The English, Germans, and Americans of the States were better advised. Having studied with greater care the country and its tendencies, they were able to initiate it into the paths of material progress. Those railways which were built by English contractors or companies are models of perfect adaptation to the needs of the country. The equipment of the tramways, furnished by the United States, may be compared with that of the principal capitals of Europe. In the matter of electric lighting the great German companies have installed the best German plant.
The same observations may be made of a large number of other products imported from abroad. There is nothing better in the United States in the matter of agricultural equipment than that possessed by the Argentine; as for stock-raising, we have only to remember that it is to South America that England sends her best bulls, rams, and stallions.
But from these remarks it must not be concluded that the Argentine has bought too dearly the glory of an equipment which is modern as compared with that of the old European nations. Of late years it is rather the reverse that has been true. The leading industrial countries, being anxious to sell off their stock on account of an almost general over-production, have been propelled towards the markets of exportation in order to get rid of their surplus. From this has resulted a competition from which the Argentine has in many cases profited, by obtaining industrial products under particularly advantageous conditions. Such has been the case in the matter, for example, of rails; the German trade offered them at £4, 16s. per ton, at a time when the European prices were considerably higher; Germany, however, was supplanted by the factories of the United States, which supplied them at £2, 8s. per ton. This is an application of the new economic process known as _dumping_, which consists in developing production as far as possible, in order to lower the net cost of production, and then to sell at this net cost price, in foreign markets, all that the producing country fails to absorb.
All the nations we have cited are the actual consumers of Argentine products; but it is to be hoped that yet other markets will be opened, attracted by the abundance and the quality of these products.