104 EXPLOITATION OF THE FORESTS 



a good part of the land, use wood-fuel. The wood of the 

 red quebracho, if left for some years in the yards where 

 the sleepers are made and is rid of the sap-wood, which 

 rots and falls out — the lena campana — is excellent fuel. 

 Charcoal is cheaper to transport than the wood, and 

 can therefore be sent farther over the whole prairie 

 district. It is made in the monte, along all the railways, 

 and especially in the thinner forests on the edge of the 

 prairie. 



The forestry of the interior is unstable as well as 

 scattered and primitive. The equipment — saws that 

 are easily taken down and set up — is not costly, and does 

 not require much capital. When one canton of the forest 

 has been exhausted, the saws are taken down and re- 

 moved. The cuttings are not made in such a way as 

 to allow the forest to recover, and so permit a continuous 

 exploitation. Everything of any value is taken. The 

 quebracho is, moreover, a tree of slow growth. The 

 forestry industry has at times returned, after an interval, 

 to land that had been stripped, but that is not because 

 they had planted a new generation of trees. It is 

 because it became profitable, as the state of the market 

 and the cost of transport changed, to cut down the small 

 trees which had not been considered good enough on 

 the earlier occasion. 



When the master obrajero removes, he is followed by 

 the greater part of the workers. But to induce them 

 to emigrate, or to recruit cutters in the banados who will 

 agree to work in remote or new districts, he has to be 

 liberal and offer higher wages. Hence the conditions 

 of work and the rate of wage are not the same in every 

 part of the forest. The oldest area of working, which 

 is crossed by the Central Cordoba, between the provinces 

 of Catamarca and Santiago del Estero, has a surplus 

 of good workers. On the other hand, the obrajeros of 

 the valley from San Francisco to Jujuy, where the 

 exploitation is more recent, have only a moderate 

 amount of labour at their command. The returns 



