Part 8 (1/2)
Also the law insists on dormitory coaches on the all-night journeys.
They are more commodious, because on most of the lines the gauge is wider than in England. There is none of the uncomfortable sleeping behind curtains, with, maybe, a stranger in the bunk overhead, and then having to wash in the smoking-room, which the long-suffering men of the United States put up with under the notion they possess the most luxurious travelling in the world. When you come to ”special cars,” a thing we know nothing about in England except for royalty, the United States comes first, but I would say Argentina is a close second.
Nothing could be jollier--when a sand storm is not on the wing--than travelling with pleasant friends in a reserved coach. It is like a flat.
There is a sitting-room, and on a chill evening the fire burns brightly in an open grate. On a hot afternoon you have your easy chairs out on the platform at the rear and, with legs c.o.c.ked up on the rail, you can smoke your cigar. You press a b.u.t.ton, and when the attendant has brought you an iced c.o.c.ktail you agree that ”roughing it” in Argentina is a delightful experience. If your car is properly equipped with a good kitchen and a good cook, and there is a decent ”cellar”--hospitality is one of the legitimate boasts of the people--you fare as well as you would do in a first-cla.s.s hotel. Were it not that I might be thought a sybarite, I could write like a chef about the menus I experienced and enjoyed in my long excursions throughout the land.
”This is a nice chicken,” I said to my host one night. ”Yes, we have a chicken run under the car,” he answered. I laughed, for I imagined the innocent stranger was having his leg pulled; but the next morning personal inspection a.s.sured me there was a ”run,” in the shape of a long galvanised screened box beneath the car.
It was pleasant to have a bedroom four times the size of a crib on an English ”sleeper,” to have a writing-table with electric light, and a bathroom adjoining. But the chief joy of a special car was that there was no changing to catch trains. Instructions were given that we would stop at a certain place at nine o'clock in the morning. The car was detached and shunted into a siding. We lived on the car and slept on it.
Orders were given that we were to be picked up by the 3.15 local train in the morning, taken down a branch line forty miles, attached to the express which would be coming along at seven o'clock, and were to be released somewhere else at 10.15 and put into a siding. I lived this sort of life for nearly a month. It was the best possible way of seeing the country.
Sometimes we travelled from point to point during the night; sometimes we camped, as it were, at a little wayside station, with the silence of the plains around us except when a great goods train went roaring by. We kept up the joke about ”roughing it.” After a dinner party, when the coffee and liqueurs were on the table, and the sitting-room was pouring billows of cigar smoke from the wide-open windows, we leaned back in our big chairs and hoped that other poor devils who were ”roughing it” in the wilds were having no worse a time than we were.
Of course, the pa.s.senger traffic--except around Buenos Aires--is a secondary consideration compared with agricultural produce. It is estimated that the area of land suitable for agriculture but not yet cultivated is 290,000,000 acres, really all beyond the zone of railway influence. At a greater distance than fifteen miles from a railway station the cartage of the produce becomes so expensive and difficult that the profit disappears. Information supplied me by the Argentine Agricultural Society shows that the average cost of cartage is 0.70d.
per mile per cwt. Therefore, whoever has his farm farther than fifteen miles from a station has to pay 10d. per cwt. for cartage. Lands lying within the agricultural zone, but distant more than fifteen miles from a railway station, lose enormously in value, as they cannot be utilised except for live stock. To find a means of facilitating and cheapening the transport of cereals would be to double the production and value of the lands. The Agricultural Society thinks the solution may lie in the construction of cheap auxiliary lines of the simplest kind, which, laid down parallel to the princ.i.p.al lines at a distance of nineteen to twenty-two miles, or at right angles to them, would hand over to cultivation considerable zones of valuable fertile lands, and concentrate the produce in the loading stations at a fair cost to the farmers.
The question is well asked, if the 20,000 miles of rails are only sufficient to permit the cultivation of 70,000,000 acres, how many will be necessary when nearly 300,000,000 more acres are being worked? At present about 1,000 miles of fresh railroad are being laid down each year. 20,000,000 a year is being put into new railroad construction.
Yet thirty years ago (1884) the total amount invested in Argentine railways--now running into hundreds of millions--was only 18,600,000.
In 1885 all the railways in the Republic transported cargo amounting to a little over 3,000,000 tons. In 1905 it was over 12,500,000 tons. In 1913 it was moving toward 40,000,000 tons.
One harks back to the time of William Wheelwright, who may be called the father of railways in Argentina. It is three-quarters of a century since he was s.h.i.+pwrecked at the mouth of the River Plate. It was as a starveling that he got his first knowledge of Argentina. He had come from the United States, knew what railways were beginning to do for the North, and dreamed what they ought to do for the South. When he got back to the United States he tried to interest his countrymen. But the North Americans turned a deaf ear. There they missed one of the greatest chances in their commercial history. Had they seized their opportunities, and come to South America with their adaptive enterprise, the story of the relations.h.i.+p between the United States and the Latin republics below them would have been very different from what it is to-day. Finding he could raise no capital in his own country for railway enterprise in Argentina, William Wheelwright came to England and interested Thomas Bra.s.sey, one of our railway pioneers. Bra.s.sey, Wheelwright, and others got capital, and a little line out of ”B.A.” was built. Other little lines were built. Bigger lines were built. There were set-backs; occasionally the investing public was shy. But, all told, for forty years a mile a day of railroad was laid down in Argentina, and during the last few years the rate has been three miles a day. And it is all done by British capital.
Before I went out to this country I was conscious of a certain apprehension in England that we had rather too much money in Argentina, and that it was about time we called a halt. The general average of dividend during recent years has been a fraction over 5 per cent., not much return for adventure in a new country; but the fact is not to be lost sight of that enormous extensions have been provided out of revenue, as well as out of fresh capital. That there is jealousy amongst considerable sections of the young Argentines at the financial interests which a foreign country like England has in the Republic is undoubted. But it may be said that the ma.s.s of the people recognise what they owe to foreign capital, and although the Government is inclined to increase the tightness of its grip on railway administration, making bargains for lines through uneconomic country in return for a concession through fertile land--so that occasionally a company will throw up a scheme rather than pay the price by building in a region the Government wants to be developed--I do not think it can fairly be said that the Government is antagonistic to foreign capital. The danger of foreign capital getting a hold on Argentina in the way of extensive concessions is sometimes preached; but the pouring of foreign gold into the country brings too precious a return to the Argentines themselves for any check to be put upon it.
Besides, in strict fact, very little money is taken out of the country in the way of dividend; the profits are mostly thrown back to provide new works. I have lying before me the returns of the four princ.i.p.al railways for the year ending June 13th, 1913 (the Central Argentine, the Great Southern, the Buenos Aires and Pacific, and the Western of Buenos Aires). During the year the four companies expended in additional capital 8,870,639, and the earnings were 9,017,944, so that the investing public extracted only 147,305, which is not a large draft in return for the hundreds of millions invested. The manner in which the earnings are thrown back into the country for further development shows that, despite the vague apprehensions in certain quarters, the public confidence is still firm.
The Central Argentine Railway may first be described, because not only does it date its origin from the earliest times of railway enterprise in the Republic, but it is one of the most up-to-date lines in the world.
At the head of it as general manager is Mr. C. H. Pearson, young, shrewd, and, like most strong men, a quiet man. When in England I hear of lack of capability in railway management I think of such a man as Mr.
Pearson, who has won his spurs at home, and by clear vision and steady, determined action is successfully directing a company which has 3,000 miles of railroad, most of it through rich country. The line to-day is the offspring of amalgamations. In the early 'seventies the Central Argentine opened a line from the river port of Rosario to Cordoba, two hundred and forty-six miles. Later on Buenos Aires and Rosario were joined by another railway company. Subsequently the two lines were linked. Always, without halt, the line has pushed its head into fresh country, until now its arms stretch like a fan with Buenos Aires as the base.
I have heard Buenos Aires and Rosario described as the London and Liverpool of Argentina--and the ill.u.s.tration is apt. Rosario, to be pictured in a later chapter, is a business and s.h.i.+pping centre, and between the two towns there is a constant rush by commercial men. It is inspiriting to see the rush at the Retiro station in the early morning, when men are busy getting their newspapers at the stalls and hastening to the breakfast car and the roomy coaches. To the eye of the newly arrived stranger there are innumerable little differences from things he is accustomed to at home. But they are matters of detail to which you speedily get used, so that after a week or two, or even a few days, you have a little start in the realisation that you are not travelling in a London and North-Western express, but amongst a similar crowd of business men, in a far part of the world, who are intent on their own affairs.
Twelve pa.s.senger trains journey daily between Buenos Aires and Rosario.
Until Mr. Pearson came along with fresh ideas most of the pa.s.senger traffic was by night. Trains left both places at ten o'clock; the pa.s.sengers went to bed, and early next morning the destination was reached. Now there are two day express trains completing the journey in just under five hours. Only first-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers travel by these trains, as excellent as the expresses between New York and Philadelphia.
There is nothing in the way of scenery to move one to rapture; but there is good agricultural progress on either side. The line is being double tracked and stone ballasted, and the running is comfortable. And sitting in this train, thronged with business men, whilst the great engine tears along to keep to scheduled time, you understand something of the spirit of modern Argentina.
Amongst the cities of the world Buenos Aires takes thirteenth place in size. With its population of a million and a half, long-distance electric tramcars and the inst.i.tution of an ”underground” system are not enough. High rents are driving many thousands to the suburbs, and when, in the morning, the rush of trains begins to deliver throngs of men and women into the heart of ”B.A.,” the scene is animated. All the big companies running out of ”B.A.” are nursing their valuable suburban traffic. The Central Argentine is electrifying over forty-four miles of double track in the neighbourhood of the city. This company, in the suburban section of its system, now carries 15,000,000 pa.s.sengers a year. All the trains of the company run 889,000 miles a month. A handsome new station is being erected on the site of the old Retiro. I was able to inspect the latest pneumatic system of signalling. When at Rosario I went over the extensive workshops, and although it would be idle even to suggest they compared with Crewe, Swindon, or Doncaster, considering most of the parts are imported, they are comprehensive works, and the machinery of the best.
Since Mr. Pearson has been in charge the Central Argentine has taken to running excursions, and encouraging the holiday makers in the flat lands to go and seek bracing air in the Cordoba mountains. Alta Gracia--of which more anon--an old Spanish town which has been drowsing in the sun for several centuries, is now one of the most popular of holiday haunts.
But, though naturally enough the average pa.s.senger considers a railway line from the way it ministers to his needs, it is the goods traffic which is of first importance to railways in a country like Argentina. I went on the Central Argentine line as far north as Tuc.u.man, and as far west as Cordoba and Rio Cuarto, and beheld the richness of the plains.
There were endless miles of wheat and maize and linseed; there were the great herds of cattle and sheep. I witnessed the sugar cane harvest in the north in full swing.
All the goods are not brought into ”B.A.” The line runs to three up-river ports, Rosario, Villa Const.i.tucion and Campana, where there are wide wharves and grain elevators. A goods tonnage of nearly 7,000,000 a year and receipts of nearly 3,500,000 a year spell big business. Yet one found this was only the beginning of things. Already there are gigantic schemes in project for irrigation works in those stretches which are incapable of use because of the insufficient rainfall. The Argentine Government is giving serious attention to this matter. But the railway companies in the Republic are not content to twiddle their thumbs and keep asking, ”Why does not the Government do something?” All of them are attending to irrigation themselves, or are doing the work for the Government. The Central Argentine, on behalf of the Government, have an irrigation scheme on hand which will cost close upon 600,000.
New lines and extensions up to a further 1,600 miles are projected to cost 8,000,000. Over 35,000 employees are on this line. The length of rolling stock is 143 miles, including 600 pa.s.senger coaches and 2,200 beds. Twenty million pa.s.sengers are carried a year, and the total receipts work out at 40 a week per mile.