ARGENTINE PROSPECTS 45 



large acreage under cultivation, is almost outside 

 our comprehension, yet such there are. The 

 success of cattle-raising has been due to the in- 

 dustry being conducted on a vast scale. Prices 

 paid for bulls may seem extravagant. They are 

 strict business when the benefits of a good sire 

 can be spread through his descendants over a 

 large herd. 



Cereal cultivation is subject to very different 

 conditions. It depends, to a considerable degree, 

 on emigration from Europe, mostly consisting 

 of Italians and Spaniards — a movement surely 

 one of the most remarkable of modern times, 

 some 100,000 labourers annually travelling to 

 the Argentine and back, say 12,000 miles, for the 

 crop season. Nor does the organisation of agri- 

 culture as opposed to stock-raising compare 

 favourably with other countries. A system of 

 grants of land to immigrants, such as that in 

 force in Canada, or the Homestead Laws which 

 did so much to help the westward development 

 in the States, if not entirely absent, is certainly 

 very ineffective, though the Argentine Law 

 of Inheritance, entailing the equal division of 

 property amongst heirs, to some extent makes 

 up for this defect by bringing properties into the 

 market. The cultivator is generally a share 

 farmer or a renter. Over wide areas, when he 

 has reaped a third cereal crop, with which lucerne 



