Argentina 145 



years ago the government sold off at auction large 

 tracts of land at little more than the cost of surveying 

 it. The reserve price was about $400 per square league. 

 A square league contains 6669 acres. Much of the land 

 thus thrown upon the market was very fertile and 

 admirably adapted both to grazing and agricultural 

 purposes. While the number of human beings in the 

 world is steadily increasing, the number of fertile acres 

 is stationary. The hungry millions of Europe were 

 calling for food ; the men of Argentina discovered that 

 they were in a position to supply it. They began to 

 grow wheat and corn in a large way. They took to 

 improving their live stock by importing the best strains 

 of cattle and sheep and horses from Europe and North 

 America. They discovered that by plowing under the 

 rough grasses of the pampa and sewing alfalfa or lucerne 

 they could secure perennial pasturage for their animals. 

 Farming became profitable and the value of the land 

 gradually began to enhance. Men who had bought 

 great tracts for a few cents an acre awoke to find pur- 

 chasers who were willing to pay anything from fifty to 

 one hundred dollars per acre for their holdings. Many 

 men who had bought a square league for $400 hold it 

 to-day at $300,000. Men who bought, as multitudes 

 did, from ten to twenty square leagues, are multi- 

 millionaires at the present moment. Some men ac- 

 quired great bodies of land, hundreds of thousands of 

 acres, for a song ; to-day they live in palaces, surrounded 

 with luxury. As the result of this sudden and enor- 

 mous increase in wealth there has been developed 

 in many cases extravagance. There are not a few 

 thoughtful men in Argentina who shake their heads as 

 they observe this tendency, and the comments they 

 made reminded me, as I heard them, of what I had 



