144 To the River Plate and Back 



as in our own crowded municipalities, hundreds and 

 thousands of people who are packed together in narrow 

 quarters eking out a miserable existence under circum- 

 stances decidedly unpropitious. Buenos Aires, like 

 New York and London, has its slums and squalid 

 tenement districts, many of the inhabitants of which 

 would be far better off if deported to the pampas and 

 made to take part in the healthful toil which falls to 

 him who is a tiller of the ground. It is hard, however, 

 to induce people who have lived in towns and cities in 

 Europe, when coming to America, to adopt the larger 

 and freer life of the open country. Farmers, like poets, 

 are born, not made. To induce a man who has been 

 trained to be a baker or small tradesman to become a 

 herder or a plowman is as difficult as to transform 

 a blacksmith into a sculptor, or a lawyer into a glass- 

 cutter. It can be done now and then, but only in 

 exceptional cases. The trouble in Argentina, as in the 

 United States, is that a great deal of the recent immigra- 

 tion has not proceeded from the agricultural regions of 

 Europe. Argentina, like North America, needs more 

 farmers and fewer hotel-waiters, bartenders, petty shop- 

 keepers, and people who live by their wits, without 

 having any trade in which they excel. 



Though there has been a rapid growth in population 

 in Argentina in recent years, there is a comparative 

 dearth of labor, and wages are very high. The pro- 

 tective tariff which has been applied to a number of the 

 industries of the country has also had its effect in 

 raising the price of labor and commodities. The cost 

 of living in Argentina, as in almost all South American 

 countries, is great. The increase in the value of land 

 has been the main factor underlying the princely for- 

 tunes possessed by many Argentinian families. A few 



