Paul B. Goodwin’s Reply^*

I disagree with Professor Damus’ critique on several levels. Broadly speaking, he has become captive to his statistics and has adopted an overly narrow interpretation of the role of the Central Argentine Railroad as a force for change, politically and economically, in nineteenth-century Argentina. More specifically, while Damus adds useful information to the debate, his interpretation of the facts reflects an inaccurate reading of the thrust of my article.

Obviously, Damus is uneasy with contemporary descriptions of Argentina and wishes to discount them as evidence. In his opinion, the accounts reflected not what the country was like but rather what the writers expected it to become. I agree that most of the authors predicted a bountiful and prosperous future for the Argentine. But those glowing prognostications sprang from detailed descriptions concerning what the country was like (pp. 620 ff.). The various chroniclers— DeBonelli, Hadfield, MacCann, Mansfield, Martín de Moussy, Page, Rickard, and Hutchinson—hailed from a variety of backgrounds and wrote from several perspectives. Their collective picture of an Argentina in transition is both compelling and reasonably accurate.

Despite his suspicion of such sources, Damus does not hestiate to invoke Mulhall’s unattractive description of the towns of Villa Nueva and Fraile Muerto in an effort to counter my contention that population was moving into the region between Rosario and Córdoba in advance of the railroad. I concur that both places were probably as “miserable” as Damus via Mulhall asserts. Fraile Muerto!—the very name conjures up an unsettling image. Frontier towns with their “rough and tough” populations, periodically supplemented by transient carters and drovers and later by railroad construction gangs, were hardly cultural centers. But there was life, there was population, there was economic activity. “Miserable,” a descriptive adjective, says something about the standard of living; it does not imply an absence of people.

Professor Damus rightly notes that the shareholders of the Central Argentine, at least in the early years, were disappointed with the rate of return on their investments. The Central experienced severe difficulties with the government guarantee and land grants. Moreover, the railroad demonstrated a marked inability for more than a decade to capture traffic from the carts and mule trains. These older forms of transportation proved themselves remarkably resistant to rail competition. Yet none of these difficulties suggest that there was a lack of traffic to carry. Allan Campbell, the engineer who investigated firsthand the potential of the Central’s proposed route, correctly estimated that with no increase in the total volume of trade between Cordoba and Rosario, and exclusive of any government guarantee, the railroad could expect a rate of return of five percent (p. 623, n. 25). Despite the failure of the line to lure traffic away from alternative means of transport, investors received, in the early years, an average rate of return of five percent. The Central Argentine Railroad was not unprofitable.

I also feel that Professor Damus tends to read too much into data vis-à-vis the significance of the “level and increase in trade related taxes” collected by the provincial government of Córdoba between 1867 and 1870. In my view, the most that can be inferred from these statistics is that economic activity was quickening in the province. Damus suggests that the rapid rate of increase, which he calculates at 162 percent per annum, indicates that “the trade of Córdoba increased rather late” and must have started from “a depressingly low level.” The argument has merit. But consider the following: could not the rapid increase also attest to the ability of a more assertive provincial government to collect duties? In other words, the tax statistics may convey an erroneous impression of “depressingly low” levels of trade. We know that wool production in the area was expanding rapidly between 1856 and 1863. And other indicators—the increased volume of mail, construction of post roads, and experiments with more rapid forms of animal transportation—suggest a higher level of activity than Damus is willing to admit.

Within the context of levels of economic activity, Professor Damus has misread my statistics on cart traffic in and out of Rosario. In 1855, carts and mules together carried approximately 15,000 to 16,000 tons of goods into Rosario from the interior. Eight years later, the figures provided by a British consul show an estimated trade of 14,000 to 16,000 tons into the city “and about the same amount the other way,” (p. 621), for a total tonnage of between 28,000 and 32,000. Damus provides another estimate for 1866 for a total tonnage of between 40,000 and 42,000, or about 20,000 to 21,000 tons each way. Where is the downward trend he notes in his critique? It appears that cart and mule traffic accounted for between 14,000 and 20,000 tons of goods each way in the 1850s and 1860s, and that this was likely the limit of their carrying capacity. It was on this base that the Central Argentine hoped to build.

Damus’ interpretation of the Central’s traffic statistics suggests that in the line’s early years a substantial portion of its revenue, both passenger and freight, was generated within the province of Santa Fe. Given this traffic pattern, Damus concludes that the Central “was more of a local line serving the neighborhood of Rosario than a factor in transcontinental development.” The historian must examine more than traffic statistics to place the Central Argentine in its proper context as a symbol for change and integration. I noted in my article the character of the impact of the railroad’s approach on the inhabitants of the interior. Aspirations, perceived advantages, and notions of progress are not necessarily provided by traffic statistics.

In sum, my original conclusions stand. Technological advance followed economic demand and opportunity. The railroad built on, and ultimately expanded, an economic pattern that had its roots in the prerail era. The Central was an important, though not the only, factor in the transcontinental development of Argentina and accelerated a process of change initiated by the carts and mule trains. Hopefully this exchange of views will spur further research into the complex processes of modernization at work in nineteenth-century Argentina.