| Show THE WHEAT FIELDS OF THE ARGENTINE rosario october 20 1898 rosario is the chicago of south america it is the chief wheat market of the argentine republic it ships thousands of tons of wheat corn and linseed every week and within la a short time after this letter is published hundreds of ocean steamers ete amers will be anchored under its bluffs loading adlong lo this years crops for europe rosario is situated on the parana river about miles toy by land from buenos ayres it is three hundred olles by water from that city and about as far inland from the atlantic ocean as pittsburg ocean steamers sail for two li hundred undred miles up the ithe rio de la Is plata past buenos ayres into the mouth of the parana fund then for about three hundred miles up the river to rosario the parana at this point is a mighty stream it has many wands islands and it is very wide its channel is so deep that steamers drawing sixteen feet can reach rosario at any time ot of the year and they come here from all parts parte of the world for grain rosario itself is s one of the thriving towns of the argentine it was founded about years ago but wheat raising in the argentine gave tt it a great boom and within the last ten yeats years it has almost trebled its population latton it has bas now about people it la is well built the streets crossing one another at right angles it has good hotels daily newspapers electric electr lo lights telephones and kg J H does a 4 big wholesale and retail buoi business neos but the moat of 0 its money comes from wheat the warehouses sex are along and the wheat is I 1 venture taken from the cars care tto the steamers more cheaply at rosario than at any other wint point to in the world the land about here Is a deep alluvial which has been carried down from the mountains by the streams of the rio do de la plata system through this soil doll the parana has ha put cut its channel to such ouch a depth that the fluffs bluffs upon which the city stands we exe gt at 1 isasa seventy feet high they are and rosario to te built clear to their edges edge so go that the warehouses war houses bouses are higher then than mhd th of the steamers floating op on the river all gsg bjong the banks of the river warehouses have teen built they are made of gray gal cantal iron they baye bate railroad stacks ft ako tko aunna ng between them and the edge qt at the bluff as and d much fo of the wheat heal f ebach is carried in on the oars ts trans transferred fOrred to the 6 ships hips without gos j fc into mhd warehouses WS the transfer ff 11 bach ach shipping is s made imade by gravity mcany m pany has ha a lorg long chute running maning from ro rom n the edge of the bluff and r from ron rom the warehouse itself down into the he e rl river ver these chutes are re made in n and are aa 0 o ar ranged arranged that they their urva form a trough from the bluff tight anto the holds holdo a the steamers amers etnie ome ox of the chutes are sections of df iron which hach can be hung on v wire are cables ca toles making an iron iran chute from the hold to the warehouse so arranged that tt ft m be lengthened or shortened at will vill the wheat is bagged on the farm the oars cars carry it to the edge of the bluff and italian laborers take the bags and pitch them into the chutes As soon as ma a bag touches the chute st it begins to descend and it fairly gallops down the inclined trough into the steamer Bt eamer the baags fly down one after the other at the hate of several to the minute and nd as you look at them they make you think of an armyon army of galloping riceland mi mice celand and you remember the horde which attacked the cruel archbishop hatto in his island in n the rhine at harvest time the wheat becomes congested att ait rosario Roa ario the railroads have more than they can dio to carry the crop and almost all othe traffic has to be suspended sue there are not enough cars for the business there is here no such system of interchange of cars las as we have in the united states one companas comp anys cars cannot go over the tracks of other companies the result is that the wheat Is piled up in bags ait the sta tlona and left there until it can be shipped I 1 saw budh piles in different parts in the argentine As yet thene are comparatively cewe elevators and the cari cariag rg for flor the wheat is after th most wasteful methods there are no barns in the argentine the weather is such that the stock feeds out of doors the yi year ar around ard only the fin finc SL of blooded ar kept under coar M ny 1113 of the work bork arri animals mals art are not fod fed but have to roly upon what they cati can eat its in the I 1 rapture a ture fields the spilt it is that there is no chanice chance fir f T the banier to st str fi 14 wheat in imms an ani l lie he has to til artly upon the iho roads for getting lit dt to the markets market s the liand hand there are no grades to speak of arad and the freight rates should be I 1 low 0 w I 1 believe that argent ane wheat raising Is in its infancy twenty years ago the wise men said chait grain could never be grown to any extent the Ar gentines were then importing nil lions of dollars worth of wheat overy every year land the farmers who were pasturing stock on wewt are now the principal wheat fields were eating flour shipped from the united states and chile today the argentine has to a large extent the wheat trade of south america it plants millions of acres every year and lit it produces gro duces from thirty to eighty million bushels a season according to the weather and to the invasions of the locusts for the last seven or eight years it has produced from three fifths to four fifths of the ahem crop of continent and today lit it is ohi wheat to the different parts of south muth america and to ismore when the argentine has a good crop the prices of wheat in the european market are affected end and our fi often get leba tor or their cheak in consequence in the pt year or 60 flour mints have been op ringing up and the haa ha now more than flour mills many or of which use ue machinery imported Itai Sm ported from the united states I 1 had haa ia fine bread lor for my iny breakfasts at puo pu enoi ay ep as you pu can oret get at any batol apt in bwy fo rork and as a iule the flour used in the ArgerY tIve is as good as any we produce 6 A great deal degi of argentine flour is shipped to brazil and uruguay and some Is ia being sent to europe T the grain producing area of the argentine increases every year abt a long dilme it was confined to the valleys valle of the para parana and uruguay riveral and aad tt it was supposed that wheat could only be grown near these rivers year by year however the faa ants have been pushed farther back said and the larea area at present is as large as ae that of england land and france Fra jice it is said thea that it if all the lands which are know knewt tg be wheat lands were used and these should produce a crop cro p ot of temi tem bushels per acre the argentine clotild now produce one ione halt half the wheat crop of t the world A ne near wheat region is that of the south the argentine from to south is longer than the united states St altes during the athe past few montha mo I 1 have been away down in patagonia t 1 have traveled thousands of miles through tillable lable tl grounds which have never been touched by the plow three hundred miles south of buenos ayres there is a thriving seaport called bable blanca there are big wheat ware warehouses bouges there and the railroad men tell me that thai 0 they have more wheat than they can handle this wheat comes from the aft southern thern provi ovinice pr Twe of buenos ayres a province which is enormous to tim iti ita ertem aa and aad d which is almost altogether composed compo eed of good land just south of this region there are vast pampas scanty pasturage and usually tool looked ceS upon as deserts through these dam 9 pas run the two great rivers and negro or ini in other W words black rivers I 1 traveled tor ft flays aloag these rivers in iia awa fth it ft P of railroad surveyors the mhd rivers have e a quantity quan of water the yar yoa t round aft said and an d their fau fall la Is such as to malce p for a wide sa along 1 them from the kedes andes to the sea arlt in the ch e v artt ture there will be irrigated farms that the isaid un d is as rich as amy pant of colorado or utah ubah or Califi ornda and its ats settlement and use is a ques au estloa aton of tune time althe welsh who have a 0 further south are growing wheat by tr a they are now exports ex bout boat tons e L year and this thib has SU all been brownt on oin what until MOW W was the desert sands samu of Falta gonda about p hos aarto and elsewhere 1 lt this van camey ey ot of the ithe parama arain the ithe sw soil is a rich blaak lotom from six elx inches to ito three feet deep lying on a bedoc flay all the a for hundreds of miles above and below rosario and comprising large 61 the of buen suenina ayre ayr 8 sui pe fe and entre alos are composed biot tatt soil goll wh which ach is very good glood for wheat I 1 have never seen such poor fw anywhere as aa is going on in the aggs tine our own farmers are baa but these people are anak worse in the united states abe ve ragie of wheat per acre twig the 00 bole country is fron twelve to thirteen bushels bushel that of the argentine is not over ten in england where the soil is more carefully studied and cared for the average is twenty nine bushels per acre in holland twenty five bushels and in france eighteen bushels the most of the wheat in this country is raised by italian immigrants many of whom farm the land on shares they do their work in the roughest and most slovenly way much of the wheat is sowed bowed on the ground as it is first sloughed ploughed hed the grain being dropped among the clods other farmers drag brush over the field and some of the better farmers use the harrow the ploughing sloughing hing is done with bullocks who drag the ploughs through the furrows by means of a yoke attached to their horns no fertilizer whatever is used and the only idea of the man seems to be to get the wheat into the ground and then sit elt down and wait tor for the crop the life of the argentine farmer would never suit our people an amer ican farmer could not be happy here without he brought his hia associates and friends along with him I 1 cannot dei scribe the barrenness and dreariness of the life in most of the wheat country there are no trees the little hut of tile the farmer made of mud stands out alone oaf on the dreary landscape it has not a sign of coni comfort fort and the farmers do not seem to care for anything but their wheat crop most of them have no garden they run their accounts at the nearest graceey and make annual settlements when they sell their wheat most of them drink to excess and few of them have any thought beyond this one avro p all have large families and at times of planting and harvesting nearly all work you may see boys of eight riding horses in the field and girls of nine and ten are doing their share of the harvest barvest the lack of elevators iki tors and other conditions demand that the wheat should be harvested quickly and at this time you will not find a harder working people in the world 0 O ald than these italian farmers odthe of the ar argentine women and girls men and boys labor with ith all al strength from sunrise to sunset and when it is moonlight t you ou may see them out under the p stars fh ir kind binding ing and thrashing wheat it is the same in planting time but between thess two seasons there is a long vacation the result to la that the failure of U a crop means partial starvation there Is no reason for this the land is susceptible cep tible ot of g growing of a great variety of crops and as aig plowing can be done heri every month in the year the ar gentina i cafter could bould raise everything he uses I 1 kg As it is Is la is said gild ha can now prod provance fice wheat beat at a wat 25 to 30 20 cents a bushel this may be so but taking the oe average ot of good and bittl bad drops it is probable tn that wheat costs as much here as it does in the united states tl la is curious to see how bow the wheat to carried to the cars from such farms farm an a are tar from the railroad it Is hauled iri in bullock carts the wheels of which are arb about eight feet high A toad load several tons is balanced between aden a couple of these wheels and from a dozen to sixt sixteen een bullocks are harnessed OA essed up in double file in front of E it As the cart moves onward over the ujka rough road the the wheels give out such a screeching t anat I 1 you think there must afe be a hog going on near by it if you tell ball the ia that a bit of grease on an the axle would top the noise he replies that ahti is 19 necessary and aind that the bu bullocks flocks will wt move mav e unless th they ey hear it in some som few of df the large farms macenery Is used and the threshing to Is common commonly 17 done with european or threshers thre the irhe argentine is ie subject too to drought and the crop arbes arid falls according taid h weather the worst thing ming however wast the tanners have to withes the the locus jb pst pet that inis tests the argentine Is fully as bad as the locust plague with which the lord I 1 afflicted pharaoh the only ionly difference I 1 was that pharaoh phanh had his locusts for a few days but the gentines argentines Ar seems to be having theirs as a regular thing the plague does not extend to the extreme south but for or the past seven years the wheat farmers of the parana valley have been seriously damaged by it there are a lot of locusts this thas year many people believe that chait the situation Is such that the number of locusts will increase from year to year and that the country can never be tree free from them they argue this from the loaa uon tion of the Arg argentine entime it is you know situated in the temperate zone ath a delightful climate and a fairly good soil just above it lies brazil which is covered with tropical vegetation and vast areas of which will never be different from what they are now in this country it Is claimed that the locusts have their breeding grounds they tare are produced toy by the millions there every year and as a swarm thinks think nothing of a flight of milles you can see that an army starting out from there is iff a dangerous enemy they say that the locusts breed in brazil and annually start out tor for the south eat ng up everything as they go they argue and they did riot come in the remote past because the argentine was then covered ath the coarse grass of the pampas this the locusts did not especially care tor for but now since they have learned of the juicy green wheat they come every year I 1 it is hard to bo realize what a terrible thing such an invasion Is the locusts appear in great swarms which often darken the sun 1 if they fly between you and it they light on everything green and begin eating the branches of the trees bend down with ther weight and you can hear the snapping of their jaws and they crunch the leaves they will 1 strip an am orchard in a night they often eat the flesh from the fruit leaving the stones of the peaches hanging banging to the bare branches they are capricious in their feeding and all choice trees or those which have been especially cultivated are sure to be eaten they will clean the crops from the fields eating the grain down to the ground sometimes they will take the green wheat from one side of the road and pass by that on the other and they sometimes fly on and on for days over ever rich fields to feed on those beyond the next swarm may eat that which to is left it seems funny to think of these locusts railroad trains but I 1 have been told again and again that this the case they come in such numbers that they cover the arar tracks ka the bafs cars crush them the rail mile |
