274 THE POPULATION 



Buenos Aires has preserved in its central district, 

 and reproduces in all its outer districts, the primitive 

 draught-board plan of a Spanish colonial city. This 

 plan is not suited to its needs to-day. The rapid 

 growth of the city and its expansion — the mean density 

 is not more than fifty-four inhabitants to the hectare, 

 as against 360 at Paris — complicate the problem of 

 transport. At the present time the city is considering 

 plans for reconstructing its thoroughfares and making 

 diagonal streets, starting from the centre and following 

 the direction of the main streams of traffic. In this 

 way the city would reproduce the fan-wise distribution 

 of railways over the Pampean plain. 



Buenos Aires is the intermediary between the 

 provinces and oversea countries. It has three titles 

 to this profitable part. In the first place, it is the 

 chief centre of the import trade. The mei chants of 

 the cities in the interior are customers of the Buenos 

 Aires importers, and are closely bound to them by a 

 system of long-term credit. Buenos Aires is, secondly, 

 the centre for the distribution of the European capital 

 which has been used in the development of the country. 

 Lastly, it divides immigrant workers amongst the 

 provinces, just as it divides capital. As an immigra- 

 tion port its position is unrivalled. The efforts that 

 were made to divert part of the immigrants to Bahia 

 Blanca failed, and direct immigration to the Santa 

 Fe province ceased at the close of the first period of 

 colonization, about 1880. It is also at Buenos Aires 

 that immigrants who are not going to settle in 

 Argentina embark ; re-emigration, which is regarded 

 as a national plague by Argentine economists, is 

 another source of profit to the capital. Hence the 

 fortune of Buenos Aires is due in the first place to 

 the close contact between the economic life of Argentina 

 and that of Europe and North America. 



But its very growth has led to a gradual change 

 in the part it plays in the interior of the country. In 



