The Saint Paul globe., 1899-01-01
ARGENTINE Low LIFE
PHASES OF EXISTENCE IN THE
GREATEST REPUBLIC SOUTH
OF THE EQUATOR
BUEN0S AYRES CONVENTILLOS


About Trades Unions - What
Women DO-The Female School
Teacher and the Telephone Girl
Queer Customs of Washing
and Ironing-The Gauchos.
copyrighted, 1898, by Frank G. Carpenter.
BUENOS AYRES, Nov. 25.-I have
written of high life in the Argentine
Republic This country has it's low
life as well. Its poor are in the great
majority 1t has tens of thousands of
people who live in zinc sheds, and
there are courts in Buenos Ayres about
which men, women and children swarm
as thickly as they do in any tenement
section of New York or London. Rents
are very high in Buenos Ayres, only
the rich are able to have houses to
themselves. The well-to-do live in flats
and apartments and the poor are crowd
ed into conventillos. Conventillos are
a popularity of Buenos Ayres. They are
immense buildings of one or two
stories, running around narrow pas
Sages or courts, and containing scores
upon scores of one-roomed homes. Each
room is the living place for one or
more families, and in most cases 1T
has so many inmates that the wash
ing and cooking must be done outside
in the court. These one-roomed homes
are without ventila ton, except from the
front. They have no light but that
which comes through the doorway, and
their sanitary condition is bad beyond
description.
IN THE -CONVENTILLOS.
You find these conventillos in every
part of Buenos Ayres. They exist un-
Ger the shadow of the government
mansions. Some are to be found on the
by-StreetS of the business sections, and
there are others back of the palaces
of the nabobs each of whose incomes
runs into more dollars per week than
any one of the inhabitants of the con-
ventillos receives in year. Take one,
for instance, which l lately visited I'M
der the shadow of the Grand opera
house. [ had just come from the box
office, where L saw a score of men pay
ing $16 a seat for the next nights en-
-tertainment, and where one man had
laid down $1,000 to pay for his family
: box for the season. The conventillo
was entered by a door from the street
Passing through this I came into a
court six feet wide and about 200 feet
long. This was walled with two
story building, made of rooms about
twelve feet wide and not much more
than twelve feet deep. There was a
gallery along the outside of the sec
ord story, and the two opposite walls
were so close together that the stone
Tagging of the court oozed with mois-
ture. 1t received but little sun, and
there was a damp, green mold on the
stones not tramped by the tenants
feet. Opening upon the court from
each room was a door, and the rooms
haG neither light nor ventilation but
that which came from the door, Just
outside each room in the court was a
bowl or box of charcoal. This formed
the cook stove Of the family within
Upon some of the fires rested pots of
steaming soup with ragged Italian
) women bending over them. There was
portly. gray-haired Italian dame in
one doorway cleaning cabbage, and
next to her | saw a lean woman with
q Spanish face cooking macaroni Fur
ther on a girl mother of perhaps four
teen was washing clothes, while under
the tub her dirty baby sprawled on the
stone and squalled. The most of the
people in the court were Italians, and
many OF the women were very young.
The Italians of Buenos Ayres develop
young, and you may read any day in
the papers the records of marriages of
girls of fourteen. Big families are the
rule, and several Of those in this court
comprised, l was told, as many as ten
children. Father and mother, grown
up sons and daughters, children and
babies, all sleep in space not over
fifteen feet square. Many rooms have
one bed, which is occupied by the par
ents and as many children as can
crowd in, and the rest must sleep on
the floor. There is no way of heating
the rooms. They made me think of
caves rather than the homes of hu-
man beings, and most of them were
quite as dirty as the average cave Not
withStanding this, the children seemed
to be generally healthy, although 1
heard one mother grooming away over
her sick baby, her sad lullaby min
Cling with the strains of the singers
who were practicing a comic opera in
the great theater over the way.
The death rate, however, is not so
high as it is in some European cities.
The climate of the Argentine is excel
lent and the last general census taken
showed that there were then living
2S4 persons who were over 100 years
old. a large proportion of the popu-
lation is made up of Italians, Span
iards and French immigrants. the ItaI-
ians predominating. The latter have
an annual birth rate of so per LOCO,
which is so per cent higher than the
average birth rate of Europe.
POOR OF THE ARGENTINE.
The working classes of the Argentine
Republic are largely foreigners The
native poor do little more than herd
cattle. The real work of the country
is done by the Italians and the Span
iards, furnished by the stream of immi
grants Which is always flowing from
Italy and Spain to the lower parts of
eastern South America. Within the
past tWenty-four years about 1000 900
immigrants have been imported from
Southern Europe, and today out of The
4,0OO,O0O people in the Argentine Repuh-
lie it is estimated that more than one
in every four is a foreigner. The rail-
roads are built by the Italians, al
though the English furnish the money.
am told that they make splendid
workmen. They are thrifty, economical
and generally happy. They send a
large proportion of their wages back
to Italy, just as our Irish do with their
wages in the United States The Ital-
lanS are also the small farmers. They
work on wheat lands, many of them
taking tracts to farm on shares.
They are as rule thrifty and accum-
ulatlVe, and many who have come Door
nave amassed fortunes. The fact that
a man lives in squalid quarters is not
q sure sign that he is poor, for in these
very conventillos l am told there are
Italians who have nice little properties.
but who prefer to save and starye for
the time in order to be the richer here
after.
The Italians are the masons. the
carpenters and the mechanics of the
Argentine. They are very apt at trades
and Will work for much lower wages
than those of the United States. They