[Footnote 62: The sales by auction conducted by this house during the first six months of 1905 amounted to £2,376,000.]
“The economic life of the country offers at each step signs of further progress. The enlargement of ports, the extension of railways, the dredging of channels, the development of the building trade in the chief city of the Republic, all show the spirit of enterprise at present animating the individual and the people. Commerce and vigorous industries reinforce these elements of prosperity and welfare.
“But it is in matters of land purchase that we best perceive the material expansion and the intensity of the forces in action. Without going back to the year 1904, we have only to consider the transactions of the last few years to realise that, both in the capital of the Republic and in the national Territories and the Provinces, the period has been a fertile one in the matter of transactions in landed property. There has been no more active period since 1889; and this time the facts have an explanation, a natural and logical sanction. Agriculture and stock-raising have so augmented the sources of national wealth that in a few years the balances in favour of the country have reached the figure of nearly £20,000,000. This is the effective cause of the increased value of the land: to which we must add the confidence which we all feel in the gradual development of the forces which labour has released, to the benefit of public tranquillity.”
One of the most surprising examples of the increased value of the soil, and of the interest awakened by sales of land, is to be found in the public and official auction of national lands which took place in the month of April 1905.
These sales were to be effected on account of those who had bought these lands in analogous circumstances in 1897, and who had not paid for them during the delay stipulated by the law. The whole surplus over the price established by the previous sale, less deductions for interest and other expenses, went by law to the original purchaser. The auctions were conducted in the presence of a crowd of speculators, capitalists, and labourers, eager to invest their money in so remunerative a speculation, since in the Argentine all are convinced that the purchase of the soil is the best form of saving. The result of the sale was that in many cases double the original price was obtained; three times the price in some cases, and in some five times the original price was realised.