In this, his latest publication, Professor Scobie outlines the social and agricultural revolution that took place with the development of the Argentine wheat zone between 1860 and 1910. This zone extends westward from the Atlantic Ocean and the Paraná River to the sixtyfourth meridian and southward from the cities of Santa Fe and Córdoba to the Colorado River and the Atlantic Ocean. Into this area after 1876 flowed hard working immigrant farmers, first from northern Italy, then from southern Italy, and they transformed Argentina into one of the world’s breadbaskets.
Prior to 1876, Scobie notes, national and provincial authorities sporadically encouraged European rural laborers to settle in Argentina. They attracted agriculturalists and extended the area of wheat cultivation, principally into zones of questionable pastoral value or exposed to Indian attacks, but their colonization projects failed because of political unrest, the lack of funds, and the opposition of the pastoral interests, broadly defined. Landowners, private colonization companies, and the railroads also sought colonists, holding out to them the possibility of some day having their own farms. One result of the immigrant influx was that wheat exports exceeded imports for the first time in 1878. With the elimination of the Indian menace, the extension of the railroads, and the decision of the pastoral interests to produce choice meats for world markets, the future of wheat farming changed. After 1880 the colonization system was destroyed, small farm owners were forced to become tenant farmers, and new immigrant arrivals could only become migrants or urbanites. Concurrently the center of wheat farming moved southward from Santa Fe, Entre Ríos, and Córdoba.
The immigrants in the cities were rapidly assimilated into the national culture, but the tenant farmers and migrants remained socially outside the nation. Both the government, which followed a liberal laissez-faire philosophy, and the hostile pastoral and landed interests were indifferent to the needs of the agriculturalist, though he was expected to build a greater Argentina. Individual bureaucrats and leaders of the pastoral industry called attention to the farmer and his problems, but they were ignored. Meanwhile the wheat economy contributed indirectly to the growth of the coastal cities and especially of Buenos Aires. The city attracted the ambitious and talented from abroad and the interior, and in it appeared a middle class and a large labor force which successfully obtained political reforms that led to the downfall of the “oligarchy.” Neither the political revolution nor the bumper crops benefited the transient tenant farmer.
This briefly is how Scobie views “the meaning and implications of wheat in forming present-day Argentina.” Unfortunately limitations of space prevented him from presenting a more detailed picture of the agricultural revolution that took place on the humid pampas. Nothing is said of squatters—were there any?—or of precarious land titles as an obstacle to land ownership or effective government action on behalf of the wheat farmer. Scobie’s presentation suggests the existence of unsympathetic pressure groups other than the pastoral interests and the landowners. They deserve fuller treatment and some of the blame for what happened to the wheat farmer. The emphasis on the attractions of the city and on the rise of tenancy farming after 1890 is justified. Less attention is given to the small independent farmer, who survived as a class, and to his reception of the new immigrants. The description of the life of the “average” wheat farmer is generally sound, but it seems to overstate the obviously harsh conditions of rural life. In a country where beggars and servants rode horses, the failure of the agricultural immigrant to become a horseman needs clarification. Any assessment of government policies must consider the political scene, for several national and provincial governments had to deal with threats to their own existence. Finally, it is arguable whether public policy ignored the farmer or consistently followed a liberal laissez-faire philosophy, for a Department of Agriculture was created and a stiff protective tariff for wheat and flour was enacted before wheat production became important. Perhaps the fundamental difficulty was national uncertainty as to the role of agriculture and the immigrant in a greater Argentina.
Scobie has written a very thought-provoking study. It deserves a wide audience. This reviewer especially looks forward to reading his projected larger and more comprehensive work on Argentine agriculture.
