capital, the country will continue to develop industrially. The astonishing increase in industries, with a total production out of all proportion to the growing population, is only explained by the use on a large scale of the most advanced machinery. But such a metamorphosis spreads from the river districts toward the interior of the country. It does not jump from one point to another without connecting links between them, but always preserves a channel through which a relation is maintained between the different zones already transformed or in process of transformation. The first effect of each infusion of foreign blood into creole veins is to appease the hot political passions of other times, abolish the old institution of the local chieftainship, even blot him from memory and replace it by an absorption in our growing material interests. These material interests appear to have conspired to bring about that indifference towards the state, as such, which makes men look mistakenly at a political career as a profession which thrives off the real working classes. For, our government both municipal, provincial and national appears to be the heritage of a well-defined minority—the politicians—who devote themselves to politics just as other social classes devote themselves to agriculture, stock raising, industry, commerce, etc.

Public life with its complex machinery of elections and governing bodies has been, so to say, delivered into the hands of a small group of men who at present are not productive of anything new in the general social situation of former times; that is to say, these men form a definite class, moved by the influence of this or that personality. Though it has suppressed the bloody characteristics of the previous period it has not relapsed into their heresies.

Little by little this shadow of the old system changes into that of the "boss" of the settlement and ward. The boss makes his business that of the mass of the voters, he stirs them up from their indifference, makes them go to the polls, deliberately falsifies public opinion, and so wins for himself a political managership, which gives him a marked influence in the back offices of officials and in the lobbies of legislatures. From such methods there spring no little censurable legislation of privilege and a great loss of contentment on the part of the people. When public spirit strengthens and shakes from itself the dust of inertia, and when the laboring classes have passed beyond that first stage of money grabbing, all the inhabitants of the nation will commence to busy themselves about the common weal. The thorn of the "boss" will prick them and they will then be able to form into political parties with unselfish programs and platforms. Every voter will cast his ballot to send to the legislature candidates who uphold the principles of his particular platform. As yet the people have not even reached the gateway to this goal. The past is still seen in full process of evolution and it is not easy to foresee the end.

This does not mean that the present moment of transition is valueless. On the contrary, it is of very great importance, because the social situation in the Argentine Republic is in process of making. The politicians, now that they look upon themselves as called to stand forth above the heads of the rest of the people, have to be real statesmen. In this historic period, such statesmen, have the personality of the chauffeur who directs one of those swift engines of our century upon its dizzy course, the mechanism of which is so sensitive to the controlling pressure of the hand that it can deftly avoid all accident or cause a catastrophe of fatal consequences. There is required in such a man extraordinary coolness, clearness of vision as to responsibility, perfect knowledge of the course to be run, besides ceaseless vigilance, iron nerve when the time of trial arrives and a complete concentration upon the task. The legitimate tasks of government, in this very grave period of Argentine evolution, require a special training on the part of public leaders. They must study thoroughly the problems of our social evolution, and they must form a clear idea of the necessary solutions. Towards this they must steer with undiverted eye. The necessity of further exploitation of our national resources, the successive expansion of enterprise over zone after zone of our territory, the assimilation of the foreign immigrants by the creole population, the slow formation of a national spirit in the new generation, all these monopolize for the present the national energies and prevent them from turning to other problems. The country is converted, as it were, into a giant boa constrictor. It is entirely given over to the task of converting its food into nourishment, of abstracting the juices from the hard and resisting substances, of passing a multitude of different elements through its living organs so that they may later form a new tissue, adapted to the present and future needs of the country.

From this point of view the present moment in the evolution of Argentine is of immense sociological interest. We are permitted to be present at the visible transmutation of a society, too weak even to direct itself, and absorbed in the fusion of different influences. The direction of this process has been handed over without counter-check to public men who are obliged to dictate and put into practice legislation and administrative rules of every kind, as though they enjoyed absolute power. Furthermore, by the very nature of things, the administrative functions in such periods have to discount the future and effect in the present a series of public works or social regulations which will weigh upon future generations not only from the point of view of the general finances but even from the point of view of national character. The national transformation of the land with ports, canals, railroads, telegraphs and every sort of means of communication, indeed, with every kind of public work, cannot be accomplished with present resources. A call must be made upon those of the future, by means of loans which will be a burden upon coming generations. If such a governmental policy is not accompanied by a skillful and prudent financial management, the burdens of our descendants will be considerably increased. They may even be committed to a policy that will cause eventual bankruptcy and an inevitable retrogression in the national development. The intellectual metamorphosis of the nation by a proper system of primary, secondary and higher education and by special schools of technical training, in order to form the national spirit of the future type of Argentine citizen, is certainly our most difficult governmental problem, because it is a question of molding the very soul of the nation. To teach different and contradictory systems, to do and then undo, each day changing the courses of study to successively adopt antagonistic standards and show a real lack of fixity in pedagogic methods, is to commit the greatest of all crimes, because it is not a crime against the exchequer of posterity but against its very soul. To accomplish a fusion of the currents of foreign immigration, to sort out the best from them, and to direct the formation of the new type which is being evolved, melting it in the crucible of the school, of the army, and of public life, is perhaps, to-day our task of transcendent difficulty. Such a problem is greater than that of directing the stream of foreign capital which, while fructifying the national soil, clings to it like the countless tentacles of a gigantic octopus and absorbs a great part—sometimes too great a part—of the riches produced only to transmit them through the arteries of the Republic, to foreign nations who employ it to their exclusive profit.

Perhaps no moment in the history of our nation requires a greater combination of qualifications in its