TANNIC-ACID WORKS 105 



are not higher there than in the south, though the 

 forests are incomparably denser and richer. It has 

 been very expensive to bring about a continuous stream 

 of immigration toward the main region of forest work, 

 which is now called the Chaco, along the railway that 

 starts from Ailatuya and goes about 130 miles further 

 north. As the worker is on piece-work, the price 

 per sleeper when the work was begun on the Chaco 

 had to be double, on the Ahatuya line, what was paid 

 in the older line from Santiago to Frias, close to the 

 hanados. 



The work is profitable only within a short distance 

 from the railways. Waggon transport raises the price 

 rapidly. Moreover, the forestry industry is just as 

 dependent on the railways for provisions as it is for the 

 carriage of its wood. The ohraje has no source of food- 

 supply on the spot. The marshy estates which begin 

 to spread in the area of irrigation-canals at Banda, 

 eastward of Santiago del Estero, supply only their 

 customers at Afiatuya and the Chaco line. Sometimes 

 the railway has to bring water as well as food. Over 

 a great part of the Chaco de Santiago there is no running 

 water, and the underground sheets are little known, or 

 inaccessible, or salty. The obraje is a land of thirst. 

 In order to meet the demand for water they dig reservoirs 

 like the represas on the ranches, which are filled by the 

 rains. But as soon as the dry season sets in they become 

 stagnant green pools, and the men have to rely on 

 waggon-cisterns. 



While the Chaco de Santiago is now a democracy of 

 mall obrajeros and contractors, the eastern Chaco, alongs 

 the Parana, has quite a different type of society. It is 

 entirely in the hands of the big tannic-acid factories, 

 where the quebracho trunks are stripped and boiled, and 

 their sap is concentrated in a viscous resin. The lofty 

 chimneys of these works rise above the forest at intervals. 

 Here the work assumes a capitalistic and industrial, 

 character which it has not in other places. It is con- 



