The Richmond Virginian. (Richmond, Va.) 1910-1920, 1913-05-18
yHI---Argentina, the UNITED States
of South America"
A COUNTRY BEEN ALMOST AS AMAZING As
THAT OF THE UNITED STATES,
COMES BEFORE ALL ELSE
BY JAMES BRYCE,
Ambassador From Great Britain to the United States

I stretches of land reclaimed, and huge
warehouses erected and railway lines
held down alongside the wharves.
Not Glasgow when she deepened her
river TO admit the largest ships, nor
Manchester when she made her ship
canal, hardly even Chicago when she
planned new park and lagooDs in
the lake that washes her front, showed
greater enterprise and holder concep-
( lions than did the men OF Buenos
Aires, when on this exposed and shall
low coast they made alongside their
city a great ocean harbor. They are
a type Of our time, in their equal de-
votion 10 business and pleasure, the
two and only deities of this latest
phase of humanity.
Bucnos Aires Ugly Suburbs.
If tho best parts Of Buenos Aires
are as tasteful as those of Paris, there
il plenty of ugliness IN the worst sub
urbs.
ON its land side the city dies out
into waste of scattered shanties, or
"shacks," dirty and squalid, with cor
rugated iron roofs, their wooden
boards gaping iike rents in -tattered
clothes These are Inhabited by the
newest and poorest Of the immigrants
from Southern Italy and Southern
Spain. large and not very desirable
element among whom auarchism is
rife. This district which, If 1t can
hardly he called city, can stiil less be
called country, stretches far ont over
the Pampa. Thus, although the CEN
trail parts are built closely, these sub
urbs are built SO sparsely that the
town as IA whole covers an immense
space Of ground.
Further out and after passing for
some miles between market gardens
and fields divided by wire fences, with
never hedge one reaches real coun-
try, an outer zone in which some OF
the wealthy landowners have laid out
their estates and erected pleasant
country houses We we're invited TO
one such. and admired the art with
which the ground had been planted.
various kinds of trees having been
selected with SO much taste that even
. on this unpromising level picturesque
ness and beauty had been attained
I Everything that does not need mucf
moisture grows iuxuriantly. We sa"
rose bushes forty feet high, pouring
: down a cataract of blossoms.
A Cosmopolitan Population.
Though Buenos Aires Is often de
scribed as a cosmopolitan place, III
lpopulation has far fewer elements thar
, would be found in any OF the grea
cities of the United States.
There are English and German col
onies both composed almost wholly O
business and railway men, and eacf
keeping, for social purposes, pretty
closely TO itself. There is "A French
colony, it's upper section including mei
of intellectual mark while the humbl
members serve pleasure rather thai
: business.
, From the United States not man.
persons have COME to settle as mer
IL f.ys lsaa
) meat companies are already at work
? OF the so-calied Latin" element I'm TIN
: inhabitants. half or little more Il
Argentine born, less than quartz
Spanish or Basque, more than
quarter I--~an. largely from Sicily an{
! Calabria. Those Slavonic parts o
= central and eastern Europe which have
recently flooded the United States will
immigrants have sent very few t
3 South America. Thus the mass of TIN
; population in Buen Aires is enflTel,
= Spanish or Italian In speech. and Tn
1 two languages are SO similar that tn,
d, Italians easily learn Spanish while als'
modifying il by their own words ant
, idloms.
The Type and Flower of Argentina.
OF the whole population of Argen'
tina, with it's immense area OF l,la3,-
y 900 square miles one-tfth dwell In
q that this ratio may be maintained sc
u that when, thirty years hence. Argen'
, tina counts twenty millions of inhahi.
(, tants, Buenos Aires viii count foul
y millions. There ore other large cities
and one Of thcm. Cordoya, has al
ancient university and a society oi
cultivated men. But business life anc
political life. as well us literary and
intellectual life. are so ncentratet
in Buenos Aires as To make 1t &c
. dwarf all the other cities and give tt
> il an influence comparable TO that Of
9 Paris in France.
, The history Of the republic was fol
= Smany years n history of the struggles
:, between the capital--already pre-emi
= nent In revolutionary days-and tbs
a provinces. So the people OF Buenos
. Aires divide the Argentine nation int,
. two classes, themselves, who are called
h, the Portenos (men OF the porC, ant
all the rest, the jewellers in the Campo
, orr open country. And though thu