Not only has Paul Goodwin illustrated the complex relationship between the British-owned railways and the leaders of the Union Cívica Radical between 1916 and 1930, he has also shed light on the UCR’s attitude toward railway laborers and major Argentine pressure groups. To accomplish this, Professor Goodwin drew upon material from the archives of the Ferrocarril Buenos Aires al Pacífico and the Ministry of Transportation, which he balanced against the partisan press of the period, including the yrigoyenista La Epoca, the antipersonalist La Actión, the conservative La Prensa, and the socialist Vanguardia.
Goodwin views the Radical leaders as middle-class political opportunists. Yrigoyen never defined his railway policies, despite his nationalistic rhetoric, because he wanted to be the friend of labor, the protector of traditional Argentine commercial and agrarian interests, and the ally of British railway capitalists. On one hand he posed as the “friend of workers” (p. 146), but on the other he worked against revolution by controlling the means of reform. His successor, Marcelo T. Alvear, also allowed political expediency to govern his dealings with the railways between 1922-1928.
Professor Goodwin has done a competent job of discussing the process by which the British-owned railways lost the right to fix their rates and to negotiate directly with labor. His treatment of the railway labor scene for 1916 through 1918 is enlightening, but for the remaining period he treats labor from a more elitist viewpoint. The semana trágica is mentioned only in passing. The study would have benefitted by contrasting the UCR’s treatment of the corrupt and inefficient state-owned railways with their handling of the British companies. The author should have dealt also with the implications of the 1929 D’Abernon agreement, especially as regarded the state-owned railways.
Paul Goodwin has written a fine study of an important aspect of the Radical period. In so doing he has made a significant contribution to understanding the bourgeois leadership of Yrigoyen and Alvear.
