The Holbrook news., 1911-09-29

stantially equivalent to that in New
 York city. Argentina Is the greatest
 exporter of meat in the world, but North Americans living in Buenos Ayres seem to think that it costs them as much at retail as in the United States. It is hard to make exact com parisons, becaus~ the method of cut ting is different, and it is common to buy not by weight, but by the piece. Bread costs as much as in the United States and twice as much as in England, although it is from Argen- tina that England buys a third of her total supply of wheat and more than half of her corn.
 When one hears of Buenos Ayres prices he naturally asks, Are salaries and wages in comparison?" Salaries are-wages are not That is. using the words in their usual sense, salaries meaning payments to men who wear collars at their work and wages the returns of those who labor in over alls. There are only two classes in Buenos Ayres-upper and lower The self-respecting middle class-the back bone of the United States-does not exist. Persons who would constitute such body in one of our communities expend their efforts in Buenos Ayres hanging on by the eyelids to the up per fringe, or else give up the strug- gle and sink down into the submerged other half.
 That the business and professional classes of Buenos Ayres have money to spend. and occupy themselves in spending it, one has every evidence. Ten years ago in Paris" a French man remarked to me, when we spoke of wealthy people 1t was of the North Americans. the English and the Rus sians. Now we include the Argen- tines"
 Tbere is no other nation in the world with a population of 6,OOO.OOU persons which is supporting a metrop- oils of one and a quarter million in- habitants. and perhaps nowhere else in the world in so small a compass are there sc many stores filled with costly merchandise as on the Calle Florida for the six squares from Riva- david to Tucuman
 Buenos Ayres is study in froth. It is the apotheosis of get-rich-quick sue cess-the rapidly matured fruit of period of unprecedented commercial development. accompanied by soaring land values. It is as far removed from the serene Spanish city which some picture it as the Rio de la Plata from the Tagus. There is little Spanish about it except the language. Italy has supplied the most numerous ele- ment in the population, England the capital and France the architecture. | The business section of Buenos Ayres | is more crowded, almost as noisy. eau ally torn up and just as much pervad- | ed with nervous. futile haste as that of | New York Racially the Argentine | capital is a Latin city, but in the | mingling of peoples and the rush to get rich Italian, Spaniard and French i man seem to have forgotten, or been afraid to assert, those national charac- eristics which make them most inter- ssting at home. Nor have they evolved anything as whole to take the place. 8uenos Ayres is still too young. too lriven by a strident, insistent con- nercialism to have achieved an in- or an atmosphere
 The dominant commercial spirit is sometimes trying even to one who has been brought up in our cities. In seeking to explain or laud their home o the stranger, the Bonaerenses al ways dwell on the money side. Pros 1erity with big P is the burden of heir remarks.
 ARTHUR H. WARNER.