198 THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS 



and the weeding and harvesting of the maize give em- 

 ployment to a comparatively large staff. The estates 

 are of moderate size, often only 50 hectares. Ownership 

 was not divided at the period of colonization, the land, 

 thanks to the breeders, having already acquired so 

 high a value that the colonists could not buy it. On 

 the lands which have been farmed out there has 

 developed a rural, and often far from docile, proletariat. 

 It is in the maize region that the worst agricultural 

 strikes have taken place. The struggles of the owners 

 and the colonists are the more prolonged because the 

 sowing of the maize can be put back to the end of the 

 spring without much harm being done. The adjoin- 

 ing zone of the Parana produced some of the maiseros 

 who have scattered over the north-west. But the 

 modern colonies include, in addition, a large proportion 

 of immigrants who have recently landed from Italy 

 and Spain. The maize growers do not mix with the 

 wheat-growers. Each group has its own area. 



The increase of wheat-growing in the south dates 

 only from 1898 : 



Wheat first spread along the line from Buenos Aires 

 to Bahia Blanca, west of the Sierra de la Ventana, 

 then in the coastal district, east of Bahia Blanca. These 

 two wheat-areas became connected after 1904, when 

 the opening of the direct line from Olavarria to Buenos 



