226 ROADS AND RAILWAYS 



Buenos Aires, may maintain their independence, but 

 a secondary port will be at the mercy of the single 

 line which conveys goods to it. In such circumstances 

 the ports have become, in many cases, mere depen- 

 dencies of the railways. The port of Colastine belongs 

 to the railways of the Santa Fe province. The port 

 of Bahia Blanca consists of a number of distinct ports 

 constructed by the different railway companies, and 

 run by them. Each of them ships the goods which 

 it brings. The port Ingeniero White, which belongs to 

 the Southern Company, was constructed in 1885, 

 immediately after the opening of the line from Buenos 

 Aires to Bahia Blanca. Puerto Galvan belongs to 

 the Pacific Company. Puerto Belgrano is the port 

 of the line from Rosario to Bahia Blanca. At Buenos 

 Aires the Southern Railway Company has acquired 

 control of the Buenos Aires Southern Dock Company. 

 At La Plata it manages the docks. 



The spread of agricultural colonization was at first 

 hampered by the cost of freightage which cereals 

 could bear over an area with a radius of about 200 

 miles from the ports. That is the figure given by 

 Girola in the Investigacion Agricola of 1904. The 

 period 1895-1905 saw the birth of a series of plans for 

 making canals in the Pampean region for the purpose 

 of transporting grain in the area which the railway 

 did not seem able to serve economically. Not one 

 of them was carried out, but the railways quickly 

 enlarged their sphere of influence in the interior. There 

 is, however, a reminiscence of this pause in coloniza- 

 tion in what Argentinians call " the parabolic tariffs." 

 The Argentine railways practically, apart from cases 

 of competition with rival lines, use proportional tariffs 

 up to a distance of 218 miles, and degressive tariffs 

 beyond that limit. In this way the railways have 

 helped in the conquest of the west. Degressive tariffs 

 have certainly played a part in the spread of coloniza- 

 tion during the years antecedent to 1912. They 



