Charlevoix county herald., 1911-09-02

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. 1t is hard to make exact COM
parisons, because 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 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 a 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
cIases 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 it was of the North
Americans, the English and the Rus
slams. Now we include the Argen-
tines"
There is no other nation in the
world with a population of 100000
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 so many stores filled with
costly merchandise as on the Gale
Florida for the six squares from Riva-
davia to Tucuman.
Buenos Ayres is study in froth. It
is the apotheosis of get-rich-quick sue
cess-the rapidly matured fruit of a
period of unprecedented commercial
development, accompanied by soaring
land values. 1t 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 1t 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. equ-
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
man seem to have forgotten, or been
afraid to assert, those national charac-
teristics which make them most inter-
esting at home. Nor have they evolved
anything as a whole to take the place.
Buenos Ayres is still too young, too
driven by a strident, insistent CON-
mercialism to have achieved an in
dividuality 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
to the stranger, the Bonaerenses al
ways dwell on the money side. Pros
perity with a big P is the burden Of
their remarks.
ARTHUR n. WARNER.