270 



THE POPULATION 



comprised 37 per cent, of the total population of 

 Argentina ; in 1914 the number of urban centres 

 was 322, and they comprised 53 per cent, of the 

 population. The population of towns with 5,000 to 

 20,000 inhabitants has increased threefold in twenty 

 years, rising from 312,000 in 1895 to 977,000 in 1914. 

 Large new towns like Rosario and Bahia Blanca were 

 created. The relative sizes of the older towns changed 

 rapidly. Tucuman and Mendoza (121,000 and 92,000 

 inhabitants) shot beyond Santiago and Salta (22,000 

 and 28,000 inhabitants). The towns of the north- 

 west, Catamarca and Rioja, are, on the other hand, 

 scarcely developed. 



When one examines a chart of the urban population 

 of the Pampean region, one finds that colonization 

 has led to the creation in it of ten chief centres, of 

 from 15,000 to 25,000 inhabitants, and some fifty 

 secondary centres, of from 5,000 to 12,000 inhabitants, 

 which all have a distinctly urban character. This 

 association of urban centres and a scattered agri- 

 cultural or pastoral population is one of the original 

 features of the way in which the Pampa was peopled. 

 There is no village, or purely rural group. The dis- 

 tribution of these centres on the plain is fairly 

 regular. They are a little closer together in the dis- 

 tricts near the Parana, to the north of Buenos Aires, 

 where the population is older, and where the density, 

 even of the rural population, is at its highest. The 

 territory of the Pampa is divided between the spheres 

 of influence of these various centres. Their radius 

 is as low as ten miles in the north-west, and is about 

 twenty miles in the south of Buenos Aires and twenty- 

 five in the extreme west. 



A secondary railway nucleus has generally settled 

 the sites of them (San Francisco-Pergamino, Junin). 

 Their population comprises all the workers needed for 

 the flow of the economic life of the Pampa : agents 

 for the exporters of cereals, merchants who supply the 



