The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-11-27
AN IMPORTANT CITY
THE RAPID AND WONDERFUL PROG
REss OF BUENOs AYREs.
1t Is the Metropolis OF south America.
and the Most POpulOus Spanish
City I'm the World.
CENTER OF POLITICAL POWER
CONTROLS ARGENTINE POLITICALLY.
SOCIALLY AND FINANCIALLY.
The Biggest Catholic City of the
World, Only Per Cent. of Ets
Population Being Protestant.
Copyright, 1898, by Frank G. carpenter)

(COpyrlgnt, leJo py FRANK ". CaTpenJer)
BUI3NOS AYRES. Nov. 1.-Buenos Ayres
is the London, the New York, the Paris of
the Argentine Republic. 1t is even more
1t might almost be called the Argentine
itself. 1t controls this country as no capt.
tai of the world does the land it is sup
posed to dominate. 1t is an old saying that
Paris is France. She is not so to the ex-
tent that Buenos Ayres is the Argentine.
There are a half dozen different cities in
France which are independent commercial
centers. Paris is by no means all France
industrially. She is so artistically, socially
and perhaps intellectually. Buenos Ayres
is the political capital Of the Argentine
1t is it's commercial capital, it's industrial
capital. its financial, social and intellectual
capital. Politically the most of the Argen-
tine congressman are Buenos Ayres citizens.
Many of them who represent PARKWAY dis
tricts practice law here They live in the
city the year round, although they may now
and then go to see their constituents The
republic is composed of rotten boroughs
supplied by Buenos Ayres men. The result
is that when Buenos Ayres takes snuff the
whole Argentine sneeZes.
Industrially Buenos Ayres has 95 per cent.
of the factories Of the republic. 1t has more
than three hundred, employing over twelve
thousand hands. The great volume of
foreign trade, now amounting to more than
$500, 0O0 a year, passes through it. It's
wholesale houses supply the republic with
goods. There are, in fact, only two places
in the Argentine-Buenos Ayres and the
Camp Buenos Ayres is Buenos Ayres. The
Camp is all Of the Argentine outside of
Buenos Ayres.
Commercially and financially Buenos
Ayres is the Argentine. 1t has the banks
which supply the republic with money; big
banks, with fine buildings; banks with de-
posits of from 100000 silver dollars down.
1t had one with a capital of $50 900 900, but
this was closed by the failures which
startled the financial world and made the
Barring brothers tremble, it's depositors
losing $70000,000 by its breaking. Buenos
Ayres has it's stock exchange, where 1.-THE
Argentine" is bought and sold in parcels,
and where stocks and bonds rise and fall
as Buenos Ayres thinks them good or bad.
On this exchange more than half a billion
gold dollars worth of stock was f1oated
during the ten years ending in 1882 When
the panic came 80 per cent. of the compa-
MES failed, and most of the shares are now
not worth 1 per cent. of their face value.
Nevertheless, both city and country are in
a good financial condition.
AS a social center Buenos Ayres is the
Argentine. The most of the money made
in the camp IS spent here. The city has
scores of millionaires, nabobs who each
own their half million acres of land and
who count their cattle and sheep in herds
of thousands. They may go to their farms
in the summer, but then winters are spent
in their palaces here, where they give royal
e+,f1 5OIlo
for a season box at the opera house.
GROWING CITY.
The Argentine is growing fast in popula-
ton 1t has on its seven league boots COM
pared with the United States. 1t trebles
its population every thirty years, and it
now has more than four million people.
Buenos Ayres grows even faster than the
rest of the country. 1t is jumping upward
at the rate of a hundred thousand year.
1t now has 100000 people, and by the end
of the century it's people claim that it will
number more than a million. One-fifth of
all the people in this country live in Buenos
Ayres.
The city grows like a green bay tree. It
increases more rapidly than any city in the
United States. Long ago it began to take
in all the adjoining territory When it had
its great boom on the edge Of the panic ali
out doors was plated out in lots, and
within five years the real estate transac-
tons amounted to about 500 1900. Still
enough land has been built upon to make
vast city, and that most solid one. The
houses are not detached as ours. They are
built in blocks of four acres, each surround
ed by narrow streets. Some of the sections
are so crowded that the people swarm in
them like bees. In others there are wide
stretches of bare fields. The city as it is
laid out is eleven miles from end to end,
and a ride around 1t is as long as from
Washington to Baltimore Within its
boundaries there is twice as much ground
as in Paris, and 1t has greater number of
stores and business places in proportion to
its population than any town in the United
States. You find stores everywhere. There
are miles Of them. The reason is that there
are few stores outside. 1t has not the great
suburban population of our cities whose
wants are supplied by their home towns,
but who come into the city for business.
Buenos Ayres is a Spanish city. 1t is the
biggest Spanish-speaking city of the world.
1t is almost twice as big as Madrid and
three times as big as Barcelona It's Span
ish character, however, belongs to the past,
and it is fast developing a municipal in
dividuality of it's own. 1t will always have
the Spanish language, but the population
will be mixture drawn from the four quar-
ters of the earth. To-day more than half
of the population is foreign and the city
itself is fast losing its Spanish character.
The houses on the new avenues, which have
been recently made, are more like those of
Paris than Madrid. The Avenida de Mayo
is wide boulevard, with an asphalt pave
ment The buildings upon it make you
think of those Of the Champs Elysee. and
there is total absence of the fat, low one
story structures of old Spain. 1t is the
same with some of the business blocks
which have been erected since Buenos
Ayres began its rapid growth.
HISTORY OF BUENOS AYRES.
The most of the buildings. however, are
low. For century or so there was not a
two-story house in the city. The town was
laid out in the Spanish style in rectangular
blocks along narrow streets. It was founded
away back in 1885 by a Spanish freebooter.
Pedro de Mendoza He named It "Buenos
Ayres." The words mean good air" but
Mendoza did not name IL thus because air
here is especially good. It is not. It's death
rate is high More than n thousand people