tropics; and lastly, the great central plain of the Amazon and its tributaries which the Brazilians call the Selvas (woods). I exclude altogether the mountainous parts of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, because they are already as well inhabited as they deserve to be. A very small part of them is fit for stock or for agriculture, and the climatic conditions (except in a few valleys) are repellent to persons not accustomed to great altitudes. Not even Italians can be expected to cultivate fields twelve thousand feet above sea-level.
The other three sections just mentioned are much underpeopled. The first is better fitted for negro or Indian labour than for that of whites, yet there are many parts of it where men of south European stock can work in the open air and thrive. In an area of about two millions of square miles, it has about seven and a half million inhabitants, of whom a small minority are pure whites, the rest Indians or negroes or mixed. Four or five times that number could easily find accommodation.
The second section is the one pre-eminently fitted to receive white men. Its area may be roughly conjectured at a million and a half of square miles, but so much of the Argentine part of it is desert that it would not be safe to reckon more than two-thirds of it as available for settlement. As there are now only twelve millions of people in this million of square miles, there is evidently plenty of room for more.
This is the part of South America which has drawn most immigrants during the last sixty years, southern Brazil leading the way, Argentina and Uruguay following. It is also the region which will chiefly continue to attract Europeans for many years to come.
In Argentina and most of Uruguay, as in the prairie states of North America and the Canadian Northwest, there are no trees to be felled, so the land, extremely fertile, can be brought under crops immediately. The estates are at present large, but if there were settlers with enough capital to buy small lots, these could soon be had, and already some Italians are establishing themselves as peasant cultivators.[149] It is a country where the labour is at present small in proportion to the area utilized, partly because much of the land is in pasture, partly because its flatness makes the use of agricultural machinery specially easy, partly because the harvests are largely reaped by migratory Europeans who return home for part of the year. Nevertheless, after making all allowances, both Argentina and the other tracts I have referred to are capable, supposing immigration to continue at the present rate, of providing work and homes for immigrants for at least sixty or seventy years to come. Locusts are said to destroy the crop once in three or four years, but this plague is deemed likely to diminish as settlement and civilization extend northwards to the regions whence it now comes. The estimate that before the end of the century Argentina may have fifty, Uruguay ten, and southern Brazil thirty millions of people (assuming the birth-rate to be maintained) need not seem extravagant to anyone who knows how rapidly settlement has advanced in North America and who realizes that before long the stream of agricultural immigration will cease to flow into the United States and may slacken in its flow towards Canada.
The cultivable areas of Chile are relatively small; and the Chileans themselves seem to think they need more land for their national development. To one who travels through southern Chile there seems, however, to be still room for a greatly increased population in its well-watered valleys, which enjoy a delightful climate. The future of these four countries is assured, so far as the gifts of nature can assure it. The world will always want what they produce.