RANCHLANDS 103 



ployer has changed even more. The big hand- 

 some ranch -houses are fitted with every modern 

 comfort and luxury, and the owners belong in 

 all ways to the internationalized upper class 

 of the world of to-day. The interest attaching 

 to a visit to one of these civilized ranches is 

 that which attaches to a visit to a fine modern 

 stock-farm anywhere, whether in Hungary or 

 Kentucky or Victoria. 



But there is one vital point — tlie vital point 

 — in which the men and women of these ranch- 

 houses, like those of the South America that I 

 visited generally, are striking examples to us of 

 the English-speaking countries both of North 

 America and Australia. The families are large. 

 The women, charming and attractive, are good 

 and fertile mothers in all classes of society. 

 There are no symptoms of that artificially self- 

 produced dwindling of population which is by 

 far the most threatening symptom in the social 

 life of the United States, Canada, and the Aus- 

 tralian commonwealths. The nineteenth century 

 saw a prodigious growth of the English-speak- 

 ing, relative to the Spanish-speaking, population 

 of the new worlds west of the Atlantic and in 

 the Southern Pacific. The end of the twentieth 

 century will see this completely reversed unless 

 the present ominous tendencies as regards the 



