The Argentine State and the Transfer of Immigrants to the Country (1850–1914)

Abstract

Argentina was the second recipient country of transatlantic immigrants until 1930. Most of them arrived through migratory chains of relatives and countrymen, who financed and managed the transfers autonomously without using subsidies. However, at different times in the second half of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, the Argentine state-developed plans to finance the travel tickets of emigrants based on the assumption that their future contribution to the national economy as producers and consumers would have to justify the expense incurred. In addition, the state created facilities to house emigrants for a period after their arrival, inform them of work opportunities and transport them free of charge to places in the interior of the country where they wished to settle. In some cases, these plans left the management of the transfer of emigrants in the hands of the state itself, while in others, they proposed using agreements with the shipping companies that covered the South Atlantic route. The chapter will analyze these plans to attract emigrants, investigating the aspects that were put into practice and the reasons why in other cases they failed.

1. Introduction

One of the first objectives of the Argentine government, after independence from the Spanish Empire, was to promote European immigration. Various reasons explain this interest, from the need to increase a population that was very scarce during the colonial period, to the promotion of economic activities that until then had not been sufficiently developed, such as crafts or agriculture. The improvement of the skills and technical capabilities of the population and the elimination of habits of backwardness that were attributed to colonial rule also contributed to a pro-immigration ideology that manifested itself from the beginning of the independence revolution. However, the wars against the Spanish armies and then the internal political conflicts severely limited the possibility of fulfilling such purposes, which in theory were associated with the incorporation of the European population. From approximately 1830, the political situation began to stabilize, while hostility toward the Spanish decreased. These factors would allow the pro-immigration ideology to gradually provide concrete results, although the amount of foreign population incorporated into the country would only become very significant after 1850.

Between 1830 and 1930, Argentina received some six million transatlantic immigrants, most of them European. If we consider the absolute figures, it was the second recipient country in the world during that period, behind the United States. However, if we consider that the total population of the country in 1869, when the first national census was carried out, only amounted to 1.8 million inhabitants, Argentina was the country in which the arrival of mass immigration had the greatest impact. In the long term, Italians and Spaniards accounted for approximately 80 percent of the total number of immigrants received, followed at a great distance by French, Swiss, Poles, Croatians, Russians, and other nationalities [1]. Most of them arrived in the country through spontaneous mechanisms, such as migratory chains that fulfilled various functions: the dissemination of information among relatives and countrymen about job and accommodation opportunities in the receiving country, the total or partial financing of the cost of the travel ticket and the reception and installation of newcomers.

At the same time, the state and some of the provinces of the Argentine Republic implemented policies to attract transatlantic immigrants. European peasants were the main objective of these measures, as they sought to populate extensive territories with very low demographic density and to develop agriculture through the establishment of settlers as tenants or small landowners. The National Constitution of 1853 even ordered that governments should encourage immigration of European origin, setting as one of its main objectives the colonization of hitherto unproductive territories. For this reason, the distribution of public lands, the delivery of seeds and farming tools, or the advance of sums to finance harvests were instruments used to settle European peasants and their families, considered in the long term as the type of immigration most desirable for the country.

Another resource was to finance the transfers of immigrants through the delivery of subsidized tickets or through agreements with navigation companies. Unlike Brazil, the other major recipient of immigrants in South America, the Argentine Republic did not subsidize tickets on a large scale, trusting that the growth of the economy and the action of spontaneous mechanisms would ensure the continuity of the migratory flow. An exception to this trend occurred at the end of the 1880s, when a significant number of tickets were distributed in different European countries, mainly Spain. At other times, shipping companies received subsidies to transport selected farmers, artisans, or technicians, although in small annual quantities. As should be noted in the debates on the immigration and colonization law of 1876, the Argentine State did not have sufficient financial resources to pay for the transportation of the tens of thousands of annual immigrants that the country was already receiving at that time [2].

This little intervention by the government to subsidize tickets does not mean, however, that the Argentine State maintained a distant or neutral attitude in immigration matters. Different plans aimed at promoting the arrival and establishment of European migrants were proposed, or put into practice, by some of the governments of the first half of the nineteenth century. The potential capacity of these migrants to develop agriculture and other sectors of the economy, and the beneficial effect that their presence could have on Argentine society, were the main objectives pursued by such plans. Furthermore, they constituted a central element in the texts of liberal intellectuals who recommended leaving the colonial past behind and opening the path to progress, such as Facundo or civilization and barbarism in the Argentine pampas, by Domingo F. Sarmiento (1845), and Bases and Starting Points for the Political Organization of the Argentine Republic, by Juan Bautista Alberdi (1852).

With slight nuances, all these proposals assumed the need for the state to sponsor European immigration through different instruments and guarantee it the same rights as the native population to carry out their activities in an environment of freedom. One of the problems to be solved was the remoteness of the places of origin of those who had to be attracted, since in the middle of the nineteenth century, the time necessary for the transfer was approximately 2 months of navigation, with a cost of the travel ticket that could be equivalent to 1 year of a worker’s salary in Europe [3]. The great advance of maritime means of transport in the following decades, with the transition from sail to steam, and the appearance of large ocean liners, made it possible to reduce the travel time by two-thirds, also reducing the cost. Even so, the issue of financing migrants’ travel remained more problematic than for destinations located in North America.

The purpose of this chapter is to analyze the policies of the Argentine State aimed at facilitating the transportation of European peasants and workers to the country during the period of mass immigration in the final decades of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. It will begin with a brief presentation of the main problems that Argentina faced as a receiving country during the pioneering stages of the arrival of European immigration. Below, we will devote particular attention to the proposals to subsidize tickets put forward during the debates of the Immigration and Colonization Law in 1875–1876. Finally, we will see the options considered by the Argentine State in the stage of mass immigration, that is, between 1880 and 1914, and their results. The chapter is based on review of different primary and secondary sources, which are partly published, such as the session diaries of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate of the Nation, or the annual reports of the General Department of Immigration, and other cases unpublished, such as the correspondence of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the offices installed in Europe to promote the transfer of emigrants.

2. Moving migrants to Plata

The governments that emerged in Buenos Aires and in the interior of the country after independence had to face the problem of the very small population of the territory. The density, of less than one inhabitant per square kilometer, was insufficient for the development of activities intensive in the use of labor, such as agriculture or crafts, except in some regions during the colonial period or at the beginning of the nineteenth-century production centers had been established that worked for the world market or for that of neighboring cities. The consumption that could have constituted a greater incentive for these sectors of the economy was also very limited, not only due to the small number of inhabitants but also due to the low average purchasing power. The enormous distances between the cities and the small number of intermediate towns made communications and trade difficult, so some of the inland regions were more connected with neighboring countries, such as Chile or Bolivia, than with the province of Buenos Aires and the Atlantic coast.

The immigration of the European population then appeared, from very early on, as the best option to overcome such inconveniences and transform society in a dynamic sense. Added to this were racial considerations associated with the ideal of incorporating white population into a territory that had a significant proportion of indigenous people and African Americans, or utilitarian considerations, in the sense of perceiving transatlantic immigrants as the most capable, disciplined, and laborious to modify the habits of the period of Hispanic rule [4]. However, the projects to promote immigration had to face some very important obstacles from the beginning. On the one hand, the War of Independence (1810–1825) and the successive civil conflicts that devastated the country during the following decades did not contribute to a climate conducive to the settlement of foreigners. Furthermore, the Argentine State, or that of the province of Buenos Aires, the largest and richest of all those that make up the country, did not have sufficient resources to finance the transfer of potential emigrants when military spending absorbed the majority of available funds.

These reasons meant that the first experiences of transferring immigrants from northern Europe were financed by individuals, either by transport businessmen or by rural owners, who wanted to hire agricultural settlers from the British Isles and northern continental Europe. The state, for its part, undertook to deliver farming instruments and public lands to some of these families in the decade of 1820–1830, a resource that, unlike cash capital, was abundant at that time and could contribute to the consolidation of the southern border against the indigenous populations. The political instability of the period determined that such initiatives did not achieve continuity, so only about two hundred families could be incorporated [5].

Despite the failures, the image that some of these pioneering efforts left in liberal thinkers and reformers was very positive and would generate a long-lasting mark. In a passage from his Facundo, for example, Sarmiento favorably compared the colonies of German or Scottish immigrants that emerged in the province of Buenos Aires with the villages populated by natives. While the former would stand out for their order, cleanliness, and the development of new activities, such as the making of cheese or butter, the main characteristics of the latter would be poverty, dirt, carelessness, and the lack of expectations of their inhabitants [6]. Civilization and progress would thus be associated with transatlantic immigration, while backwardness and barbarism would be linked to the native population and the colonial heritage.

The next stage of paying for tickets was different, since in it the state intervention was more direct, and the recruitment of immigrants was not mainly oriented toward agricultural colonization. Between 1827 and 1860, the province of Buenos Aires was separated from the rest of the country, operating with political and economic autonomy. In this situation, immigration began to recover through spontaneous means. On the other hand, the difficulties of the public sector in recruiting employees and servants due to constant military conflicts and the small population made the provincial government decide to dedicate resources to finance the arrival of poor European workers who had to return in some years the amount of the tickets. Thus, during the decade of 1840–1850, a local shipping company, which had two ships previously used for the slave trade, carried out expeditions to recruit labor [4]. These immigrants, mostly of Spanish origin, were employed as cleaning staff in hospitals, as police assistants and night watchmen, or as day laborers in road construction. After a few years, in which they paid with their work the cost assumed by the state to transport them, these immigrants were free to be employed in the private sector of the economy [7].

From the decade of 1850–1860, European immigration gained impetus due to different causes, such as a more solid integration of the Argentine economy into the international one, the sanction of the National Constitution of 1853, which granted civil rights and guarantees for foreigners, and a more determined pro-immigration policy, both on the part of the national government and some of the provinces. One of the first measures adopted consisted of installing agents in Europe to promote the country’s qualities for immigration, although these agents did not have the power to hire immigrants or pay for tickets [7]. In 1869, Sarmiento, then President of the Republic, ordered the construction of an asylum for the free accommodation for a few days of those who had just disembarked. He also ordered the health inspection of the ships that transported the immigrants, when they arrived at the port of Buenos Aires [8]. The asylum would have a post office so that they could send news to their relatives in Europe, transmitting their impressions about the new country, which demonstrates the trust that the state already placed at that time in the ability of the immigrants themselves to establish networks of information that would allow the population flow to continue and expand.

3. The immigration and colonization law and the problem of subsidies

In 1875, President Nicolás Avellaneda, Sarmiento’s successor, sent to Congress a bill that would be known as “immigration and colonization”, which integrated and expanded the previous provisions, aimed more clearly at attracting European settlers through the distribution of public lands. He did so in the context of an international economic crisis, which began 2 years earlier and was causing very negative effects for Argentina. Export prices, mainly those of raw wool and other livestock products, had collapsed. This also contracted the country’s ability to import and the collection of customs taxes, the main resource of the national state, forcing a sharp reduction in public spending. However, Avellaneda maintained that the two areas in which spending should not be reduced were the promotion of immigration and the expansion of the railway network due to the great importance they had for economic growth.

Nevertheless, the expectations placed by the Argentine government on the recovery of the economy were based on another important change that was occurring in international trade: the transition from sail to steam in ocean navigation. While maritime traffic remained in charge of sailboats, even in their most modern and fastest versions, Argentina was not able to add several of its export items. The limited carrying capacity of such means of transport, their slowness, and the high cost of freight meant that trade from America to Europe was essentially composed of high-priced products per unit of volume or weight, among which the only ones exported from the Río de la Plata were cowhides [9]. With the large-scale incorporation of steamers, other items were able to be added to Argentine exports, such as wheat in the 1870–1880 decade and frozen meat some years later. The increase in navigation that this would entail could also imply a growth in immigration, encouraged by the reduction in travel time and the cheaper tickets.

The latter had also suffered the impact of the international economic crisis, since the annual record of 1872, with more than 50,000 new admissions, had been followed by a drop to less than half that figure 3 years later [10]. The national government considered it appropriate in this context to present a project to boost the arrival of immigrants, understanding that this would be one of the main incentives to recover production, consumption, exports, and state resources. In other words, the law was part of a counter-cyclical policy aimed at returning to the path of sustained growth. As some provinces had already determined, the attraction of European farmers would be linked mainly to the distribution of public lands in small ownership or lease, in the so-called “national colonies” to be created [11]. For that reason, it was both an immigration law and an agricultural colonization law. The law maintained the right of immigrants to free accommodation for a certain number of days after their disembarkation, to which it added the offer of jobs, the transfer to the places in the interior of the country where they wished to settle, and the delivery of seeds and farming instruments. It also expanded the functions of propaganda agents established in Europe, since they could sign contracts with shipping companies that were licensed to transport agricultural settlers [12].

The project also included the distribution of free transatlantic tickets or at least the advance of the amount thereof, to be later returned in installments by the immigrants. Despite the interventionist spirit revealed by all these measures regarding immigration, the economic situation did not allow to think about financing a large mass of full travel tickets from northern Europe, which was the origin that was most strongly promoted. In the debates in the National Congress, the issue was therefore oriented toward other options. The most discussed was that the state would finance the difference between the cost of tickets from a certain European port to Buenos Aires and the cost of the trip from that same port to New York, the destination that, by far, dominated the market of transatlantic emigration. According to this formula, migrants who chose to go to Argentina instead of the United States would have the right to be reimbursed by the state for the difference in the cost of the tickets between both destinations. It was no small expense, considering that this difference could be more than 50 percent of the total price of the tickets due to the great distance of the South American country from the main departure ports in Europe.

While some legislators strongly defended the use of this resource, others raised criticism or raised serious doubts about the idea. One of them arose from comparing what the payment of that difference in the cost of tickets would have meant with other items in the state budget that were inalienable, such as the payment of schoolteachers or hospital doctors, showing that it was a burden impossible to assume with the available resources. If, on the other hand, it was a matter of financing the travel tickets through the issuance of new public debt securities, as was contained in the bill, the entry into the market of the new bonds would have caused, with great probability, the fall in the price of existing ones, generating distrust among European investors. The latter was precisely what the government tried to avoid, considering that the recovery of the economy depended heavily on the maintenance of foreign investment [13].

Another criticism, even more forceful, emphasized that the higher cost of tickets was not the only reason – or even the main one – why migrants tended to prefer North America as a place of settlement rather than Argentina. According to this opinion, the British, Scandinavians, or Germans chose the United States or Canada due to the greater similarity of these societies with those of origin of the emigrants [9]. The problem would be difficult to solve for a country like Argentina, which has Hispanic roots and whose main contingent of recent population was made up of Italians. Since the government’s position was in the minority during the debate in the Senate, it failed to maintain the original version of the project regarding the financing of transatlantic tickets. The compromise solution that was achieved, therefore, was that all other rights that the bill established for immigrants were confirmed, but transatlantic tickets would not be subsidized on a large scale [14].

The distribution of tickets was limited to those farming families who would settle in the “national colonies.” The latter were agricultural farms that would be directed by the national state on public lands that were not yet part of the provinces, that is, in the territories of the south (Pampa and Patagonia) and the north of the country (Chaco and Misiones). These were regions far from the main population centers, poorly communicated, and, in most cases, provided with inferior-quality land. The colonies would be made up of parcels of lands that could be sold or leased to foreign farmers or internal migrants, as well as others that were planned to be left in the hands of aboriginal families for farming. The multiple inconveniences that arose from the full incorporation of these extensions into agriculture made the project almost completely fail, except in some specific sites, which had better communication possibilities or where it was possible to adapt substitute crops that had a sufficient market. In fact, at the beginning of the decade of 1880–1890, the functions of the Bureau of Lands and Colonies, a public agency that would oversee the administration of these exploitations, were separated from those of the General Department of Immigration, which was in charge of everything related to the arrival of the transatlantic settlers [15]. Therefore, the financing of travel tickets for farmers, as incorporated in the 1876 law, did not achieve the practical application that was originally envisioned.

This aspect of the law was not the only one that remained inactive, since other provisions contained in it also lacked effectiveness. The intervention of agents based in Europe in the signing of contracts between private parties for the recruitment of emigrants to Argentina was a purely theoretical attribution, since their countries of origin did not recognize foreign power over agreements signed in their territories. For its part, the health inspection of ships continued to be mainly in charge of the countries to which the shipping companies belonged and those in which the stops where emigrants embarked were made. The physicians who traveled on the ships were not designated by the Argentine government, which had to limit itself to controlling the conditions in which they arrived at the port of Buenos Aires. Eventually, it could sanction fines for those shipping companies that did not comply with the provisions on safety, hygiene, and available cubic capacity per passenger [11]. As some of the legislators had already pointed out in the debate on the law, it would be very difficult for Argentina to impose rigorous health control criteria during the transatlantic journey when it did not have its own merchant navy to transport emigrants, as was the case of the United States. On the other hand, excessive zeal in control could lead to an increase in the cost of transportation, which is the opposite effect sought by the government.

4. Immigration and shipping companies

From the beginning of the decade of 1880–1890, transatlantic migration to Argentina once again showed sustained growth, encouraged by the recovery of the economy and exports, the great expansion of the railway network during that decade, and the growth of public works and private construction [9]. The large-scale emergence of American grains into European markets also caused many peasant farms on that continent to go into crisis, encouraging emigration. Italian origin was more dominant than ever, reaching almost 80 percent of the new arrivals to the country in 1885. Although the Argentine State was fulfilling the main obligations assumed with immigrants under the law of 1876, the bulk of the flow was financed and materialized through the micro-social mechanisms in which the Italians were in the lead due to the influence that this community had achieved in Argentina. More than 80,000 new immigrants entered in some years of the first half of the decade [10]. They were not only attracted by employment opportunities in the large cities and Pampa’s agriculture but also by other regions, such as Cuyo, in the extreme west of the country, which, since the arrival of the railroad, became the main producer of wines.

This firm recovery of the immigration flow made the urgency that had led to the approval of the law in the previous decade lose relevance, especially regarding state intervention in the financing of travel tickets. The agents installed in Europe received the order to continue promoting the arrival of farming families who would be given facilities for access to the exploitation of the land, but it was clarified that the payment of the tickets had to be at their own expense [16]. The agreements with the shipping companies also did not contemplate subsidies on a significant scale for the transfer of immigrants. The companies that had a license to transport peasants to the “national colonies” were obliged to embark six of them free of charge on each trip, but this was a meager figure if we take into account that by then, each steamship could transport 300 or 400 passengers per trip [17].

Another novelty of this decade consisted of the opening of new transatlantic routes from European ports to the Río de la Plata, which did not always lead to the formation of a solid migratory current between both extremes. This is what would be demonstrated in the case of Bremen, which, despite being connected to Buenos Aires since 1880 with a regular line, did not generate a sustained flow of Scandinavian or German emigration [18]. Similarly, in 1887, a route was inaugurated by the Compañía Trasatlántica, until then, specialized in navigation between Spain and the Caribbean Sea, from the port of Barcelona to Buenos Aires, including stops in Mediterranean ports, in Recife and Santos (Brazil) and Montevideo (Uruguay). However, Spanish emigration to Argentina continued to come mainly from the Atlantic and not from the Mediterranean, meaning that it did not receive a perceptible boost with the newly inaugurated line. The Atlantic route was already controlled by German and British shipping companies, while the Mediterranean route, with epicenters in Genoa and Marseille, was in the hands of the French and Italian [19].

Competition for cargo freight and emigrant tickets became more aggressive, so some of the companies tried to obtain special conditions from the Argentine government, including the granting of monopolistic positions. During the government of Julio A. Roca (1880–1886), some of these shipping companies presented projects to introduce immigrant settlers through consortia to be formed between two or more of them. One of the proposals took up the idea of paying the difference in tickets with New York that had been debated in 1875–1876, suggesting that emigrants pay the equivalent of the price of the trip to that port and the Argentine State take care of the remaining cost to Buenos Aires [15]. Other presentations by the companies proposed the transfer of a certain number of immigrants for a period to be agreed upon, with payment of the tickets at the expense of the state and return by them once settled in the country. When it came to transporting farmers, some of these projects once again linked the transportation subsidy with the delivery of land free of charge or to be paid in installments, despite the fact that, as already seen, this alternative was only possible in marginal areas [20].

None of these projects achieved practical results due to opposition from state officials who decided on their viability. Some of the proposals were attractive because they offered the possibility of incorporating in significant quantities a type of immigration, such as that from northern Europe, which was desired by the ruling groups. However, they presented inconsistencies regarding the reimbursement of the amounts that the state would advance because this aspect was left to the economic solvency that the settlers would have achieved when the time came to start paying the installments. Nor was the idea of forming consortia accepted because these would be made up of two or more existing shipping lines that covered the South Atlantic route. If this claim had been admitted, these companies would have stopped competing without increasing the number of ships available for the transport of emigrants, but rather the opposite. Finally, in the case of the proposals that aimed to charge a certain sum of money to the Argentine State for each emigrant transported, the real risk was that the companies would try to recruit the largest possible number of candidates in Europe, regardless of their abilities or occupations, which could lead to detriment for the receiving country and greater integration difficulties for those who arrived through this system.

5. Spontaneous immigration and intervention policies

Although spontaneous immigration, without contracts on a significant scale with shipping companies or the direct intervention of the state in transportation, was achieving the arrival of a number of immigrants never reached before, General Roca’s successor as President of the Republic, Miguel Juárez Celman (1886–1890), decided to introduce an important change in the current modality, resorting to subsidizing tickets. Different reasons may explain this option, but it is difficult to justify due to its costs and possible results. First, the fact that Brazil, in its transition toward the abolition of slavery, was already subsidizing passages and planned to do so on a larger scale [21]. With this, there was fear that the largest country in South America would displace Argentina as a recipient of immigrants. Second, the expectations that the national economy, which in the mid-1880s-1890s was already growing at a rate of more than 6% annually, and we would not be able to maintain that pace of growth without a rapid and substantial increase in the number of immigrants received [22]. Finally, the strong predominance, noted above, of Italians in the group of migrants suggested the need to diversify origins through a more interventionist policy of the state.

Thus, the number of immigration promotion offices in Europe substantially increased, and their functions were expanded, allowing them to intervene directly in the delivery of subsidized tickets or in agreements with companies for the recruitment of immigrants. Between 1887 and 1890, the state delivered, by such means, or distributed in the country itself, some 133,000 subsidized tickets, the largest amount granted in the entire history of transatlantic emigration to Argentina [23]. Regarding origins, the purpose of this policy, again, was to expand the proportion of northern and central Europe. Hence, offices were set up in cities such as Copenhagen, Berlin, Bern, London, and Brussels. The results in this sense were meager since, except for the arrival of a few thousand Dutch and Belgian immigrants, it was not possible to alter the traditional link of such origins with North America [16].

An appreciable change was due to the large contingent of Spanish immigrants during that 4-year period (around 60,000, or almost half of the total subsidized tickets) [23]. Within it, there was also an important modification in the regional origin. Since the end of the colonial period, Spanish emigrants heading to the Río de la Plata came mainly from the northern regions of the peninsula (Galicia, Asturias, the Basque Country, Catalonia). On the other hand, subsidized immigration opened the possibility of joining the southern regions of Spain, dominated by non-land-owning day laborers, who would have been unable on their own to finance the expenses associated with moving to America. This would have immediate repercussions, since the arrival of subsidized immigrants practically coincided with the beginning of a serious crisis in the national economy, leading to recession and increased unemployment. These immigrants, who did not have micro-social protection networks, unlike their peers from northern Spain, suffered the consequences of the crisis in conditions of helplessness and the impossibility of immediate return to their country of origin [24].

In the original version of the project, subsidized tickets would not be granted permanently but rather would be a temporary resource directed toward those countries or regions that had not registered sustained emigration to Argentina. The idea was that they would serve in the first stage to create communities of immigrants who, once settled and working, would send information and remittances of money to their relatives, which would constitute an incentive for a part of them to decide to join the crossing of the Atlantic. The director of the propaganda office in Copenhagen, for example, maintained in 1888 that the almost a thousand subsidized tickets that had already been given to the Danes would allow the start of a trend in which the emigrants themselves would later be the protagonists, as was already happening in the case of the Italians [25]. The climate of the economic crisis, however, meant that this optimistic scenario did not materialize because the immigrants who arrived through subsidies did not transmit encouraging news to their families nor were they able to generate savings to ensure the continuity of the emigration flow from their places of origin.

In addition to the difficulties immigrants suffered, the subsidized ticket system completely altered the budget of the national state. In 1889, the total amount spent under the heading “immigration” was multiplied by ten if we compare it with the average of 1880–1885 [26]. To the payment of the tickets, which was already very onerous, the cost of operating the propaganda offices in Europe and the reception hotels was added, which had to be expanded due to the large increase in the number of people to be accommodated. It should be considered that, under the subsidized ticket system, the proportion of those who used hotels and other services provided by the state was much higher, since they generally did not have countrymen or relatives to house them or help them travel inside to other provinces of the country. In theory, it was planned that immigrants would reimburse the amount of their tickets in four semiannual installments. However, the economic crisis meant that the returns were meager, less than two percent of the total paid by the state.

Finally, it should be noted that the activity of propaganda offices installed abroad was not always accepted by European countries. Switzerland, for example, accepted the propaganda of countries that tried to promote emigration but rejected any form of recruitment by agencies, in particular the payment of subsidized tickets [27]. The Swiss government’s argument was that those who emigrated through this system were generally indigent people or people with low job qualifications who would not have protection mechanisms in case of difficulties, so they would end up constituting a burden for the Swiss consulates or for the communities of that origin installed in the countries that promoted such practices. The Argentine office installed in Basel was accused of distributing tickets among potential emigrants, in complicity with a French shipping company, which created a bilateral dispute. Finally, the Argentine government chose to close that agency and move it to Geneva, where its functions were significantly reduced [27].

In 1890 the Argentine state stopped paying subsidized tickets. As has been pointed out, the main reason why this decision was made was not a change in the pro-immigration policy, in a more restrictive sense, but rather that the economic crisis prevented the continuity of payments [28]. Added to this were the diplomatic problems indicated and the integration difficulties of the immigrants who arrived through this system, whose occupations were in many cases not the most necessary for the country’s economy. Argentina would no longer pay subsidized tickets on a scale similar to that achieved in the 4-year period 1887–1890. The benefits of spontaneous immigration were once again exalted, even more so after 1892, when the “billetes de llamada” came into effect, that is, tickets that were paid in Buenos Aires by foreigners already settled to finance the trip of other members of their families [23]. Within this panorama, Italian immigrants gained consideration because they were the ones who most resorted to self-financing mechanisms to emigrate, the most oriented toward work in the countryside, and those who presented the best possibilities of integration into Argentine society.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, emigration from Spain grew strongly, again driven by the northern regions and particularly by Galicia, which came to represent approximately half of the Spanish total in terms of new arrivals to Argentina. Due to its geographical location, Galicia provided an excellent stopover opportunity for the ships of German shipping companies (such as Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt and German North Lloyd) and British shipping companies (such as Royal Mail Steam Packet) on their routes to the South Atlantic [29]. The Galician shipowners, who until then had participated on their own in the emigration traffic, became representatives of these large shipping companies [3]. Two French shipping companies (Chargeurs Réunis and Messageries Maritimes) also joined this transatlantic itinerary. If we consider the number of immigrants transported, the route that stopped at the ports of Galicia managed to compete on parity of conditions since the beginning of the century, and even surpass, at times, the one that originated in the Mediterranean ports (Genova, Naples, Marseille, Barcelona), in which two Italian companies (Navigazione Italiana and La Veloce) and one French (Transports Maritimes) prevailed.

In regions of high emigration from Italy [30] and from Spain [3, 31, 32], departures mainly affected families of small landowners, regardless of the inheritance system. The possibility of mortgaging the land to pay for the ticket of the family member who emigrated, or of selling a part of the crops or livestock for that purpose, was an alternative that was not available to non-owners or agricultural workers without their own land. The emergence of large ocean liners, which could cover the routes from Italian and Spanish ports to Buenos Aires in less than 3 weeks, facilitated the spread of these migratory strategies and the increase in the returns to the country of origin in the case of those who emigrated to maximize their incomes in short periods of time. The existence of large groups of immigrants, already consolidated in Argentina at that time, as well as the improvement in navigation conditions and the sustained growth of the economy of the receiving country, are factors that came together to allow the financing of self-sustaining and spontaneous immigration.

The prolonged predominance of this kind of immigration over directed immigration meant that some of the services offered by the Argentine state were used by only a portion of the foreigners who arrived in the country. Accommodation in immigrant hotels, for example, peaked in 1888–1889, with 58% of newcomers, only to decline between 1891 and 1914 to an average of 41% [23]. That is, more than half of the immigrants did not use it because they arrived through micro-social networks that provided them with accommodation and food in their first days in the country. For the same reasons, obtaining their first job through the state-sponsored job bank only benefited a third of immigrants in the same period. A similar percentage obtained free passage, by train or river steamer, to the inland towns where they planned to settle [23].

6. Conclusions

During the second half of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth, the notable growth of the Argentine economy, the availability of land, the difference in salaries with a significant part of European countries, and an open and tolerant policy toward foreigners were factors that attracted a massive immigration flow to the Argentine Republic, particularly when compared to the pre-existing native population. As time passed, the immigrant communities themselves also operated in the same direction, through the circulation of information about employment opportunities, the reception and support of newcomers, and the payment of tickets from Buenos Aires. The Argentine case cannot be, therefore, characterized as that of a country of immigration mainly induced by impersonal mechanisms, such as the direct action of the state or shipping or colonization companies.

Nevertheless, the notion that the state should intervene to ensure the continuity of Argentina as a country of immigrants remained a long-term ideal and efforts were made to put it into practice through different instruments. Advertising in European countries, the accommodation of new arrivals in public hotels, free transportation to the inland places where they would reside, and employment exchanges were the most used for this purpose. Direct payment of tickets, or subsidies to navigation companies, on the other hand, were much less used resources than in Brazil, the other major South American recipient of immigrants. The failed experience of the late 1880, in which enormous state funds were spent to finance the arrival of tens of thousands of immigrants, without producing a perceptible beneficial effect on the economy, discouraged any possible continuity of such large-scale policies. On the other hand, what happened then and in subsequent years would clearly show that the immigrants who best adapted and integrated into Argentine society, and generally the most productive, were those who arrived through contact with their relatives or friends who had preceded them on the transatlantic voyage.

In a way, these primary networks functioned not only as a mechanism of attraction for new immigrants but also of selection, to the extent that they tended to discard those who did not have enough contacts and reception environments to successfully carry out the decision to emigrate. The action of these networks was added to the chronic difficulties of the public treasury to pay expensive tickets from European ports, providing new reasons for the option of spontaneous immigration that had already been recommended, in the mid-nineteenth century, by some of the liberal intellectuals of the national organization, such as Juan Bautista Alberdi. The predominance of this last modality, in short, was not produced by the lack of will of the Argentine ruling class to intervene openly in the transfer of immigrants, but by the ability of the economy to attract them without the need for subsidies or paid tickets and due to the financial difficulties that the application of a more active policy would have implied.

As we noted at the beginning, among the American countries that received European immigration, Argentina was the most transformed by its presence, due to the very high percentage that it represented with respect to the native population. It is not possible to understand the formation of modern Argentina without taking into account immigration, especially in large cities, such as Buenos Aires or Rosario, or in regions where agriculture mainly dedicated to export was established. Promotion policies constituted a very significant factor in achieving this result, along with others such as the growth of the economy or the availability of land to settle immigrant farmers. This chapter has tried to contribute to the discussion of one aspect of these policies, associated with the transfer of immigrants, about which there are still issues to be known in depth. In particular, an analysis from the perspective of the shipping companies would be interesting, using sources from their archives, in order to confront that of the state receiving the immigrants, as has been our objective.