Solberg, C. E. - Peopling The Prairies and The Pampas. The Impact of Immigration On Argentina and Canadian Agrarian Development, 1870-1930

Peopling the Prairies and the Pampas: The Impact of Immigration on Argentine and Canadian
Agrarian Development, 1870-1930

Author(s): Carl E. Solberg
Source: Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, Vol. 24, No. 2 (May, 1982), pp.
131-161
Published by: Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Miami
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CARL E. SOLBERG
Department of History
University of Washington, Seattle
Seattle, Washington
PEOPLING THE PRAIRIES

AND THE PAMPAS
The Impact of Immigration on Argentine and
Canadian Agrarian Development, 1870-1930
Separated by many thousands of miles and very different

cultural heritages, Argentina and Canada might not seem to have
much in common. But during the period between 1870 and 1930,
there were many striking similarities between the economic
development of these two countries at opposite ends of the New
World (Blain, 1972). Indeed, by the late 1920s, Alejandro E.
Bunge, the distinguished head of the economics faculty at the
University of Buenos Aires, was pointing to the "Argentine-
Canadian economic parallel" in his publications (Bunge, 1929).
Bunge had perceived that Argentina and Canada were two of a
small group of historically favored new countries that shared
what Canadian economist Melville Watkins (1963: 149) has
called, "an enormous advantage over the typical underdeveloped
country," because they did not "start their development with
population pressing against scarce resources." Like other coun-
tries of this group-Australia, New Zealand, Uruguay, and the
United States-they were land surplus countries rather than the
labor surplus type so common on the peripheries of the expand-
ing Western European economy (Watkins, 1963: 149; Teubal,
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Grants-in-aid from the American Council of Learned Societies and
the American Philosophical Society helped support the research on which this article is
based.
Journalof Interamerican
Studiesand WorldAffairs,Vol. 24 No. 2, May 1982131-161
? 1982Sage Publications,Inc.
131

132 JOURNAL OF INTERAMERICAN STUDIES AND WORLD AFFAIRS
1975: 34-35). Indeed, Argentina and Canada contained two of the

world's richest agriculturalregions-the prairiesand the pampas.
Agricultural development in these two regions did not begin on
a significant scale until the 1870s. It accelerated in the 1890s and,
by the 1920s, Argentina and Canada had risen to the rank of
leading world agricultural exporters. Unlike the United States,
whose huge domestic market consumed the large bulk of its farm
production, Argentina and Canada had small populations (about
9 million each in 1921), and the agricultural produce of both
countries consequently flowed primarily to export markets.
Argentina was the world's largest corn and beef exporter and was
second or third in wheat exports; Canada led the world in wheat.
Policies encouraging massive foreign investment and immigra-
tion helped make this phenomenal growth possible in both cases.
By 1913, the investment, which took place largely in the railway
networks necessary for modern commercial agriculture, totalled
$3.2 billion in 1913 value dollars in Argentina and $3.7 billion in
Canada. Of these totals, British investors provided 60% in
Argentina and 76% in Canada (Phelps, 1938: 108; Aitkin, 1961:
24-54). Because of this massive influx of British capital and the
United Kingdom's position as the single most important market
for Argentine and Canadian agricultural exports, both countries
shared a particularly close economic relationship with Great
Britain. Although not a part of the "formal empire" like Canada,
Argentina was very much a part of what H. S. Ferns (1953) has
called "Britain's informal empire."
Argentina and Canada also promoted immigration to populate
their empty grasslands and to provide the labor force essential for
agricultural development. Within 60 years, between 1870 and
1930, millions of immigrants arrived to work the soil of the
prairies and pampas and to transform them into breadbaskets of
the world. The newcomers shared a common aspiration in both
countries-to find in New World farming the material prosperity
and personal freedom that were so elusive for the poor in Europe.
Nonetheless, Argentine and Canadian immigration came from
different parts of Europe and America and from countries at
distinct stages of economic and political development. This

Solberg / AGRARIAN DEVELOPMENT 133
TABLE 1
Net Immigration (Excess of Arrivals over Departures) in
Canada and Argentina, 1871-1930 (Ten-Year Totals)
Ten Year Period Canadaa Argentina

1871-1880 -40,000 104,095
1881-1890 -154,000 675,942
1891-1900 -115,000 462,318
1901-1910 794,000 1,249,505
1911-2 920 306,000 495,450
1921-1930 142.000 969,986
Totals 933,000 3,957,376
SOURCES: McDougall (1961: 172). Despite the article's title, the author analyzes
Canadian population growth through 1931. Argentian (1963: 205-06, 209, 214).
a. The CanAdiangovernment did not keep a close count of departures, most of which
went to the United States. For this reason, the figures for Canada represent estimates
made by the Dominion Bureau of Statistics after analysis of birth, deaths, and immi-
grant arrivalsduring each ten-year period.
b. The Argentine figures are the official statistics of the government's Direccion Na-
cional de Migraciones. They do not count clandestine immigration, which frequently
took place in Argentina.
article examines and compares Argentine and Canadian immi-

gration between 1870 and 1930 and focuses on the impact the
newcomers made in the prairies and the pampas. The purpose is
to consider how immigration affected agricultural development
as well as rural social and political change in these two
comparable cases.
Government Policies: Immigration and Land Tenure
Although both governments, particularly between 1880 and

1914, made immigration a high national priority, Argentina
attracted and retained a much larger immigration population.
Between 1870and 1930, as Table 1 shows, more than four times as
many immigrants arrived and remained in Argentina than in
Canada. The Argentine population growth rate in the same
period, a direct reflection of massive immigration, greatly
exceeded the growth rate in Canada (Table 2).

TABLE 2
Growthof the Argentineand CanadianPopulations,1869-1914
t9a 19Sl4b ~ Average Yearly

Growth
Argentina 1,856,490 7,885,237 133,972

Canada 4,324,810 7,206,643 72,045
SOURCES: Kubat and Thornton (1974: 14-15); Argentina (1872: 632-33); Argen-
tina (1916-1917: II, 109).
a. Argentine statistics for 1869, Canadian for 1871.
b. Argentine statistics for 1914, Canadian for 1911.
Why did Canadian immigration lag so far behind the Argen-

tine? Part of the explanation involves the magnetic attraction of
the United States among North American immigrants, including
those who originally sailed for Canada. Between 1873 and 1896,
economic stagnation plagued the Dominion, and, as a result,
emigration to the United States reached large-scale proportions.
Indeed, more people left Canada-primarily to the United
States-than entered it between 1871 and 1900 (Table 1). As Sir
Richard Cartwright (Porter, 1965: 34) put it, "the Dominion
which began in Lamentations seemed to be ending in Exodus."
During the next two decades, 1901 to 1920, the period of the great
prairie land rush, net immigration-the excess of arrivals over
departures-totalled 1.1 million but this number was still only
33% of immigrant arrivals (Porter, 1965: 30-31). Argentina also
had a very high rate of transient immigration, although for
different reasons. Before World War I, tens of thousands of
Europeans came each year to work as harvest laborers;thousands
more came to work only for a few years and to return to Europe
with their savings. Nevertheless, Argentine net immigration,
about 52% between 1901 and 1920, was higher than Canada's
(Table 1; Willcox, 1929: I, 546).
Both governments mounted vigorous and expensive cam-
paigns to attract immigrants, but Argentina spent more on
advertising than did Canada. Indeed, the Argentine advertising
campaign was second only to that of the United States, although
private sources financed most American immigration promotion

(Macdonald, 1966: 116). And this campaign presented Argen-

tina's prospects in terms that were not only highly favorable but
even misleading. Prospective immigrants read that it was "easy"
for newcomers "without capital" to acquire their own land and
that "virginland" was "subdivided and sold by the owner on very
easy terms" (Argentina, 1911: 31). To attract immigrants, the
Argentine government also occasionally employed recruiting
agents and, at one particularly feverish period between 1888 and
1890, paid ocean passages for 132,000 Europeans (Scobie, 1964:
123; Jefferson, 1926: 180).
But the key to Argentina's success in attracting a massive
immigration was the government's policy, in effect until 1930,
that admitted all able-bodied Europeans regar_dlessof ethnic
background. The only exception, after 1910, was in the case of
"anarchist agitators." This policy reflected the position of the
republic's leading interest groups, the most influential of which
was the Sociedad Rural, the association of large landowners and
cattlemen who stood to profit from a large supply of labor. Before
1914, the Sociedad (Anales, 1910: 142-143) never wavered from
its position that unrestricted European immigration was vital to
Argentine economic development.
The Canadian government paid subsidies and bounties to
immigrant recruiters-and had done so as early as the 1870s-but
Ottawa accelerated its promotion campaign after 1896, when
Canada's economic stagnation finally lifted (Macdonald, 1966:
45-46). The government took advantage of the newly favorable
economic circumstances to launch a major immigration program.
Clifford Sifton, Minister of the Interior from 1896 to 1906,
organized an immigration service that issued mountains of
propaganda and paid bonuses to recruiters, who-like their
Argentine counterparts-presented Canadian prospects in the
most roseate terms. According to McCutcheon (1974: 36),
Canadian immigration agents spread "half truths, distortions,
exaggerations, and outright lies" about facets of prairie life
ranging from the climate to railway rates.
These verbose and expensive recruiting campaigns belied the
fact that Argentina was in a better position to attract a truly

massive immigration. And the lack of a competing immigrant

country on her border to serve as a magnet for the disillusioned
(Brazil or Chile hardly could exercise the pull that the United
States did in Canada) is only a partial explanation. Ethnic
considerations also are important for analysis of Argentina's
success in attracting huge numbers of people. By the late 1890s,
the predominant flow of European emigrants originated in
Southern and Eastern Europe and, while Argentina welcomed
these people, Latin and Slavic immigrants received a more
ambiguous reception in Canada. Certainly Northern Europeans
enjoyed the highest prestige as desirable immigrants in Argentina;
a noted contemporary writer (Ceppi, 1910: 171), for example,
stated that one would have "to be blind or consciously to close
one's eyes" to fail to perceive this attitude. Social Darwinist
notions of "superior races," after all, were entrenched in Argen-
tina as well as in Canada (Porter, 1965: 62). But nineteenth-
century attempts by the Argentine government to attract a large
migrant flow from Britain, Scandinavia, Germany, and the Low
Countries were unsuccessful. Consequently, the government
actively encouraged Spanish and Italian immigration-although
Northern Italians and Basques found a warmer welcome than
Sicilians and Andalusians. In sum, economic opportunity as well
as religious, linguistic, and cultural affinities attracted millions of
Argentine migrants throughout Spain and Italy.
Few Argentine intellectuals regarded Southern Europeans as
undesirable. In fact, the predominant tone of Argentine litera-
ture, at least until 1905 (Solberg, 1970: 7-14), was to praise the
Italians as bearers of a distinguished cultural tradition and the
Spanish as thrifty and hard workers. Despite rumblings of protest
against some groups, primarily Syrians, Lebanese, and Jews
(Alsina, 1910: 205-206), the Argentine government kept the doors
wide open precisely when Southern and Eastern European
migration reached its zenith shortly before World War I. This
policy peopled the Argentine pampas with ambitious migrants
who were not accustomed to standards of living as high as those
common in Northern Europe (or Canada) and who were willing
to enter agriculture as sharecroppers or renters rather than as
landowners.

This fact was of prime importance to the development of

Argentine agriculture,for the pampas's best lands had passed into
the hands of large landowners in the mid-nineteenth century, and
the republic had no Homestead Act for free land distribution.
Although a minority of immigrant farmers (about 30%) ac-
quired land (Argentina, 1935:487), either through early coloniza-
tion plans or by buying it on the market, the rapidly rising price of
land forced most Argentine farmers to rent. Southern European
immigrants accepted this system, although they objected to its
abuses, because they saw land rental as a means to make money,
which they often intended to use to move to the city or back to
Europe. Because Argentine immigrants were willing to work as
tenants, immigration not only provided the muscle for the
republic's spectacular export growth but also strengthened the
system of large estates by making the land much more valuable.
And, because the vast majority of immigrants did not become
Argentine citizens-only 2.2% of the foreign-born population
had been naturalized by 1914 (Solberg, 1970: 42)-immigrant
farmers did not exercise political power in Argentina. This
absence of an agrarian political movement greatly weakened
efforts at land reform.
Canada, in contrast, strongly favored Northern and Western
Europeans-and Americans. The government classified immi-
grants from Britain, Scandinavia, the Low Countries, France,
Germany, Switzerland, and the United States-but not blacks-
as people from "preferredcountries."To encourage them to come
to Canada, Ottawa advertised in these countries, and in some
years, subsidized steamship fares (Macdonald, 1966: 30-48).
Immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe were "nonpre-
ferred," although Sifton and his successors down to 1914
challenged this categorization by promoting Slavic and particu-
larly Ukrainian immigration, a policy that caused deep misgiv-
ings among British Canadians, who accused him of bringing in
the "scum of Europe" (Porter, 1965: 64; Avery, 1979: 18-19).
The classification of people into preferred and nonpreferred
groups reflected a deep-set Canadian conviction, fortified by
Social Darwinist theories, that Slavs and Latins were racially
undesirable, if not inferior, and should not be encouraged to

migrate to Canada. Indeed, some of Canada's leading intellec-

tuals, including the national wit Stephen Leacock, legitimized the
idea that Southern and Eastern Europeans were of subordinate
intelligence and that they would "pollute"the Canadian popula-
tion through race mixture (Berger, 1970: 151; Porter, 1965: 67).
As a result, when nonpreferred groups came to Canada, they
often faced public attitudes of prejudice or outright hostility
(Avery, 1979: 7-8).
Canadian policy populated the prairies predominantly with
British and Northern European immigrants who, like the Argen-
tine immigrants, were thrifty and hard-working. But Canadian
immigrants differed from their Argentine counterparts in several
ways. With the exception of the Eastern Europeans, they were
accustomed to a higher standard of living. Moreover, immigrants
in the prairies aimed to acquire land under the Homestead Law,
which had been in effect since 1872, and to settle permanently-
although many failed. Most of them also came from countries
where popular participation in democratic politics was well-
established. They brought traditions of economic cooperation
and populist reformism with them and, in contrast to the
Argentine situation, establihsed vigorous political movements to
defend the interests of prairie farming (Lipset, 1971: 39-98).
Canadian immigration thus fortified the pattern, already well-
established in Canada, of family-owned farms and close-knit
rural communities.
This system was in direct contrast with the tenancy system of
Argentina, under which farmers moved around from one estate to
another as their rental contracts expired. Although the tenancy
system, as Ferns (1973: 94) points out, did not necessarily
impoverish the farmers economically, "it tended to impoverish
rural life," for the pampas generally failed to develop strong social
or political institutions. Nonetheless, the Southern European
tenant farmers of Argentina did have certain advantages over
their Canadian landowning counterparts, who often were laden
with heavy mortgages. When agricultural prices declined, ten-
ancy rents fell, at least in the long run (Argentina, 1935:503), and

TABLE 3
Growthof the Prairieand PampaPopulations, 1868-1914
Region 1869a 1b
Regional % of National Regional % of National Average

Population Total Population Total Yearly Growth
Pampasc 772,216 42.2 4,227,988 53.6 76,795

Prairies 73,228 2.0 1,328,121 18.4 31,372
SOURCES: Kubat and Thornton (1974: 14-15); Canada (1933-1936: II, 141, 440);
Argentina (1872: 632-33); Argentina (1916-1917: II, 109).
a. Argentine statistics for 1869, Canadian for 1871
b. Argentine statistics for 1914, Canadian for 1911
c. Includes La Pampa territory and Cordoba, Santa Fe, Entre Rios and Buenos Aires
provinces but not capital city of Buenos Aires.
d. Includes Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta.
Argentine farmers were seldom saddled with large fixed debts.

Moreover, partly because of the difference in land tenure systems,
the cost of wheat production in Argentina was usually lower than
in Canada, giving the Argentine an advantage in the world
market, which during price slumps like the Great Depression,
became highly competitive (Hind, 1937: 271; Patton, 1935: 33).
Immigration and Demographic Change

The first agricultural migrants who ventured to the newly
opened Canadian prairies shortly after 1870 found them virtually
deserted, with a total population of about 73,000 (Table 3). About
half these people were Indians, and most of them were placed on
reserves during the 1870s as the result of a series of Indian treaties
that Ottawa negotiated. There was only one violent outburst of
Indian protest-during the 1885 Northwest rebellion. Massive
immigration began in the 1890s, and by 1911, 1.3 million people
inhabited the prairies.
This growth was undeniably impressive, but the population
gains of the Argentine pampas were spectacular by comparison.
In 1869, when Argentina took its first national census, the
pampas already had a substantial population of about 772,000

clustered primarily along the Paranai River and in the coastal

regions. Although cattle and sheep raising were flourishing in a
number of areas, vast sections of the pampas were still empty
grasslands, populated only by warlike nomadic Indians. Govern-
ment forces virtually eradicated them in the 1880s. Cattlemen
acquired huge chunks of the newly opened frontier, and immi-
grant farmers quickly followed, although usually as renters and
not as landowners. Primarily because of massive immigration,
the region's population grew rapidly and reached 4.2 million in
1914.1 Between the 1869 and 1914 Argentine censuses, the
pampas grew by an average of 76,795 people per year; the prairie
population increased at the slower average pace of 31,372
between the 1871 and 1911 Canadian censuses (Table 3).
This contrasting rate of population growth contained major
political and economic implications. The prairies remained a
minority region, with only 18.4%of Canada's population in 1911.
The region was unable to exercise a decisive influence on federal
economic ~policy, for seats in the House of Commons are
apportioned on the basis of provincial population. The rapidly
industrializing provinces of Ontario and Quebec, which together
held about 60% of the seats in Commons, formed a powerful
political base for Canada's high tariff policy of industrial
protection that the prairies so bitterly resented (Fowke, 1957:63-
69). But in Argentina, the pampas contained over half the
national population by 1914, and the pampa provinces-along
with the federal capital, the prime commercial outlet for the
region-clearly dominated Argentine economic policy making
and kept tariffs at moderate levels to supply government revenue
rather than to foster industrial growth (Solberg, 1973). Argentine
protectionist sentiment concentrated in the interior provinces,
which early in the nineteenth century had contained some light
industry and the bulk of the nation's population. Massive
immigration decisively shifted the nation's demographic and
political balance to the pampas, and this shift made a policy of
industrial tariff protection-which farmers, cattlemen, and urban
consumers all opposed-a political impossibility throughout the

TABLE 4
Native and ForeignBornPopulationsof the Prairie
and PampaProvinces,1911 and 1914
Argentina (1914) Native % of Foreign % of Total
Born Total Born Total Population
Buenos Aires 1,362,234 65.9 703,931 34.1 2,066,165
Santa Fe 583,699 64.9 315,941 35.1 899,640
C6rdoba 585,052 79.5 150,420 20.5 735,472
Entre R!os 352,872 83.0 72,501 17.0 425,373
La Pampa 64,406 63.6 36.932 4 101,338
Totals 2,948,263 69.7 1,279,725 30.3 4,227,988
Canada (1911)
Manitoba 270,554 58.6 190,840 41.4 461,394
Saskatchewan 248,751 50.5 243,681 49.5 492,432
Alberta 161,869 42 212,426 8 374,295
Totals 681,174 51.3 646,947 48.7 1,328,121
SOURCES: Argentina (1916-1917: I, 202); Canada (1933-1936: III, 518-23).

NOTE: Alberta and Manitoba totals were later revised slightly.
interwar period. Argentine farmers, as a consequence, could

purchase imported goods relatively more cheaply than could
Canadian farmers. Imported farm machinery, for example,
entered duty-free before 1931 (Strong, 1939:247). This lower cost
of imports helped improve the competitive position of Argentine
agriculture relative to Canada's.
In spite of their distinct rates of population growth, the prairies
and pampas both became predominantly immigrant regions. On
the eve of World War I, as Table 4 shows, 30.3% of the pampas
and 48.7% of the prairie population were foreign-born. In both
cases, and particularly in the pampas, the children of these
immigrants (the censuses counted them as native-born, but they
often remained unassimilated) composed additional large groups.
The farming population of both regions, moreover, were over-
whelmingly composed of immigrants. Table 5 shows that 63.8%
of prairie farmers and 70.5% of pampas farmers were foreign-
born. Clearly, it was immigrant farm labor that made possible the
sudden and spectacular rise of Argentina and Canada to leader-
ship among agricultural exporters.

TABLE 5
Immigrantsand the Native Born Among Pampaand Prairie
FarmOperators,Eve of WorldWarI
Country and Immigrants Native Born Total Farmers

Province Number % of Farmers Number % of Farmers
Canada (1911)
Alberta 45,471 72.5 17,290 27.5 62,761
Saskatchewan 64,643 63.9 36.458 36.1 101,101
ianitoba 23,045 51.2 21,924 48.8 44,969
Prairie Total 133,159 63.8 75,612 36.2 208,831
Ar, entina (1914)

Buenos Aires 28,615 67.8 13,533 32.1 42,148
Santa Fe 22,773 79.7 5,723 20.1 28,496
C6rdoba 12,035 64.9 6,461 34.9 18,496
Entre Rfos 6,491 58.5 4,569 41.3 11,060
La Pampa 3,776 87.6 41 12.5 4317
Pampa Total 73,690 70.5 30,827 29.5 104,517
SOURCES: Argentina (1916-1917: V, 309-16); Canada (1912: VI, 52-229).

a. In both cases, figures are for cereal farmers only (plus alfalfa farmers in Argentina)
and do not include ranchers, truck gardeners, fruit growers, and so on.
b. Percentage figures may not add up precisely to 100 because of preliminary
rounding.
Patterns of Immigration
Our focus now shifts to a closer analysis of the migratory
currents and major immigrant groups that formed the farming
populations of the two regions. Table 6 details the countries of
birth of the prairie's and pampas's farming populations and
provides a convenient point of reference for this discussion of the
impact that massive immigration made on the rural labor force
and agricultural development.
INTERNA L MIGRA TION
When Canada acquired the prairies from Hudson's Bay

Company in 1896, the Dominion already contained a large and
experienced farming population in the provinces of Ontario and
Quebec. The prairies provided a potential outlet for this crowded
rural population, and migration began in the 1870s, primarily

TABLE 6
MajorCountriesof Originof Pampaand PrairieFarmers,
1914 and 1921a
Country of Birth Pampa Farmers (1914) Prairie Farmers (1921|-
No. - No.
Argentina 30,827 29.5 -
Canada --- -- 82,194 32.1
United Kingdom 387 .3 45,296 17.7
United States --- -- 42,042 16.4
Italy 46,607 44.6
Spain 11,845 11.3
Russia 5,638 5.4 13,885 5.4
Poland - --- 2,181 .8
Austria 2,326 2.2 12,856 5.0
Galicia --- 9,314 3.6
Ukraine -- -- 1,833 .7
Rumania - -- 3,755 1.5
France 2,790 2.7 2.212 .9,
Germany 673 .6 4,279 1.7
All Others 3,424 3.4 35.725 14.0
Totalsb 105,517 100.0 255,657 99.8
SOURCES: Argentina (1916-1917: V, 309-16); Canada (1924-1929: V, 78-9).

a. The welter-web of empires and nation states in Eastern Europe make it difficult to
ascertain how many people from that region's various national groups actually lived
in the prairies, and the Canadian census statistics did little to resolve this problem.
Through 1921, census takers usually classified East Europeans by the country of
their birth (Austria or Russia), but some Ukranians were counted as Galicians and a
few were even counted as Ukranians!
b. Totals may not add up to 100.0 because of preliminary rounding.
c. Because the 1911 Canadian census did not detail the country of birth for farmers,
1921 census figures are used in this table.
from the farming districts of Ontario. This quickly became a

major migratory movement, and, by 1921 (Canada, 1924-1929:V,
28-29), more prairie farmers were born in Ontario than in any
other Canadian province or foreign country. "Therewas scarcely
a family in rural Ontario," O. D. Skelton (Stovel, 1959: 107)
commented, "that had not sent a son and the bay colts and the
second-best buggy to Manitoba or Saskatchewan."
Immigration from Ontario began earlier than large-scale
European migration to the prairies, and these early Canadian
migrants transplanted many of the social and cultural norms and
institutions of Victorian-age Ontario to the West. The Ontarians
labored to create a new society in the image of the one they had
left. Under their impact, the family farm, the rural community
with its schools and churches, and a popular devotion to civic

progress and political participation took deep root in the prairies.

Later waves of immigrants from the United Kingdom reinforced
the dominant British Canadian culture of the prairie West
(Morton, 1967: 177-179, 224-225).
Few French Canadians, however, joined the steady stream of
Ontario farmerswho packed up to claim a homestead in the West.
Although rural Quebec suffered severe overcrowding, the press
and the powerful Catholic Church did not portray the prairies as
a favorable destination for emigration. The image of the West
that most French Canadians received after 1870 was that of an
infertile region where agriculture was different and where the
French language as well as French Canadian culture were under
attack. To go there was to expatriate oneself in what was
considered virtually a foreign country. Thus, few French Cana-
dian farm communities emerged on the prairies after 1870. The
Northwest Rebellion of 1885-a rebellion in which government
troops crushed the forces of the French-speaking metis-further
discredited the West as a potential destination for French
Canadians. When these people migrated, they moved toward the
northern regions of Quebec or to the United States (Silver, 1969).
Argentina did not share the Canadian pattern of a large
internal migration of native-born farmers to the new agricultural
regions. As already mentioned, "native-born"Argentine farmers
that the censuses reported were usually the sons of immigrants.
The overwhelming predominance of European immigrants and
their descendants among Argentine farmersresulted from the fact
that, unlike Canada, Argentina had no previously settled agricul-
tural region to serve as a source of internal migration. There was
no Argentine equivalent of Ontario with its individually owned
small farms. The Argentine interior provinces, settled since the
colonial period, were divided into large estates, were devoted to
cattle raising or plantation crops, and were worked by mestizo
tenants. The existing population of the pampas-the famous
gaucho horsemen-disdained agriculture as an inferior pursuit
suited to women or Italians. The Argentine government made no
real effort to settle internal migrants as farmers, so the pampas
filled up with Europeans.

When Argentine internal migration did take take place, it

headed either for the burgeoning coastal cities or for the pampas,
but there the native-born became wage laborers employed by
immigrant farmers or by cattle ranchers (Jefferson, 1926: 97;
Taylor, 1948: 190). As Walter Larden put it (1911: 67), "the
population in the 'camp' is composed of two distinct classes, who
are also of two distinct races. These are ... the peons, 'native' by
race, who deal with the stock, and the colonists, mainly North
Italians, whose work is agriculture."As a result of this migratory
pattern, Argentine agriculture long was more "foreign" than
prairie agriculture. In sharp contrast with Canada, most Argen-
tine farmers came from outside the national cultural and political
tradition.
BRITISH IMMIGRA TION
Despite the Canadian government's desire to attract British

immigration, Canada hardly enjoyed a stellar image in the United
Kingdom as an immigrant country. It was hard to live down the
reputation of a land Rudyard Kipling had called "OurLady of the
Snows." The general tone of British travel literature on western
Canada was that it was the "Siberia of the British Empire," a
country where life was very hard and where success in farming
came only with great difficulty (Thomas, 1973: 183-185). Nor
did all western Canadians think British immigrants were particu-
larly apt for prairie life. Some Westerners considered the British
as uppity and condescending; others believed that Britain was
pawning off its undesirables on Canada (Sloan, 1968: 3; West,
1981: 18). Despite these unflattering perceptions on both sides of
the Atlantic, British immigration increased rapidly after 1900.
The British became the largest single immigrant group among
prairie farmers (Table 7) and were especially numerous in
Saskatchewan. They were in the forefront of organizing farmers'
protective associations, which blossomed into full-scale agrarian
political movements. Many of them, however, tried rural life
briefly and then departed, pulled by the magnets of the Canadian
cities or the United States (Reynolds, 1935: 26, 34-35, 79;
Carrothers, 1966: 246).

TABLE 7
Four LeadingRegions of Originsof Farmersin the
PrairieProvinces,1921 and 1931
Region of
Birth 1921 1931
No. % No. %
Canada 82,194 32.1 88,586 30.7

United Kingdom 45,296 17.7 42,575 14.8
Eastern Europe 43,824 17.1 53,481 18.6
United States 42,042 16.4 38,890 13.5
All Others 42.301 16.5 64. 97 22.4
Total Prairie
Farmers 255,657 99.8 288,129 100.0
SOURCES: Canada (1924-1929: V, 78-9); Canada (1933-1936: VIII, ccxi-ccxiii).

a. See Table 6, note "a" regarding nationalities of East European immigrants.
b. Totals may not add up to 100.0 because of preliminary rounding.
If the British hesitated to go to Canada to farm, they positively

avoided Argentine agriculture. Thousands of the English, Scotch,
and Irish had migrated to Buenos Aires province in the mid-
nineteenth century, where they obtained land and often pros-
pered in cattle or sheep raising (Sabato and Korol, 1978). But in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, British migrants
found far greater opportunities to become independent land-
owners in the Dominion or the United States than in Argentina,
which was not, warned one Englishman on the scene (Larden,
1911: 60), "a country suitable for the English emigrant of the
usual 'emigrant class!"' The threat of frontier Indian raids until
the 1880s, along with the unfamiliar language, the high cost of
land, Argentina's low standards of livings, and its reputation as a
country where rural justice and the police were capricious and
corrupt all combined to discourage British migration (Seymour,
1869: 56-74; Platt, 1964: 9-20). In fact, net British immigration
during the entire 1857-1924 period was only 19,056 (Willcox,
1929: I, 543). In the twentieth century, so few Britons entered
Argentine farming that by 1914 they were statistically insignifi-
cant. Argentina did have a large and powerful British community,
but it was centered in the capital and composed of businessmen
(Bailey, 1979).

For Argentines, a particularly poignant aspect of British

migration was the departure of a group of Welsh farmers for
Canada in 1902. Although these people had not settled in the
pampas but in the Chubut Valley of northern Patagonia, their
case demonstrated the difficulties that Argentina faced when it
tried to attract Northern Europeans. The first Welsh had
migrated to Argentina in the 1860s, attracted by the federal
government's offer of land grants and by the vision of establishing
a bastion of Welsh nationalism in the New World. The obstacles
to successful farming in Patagonia were formidable; to overcome
them, the settlers had to learn irrigation techniques and had to
devote themselves to hard, unstinting labor. About 3000 Welsh
eventually migrated, and by the 1880sthe colony achieved modest
prosperity, primarily in wheat farming. The Welsh, in fact, grew
superb wheat-it won a gold medal at the 1889 Paris exposition-
and they proved that at least some parts of Patagonia, which most
Argentines long had considered a wasteland, could be turned to
agriculture. But discontent grew with the Argentine government's
determination to assimilate Argentine-born sons of immigrants
through compulsory military training instituted in 1901 and
education in the Spanish language (Williams, 1975). W. L. Grif-
fith, a Canadian immigration agent in Wales, heard of this situ-
ation, visited Chubut, and began to make plans for emigration to
Canada. Powerful support came from David Lloyd George, then
a Welsh member of Parliament, who had visited the Canadian
West and who helped raise a fund for the remigration. The
Canadian government, anxious to encourage these hardy farmers
with their knowledge of irrigation, set aside a 36-square-mile
township in Saskatchewan (Owen, 1977: 52-62; Thomas, 1971).
In May 1902, 230 Welshmen left Argentina enroute to Liver-
pool and then to Quebec. They settled on good land in the
Saltcoats district of Saskatchewan, where they prospered and
founded the town of Llywelyn (Johnson, 1963:92-93). This affair
unquestionably damaged Argentina's reputation in Britain as a
country for emigration. In Wales, the press spoke of the "practical
serfdom" of the Argentine colony, while in London, the Daily
Telegraph emphasized that the Patagonian affair demonstrated

that emigrants should follow the flag (Owen, 1977:66, 68, 95). In
Buenos Aires, where La Prensa (Solberg, 1.970:24) equated the
Welsh exodus with "the failure of colonization in Patagonia," the
mood was sadness. Nonetheless, Argentina's attitude toward
immigrant assimilation continued to harden as World War I
approached. A few more Welsh did trickle in before 1914, but
their migration then ceased and never resumed (Williams, 1975:
70).
AMERICAN IMMIGRA TION
Canada also had access to another group of immigrants that

Argentina hardly could hope to tap. These people came from the
United States, and they were particularly important to agricul-
tural development because many thousands of them had previous
experience in dry-land cereal farming. The Americans became
the third largest immigrant group among prairie farmers by 1921
(Table 7). Encouraged by the availability of good, cheap land in
the prairie provinces, hundreds of thousands of people, particu-
larly from the Great Plains states, trooped north after 1896. The
total number of American immigrants is unknown, for many
Americans moved north in prairie schooners and did not bother
to report at border stations. Hundreds of thousands also soon
returned to the United States. In any case, the number of Ameri-
can-born in Canada rose from 81,000 in 1891to 374,000 in 1921-
and the vast majority of these lived in the prairies (Canada, 1934:
126; Hansen, 1940: 219-243; Troper, 1972, 148-154). (In contrast,
only 4,153 immigrants from the United States arrived in Argen-
tina between 1881 and 1909, Alsina, 1910: 22.)
These "Americans"came from diverse origins; some were from
the families of earlier Canadian emigrants to the United States,
others were farmers' sons who wanted land, and still others were
recently arrived Europeans-especially Scandinavians-who
wanted more or better land. The United States, in fact, was
the principal source of Norwegian and Swedish immigration in
Canada (Wonders, 1976). Whatever their origin south of the
border, most western Canadians warmly welcomed Americans.

Solberg I AGRARIAN DEVELOPMENT 149
After all, they shared the same basic aspirations and values as did
migrants from Ontario and Britain: They strove to obtain title to
their land and to achieve a comfortable standard of living in a
stable rural community. They quickly became citizens and took
part in western political protest movements as well as the new
Progressive Party, which was primarily western based. The
American-born became particularly numerous in Alberta, but
wherever they settled, they established a reputation as competent
farmers. Indeed, the distinguished Canadian historian Arthur S.
Morton (1938: 170-171) concluded that Americans "contributed
more than any other nationality to increase the productivity of
the Canadian northwest." When R. B. Bennett, the future Prime
Minister, stood up in the House of Commons in 1913 and
suggested that American settlers might prove disloyal, the Grain
Growers' Guide (1913) quickly repudiated him and instead
emphasized the Americans' contribution to western agriculture.
Much more alarm about the consequences of American immigra-
tion appeared in the British press and government than in the
Canadian (Sloan, 1968: 6-7).
SOUTHERN EUROPEAN IMMIGRA TION
In sharp contrast with Canada, immigrants to the Argentine

pampas were primarily from Latin Europe, and Italians led the
way. Although Argentine wages were lower than in the United
States, Canada, or Australia, millions of people from all parts of
Italy viewed Argentina as a land of golden promise where the
poor newcomer found prosperity and the language presented no
formidable barrier to economic assimilation. Net Italian immi-
gration to Argentina between 1857 and 1924 totalled 1.3 million
(Willcox, 1929: I, 543). At least 40% of all Argentine immigrants
were Italians; more Italians migrated to Argentina than to any
country except the United States, and in no other immigrant
country did Italians form such a large part of the total population
(Foerster, 1919: 223-278). Given the magnitude of this migration,
it is hardly surprising that they formed by far the largest single
group of pampas immigrant farmers. Indeed, they far outnum-

bered native-born farmers in the 1914 census (Table 6). By the.

mid-1890s, wheat growing, wrote Goodwin (1895: 12), was "really
in Italian hands." It was this abundant supply of Italian
immigrant labor that enabled pampas agriculture to expand so
dramatically around the turn of the century.
Some Anglo-Saxon writers (Smith, 1908: 143, 145) assumed
that Italian farmers in Argentina were "of a low order of
intelligence" and employed "ignorant methods," but the reverse
was more often the case. Most Italians who migrated to the
pampas were Piedmontese, Lombards, and Venetians; although
they usually lacked capital and often had no previous agricultural
experience, they were extremely ambitious, "always feverishly
anxious to get rich," as Foerster (1919: 265-266) noted. They did
not object to the land rental system, at least not as long as crop
prices were high. Indeed, Italian newcomers viewed the Argentine
land system as an opportunity to accumulate capital and move up
the economic scale. When times were good, their thrifty habits
enabled them to save remarkable sums, much of which they
remitted to Italy (Cortes Conde, 1979: 252).
But when a severe cost-price squeeze began to threaten the
economic aspirations of Italian tenants in 1912 and again after
World War I, they organized farmers' protest movements that
lobbied for reforms in the tenancy system and on various
occasions used the tactic of the rent strike to dramatize agrarian
discontent. But because most Argentine immigrant farmers
remained unnaturalized, the political impact of these movements
was peripheral and the reforms they achieved were minimal
(Solberg, 1971). The failure to naturalize reflected the fact
(Garcia Serrano, 1967: 51) that numerous Italians and Spaniards
never intended to remain in Argentina but to work as tenant
farmers for a few years and then to return with their savings.
Because of this propensity-and because of the large numbers of
Italian harvest workers who migrated seasonally to Argentina
before World War I-the rate of Italian remigration was high:
49.6% of all Italians who arrived in Argentina left it between 1857
and 1924 (Willcox, 1929: I, 543).
These plucky Italian tenant farmers often had large families-
12 or 16 children were not uncommon-and all pitched in. As

Goodwin (1895: 17-18) noted, "When there is work to be done,

the Italian will not spare himself or his family, but will plough by
moonlight or by starlight, resting during the hot mid-day hours,
and will not cease from his hard and continual work during
favorable weather." Similarly, Campbell Ogilvie (1910: 13), a
shrewd Briton, praised these "industriousand kindly people" who
were "well content with their surroundings" and "careful and
frugal in their living." He concluded that Italians adapted
themselves to Argentine circumstancesfar more successfully than
did the British. Another British observer (Larden, 1911: 32)
exclaimed that "the industry of these colonists is wonderful."
Although Italians were among the "nonpreferred"Canadian
immigrants, a substantial Italian community emerged. By 1931
(Canada, 1933-1936: I, 1218-1248) there were 42,578 people of
Italian birth in Canada. This community gathered primarily in
the eastern cities, especially Toronto, where the large labor
market quickly absorbed Italian unskilled workers, artisans, and
tradesmen. As in Argentina, many Italians did not intend to
remain in Canada permanently, and they hesitated to enter
prairie agriculture, whose land tenure system required consider-
able long-term investment. Toronto, in contrast, gave Italians the
opportunity to accumulate savings (Harney and Troper, 1975: 2-
3, 51, 84). In 1931, only 3,388 Italians inhabited the prairie
provinces, where they often worked as railway section hands.
About a thousand were prairie farmers. Ethnic prejudice in the
prairies also may have discouraged Italian migration to the
region. One Saskatchewan politician (Gualtieri, 1929: 59) even
called Italians "garlicsmelling mongrels,"while various publicists
claimed-with little evidence-that they were particularly prone
to crime, drunkenness, and other vices. Some prairie economic
leaders, notably the Calgary businessman C. W. Peterson
(Gualtieri, 1929: 7-11), challenged this racial mythology and
pointed out that Italian immigration might lower the high labor
costs that plagued prairie agriculture. But these arguments
produced no change in Canadian policy or popular attitudes.
Like the Italians, Spanish emigrants headed for Argentina in
massive numbers. Argentina, in fact, was by far the leading
destination of overseas Spanish migration; net Spanish immigra-

tion totalled about a million between 1857 and 1924 (Willcox,

1929: I, 543). Some went to Argentina to avoid compulsory
service in the Spanish army, which was engaged in long and futile
wars in North Africa. But the majority of the Spanish came to
find their fortune. They streamed out of Galicia, the poverty-
stricken northwestern region of the Iberian peninsula (Spain,
1916: 46-49, 380-381). Many of these Gallegos aimed to work in
Argentina for a few years and then to return with their savings
and, thus, the Spanish remigration rate (42.5%) was high
(Willcox, 1929: I, 543).
The huge mass of Spanish immigrants, most of whom were
male and illiterate, congregated in the cities and entered unskilled
jobs. Far fewer Spaniards than Italians ventured into the
countryside to become farmers. In 1914, they composed 11.3%of
the pampas farming population (Table 6). The one Spanish group
that often took up agriculture was the Basques, who became
particularly numerous in La Pampa territory (Rahola, 1905: 124-
127; Jefferson, 1926: 140-141).
The Spanish community in Canada was very small. While
Argentina was the destination of 403,000 Spanish emigrants
between 1911 and 1915, only 80 sailed directly for Canada. After
working on the Panama Canal or in the United States, other
Spaniards trickled into Canada to look for railway or canal
construction jobs. A Spanish community emerged in Toronto by
1915, but as late as 1931, only 552 persons of Spanish birth lived
in Canada-of these, 70 inhabited the prairie provinces (Spain,
1916: 95, 122-123; Canada, 1933-1936, I, 1218).
EASTERN EUROPEAN IMMIGRA TION
The groups discussed to this point-Ontarians, British, and

Americans, in the case of Canada, and the Italians and Spanish,
in the case of Argentina-formed the bulk of the immigrant
farming population of the prairies and pampas. There were, of
course, numerous other European groups present in both regions.
Icelanders, Hollanders, Scandinavians, and Germans were scat-
tered through the prairies, often in ethnic settlement clusters.

Similarly, the pampas contained pockets of Swiss and Danish

settlement as well as a scattering of French, Austrians, and
Yugoslavs. On the whole, however, the population of the prairies
was primarily Northern European and the population of the
pampas primarily Southern European. Only Eastern Europe was
a common source for major groups of immigrant farmers in both
Canada and Argentina. Although this migration was more
numerous in Canada, Eastern Europe provided the third largest
group of rural immigrants and farm operators in both countries.
Eastern Europeans contributed enormously to the opening and
development of prairie agriculture. As Table 7 shows, by 1921
nearly as many of these immigrants were operating farms as were
the British, and by 1931 Eastern Europeans clearly formed the
largest single immigrant group among prairie farmers. The vast
bulk of these people were Ukrainians who had come from Galicia
and Bukovina, territories that were under Austrian rule before
World War I. Ukrainians found the free homesteads and absence
of compulsory military service in Canada a powerful magnet,
particularly in view of the high taxes, avaricious landlords, and
small-sized farm holdings in their homeland. An estimated
270,000 entered Canada between 1896 and 1930, although many
remained only temporarily (Yuzyk, 1953). Ethnic Poles were in
distinct second place among East Europeans on the prairies.
As mentioned earlier, the Canadian government desired to
populate the prairies as rapidly as possible, and to carry out this
policy, Clifford Sifton developed a program to recruit Ukrainian
immigration vigorously. Temporarily, in fact if not in theory,
Ukrainians became "preferred" immigrants. In an oft-quoted
remark (Dafoe, 1931: 142-143), Sifton told a Toronto audience
that "a stalwart peasant in a sheepskin coat, born on the soil,
whose forefathers have been farmers for ten generations, with a
stout wife and a half-dozen children, is good quality," and to
emphasize this conviction, between 1896 and 1900 his ministry
paid bounties to agents who recruited Ukrainian immigrants.
Ukrainian immigration ceased during the war, and during the
1920s, vociferous opposition to resuming it appeared (Avery,
1979: 93-101). This view was largely based on fear of the social

and cultural consequences of admitting more Ukrainians; on the

prairies, many established farmers argued that they were undesir-
able because they remained aloof from agrarian cooperative
movements. During the early 1920s, Ottawa responded to these
attitudes by erecting various barriers to keep Ukrainian immi-
gration to a trickle. But the Canadian National and Canadian
Pacific Railways, along with some western businessmen, carried
on an unremitting campaign on behalf of resuming large-scale
migration from Eastern Europe. By 1925, the government devised
an arrangement with the railway companies to admit Eastern
European farmers when prairie farmers guaranteed them jobs
(England, 1929: 25-26). But the pro-Ukrainian lobby found this
policy far too restrictive. One leader of this group, C. W. Peter-
son, the Calgary businessman who also backed Italian immi-
gration, strongly promoted massive Eastern European immi-
gration during the late 1920s. Peterson (1926, 1929)reasoned that
if they were settled on less desirable dry lands and in "groups of
from 10 to 15 families," they would solve two problems at once-
they would speed occupation of the fringe areas of the prairies
and they would form a labor pool that would "reducethe cost of
operation of all farms in the west." The Eastern Europeans, in
other words, would help solve one of prairie farming's endemic
problems-a shortage of harvest labor.
Indeed, Ukrainians had provided cheap labor in the West since
the beginning of their migration. As Peterson had pointed out,
the men had to go to work off the homesteads for months at a time
to make the cash essential to begin farming. Although the largest
number of Ukrainians settled in Manitoba, wherever they went,
they usually occupied marginal land that homesteaders hitherto
had avoided-especially bush lands on the northern fringes of the
prairies. Often arriving penniless, the Ukrainians' early years
were full of hardships and suffering; their houses were hovels of
logs and mud over a three-foot excavation. "Nothing could be
more depressing than to live in that small, damp hole," one
pioneer recalled (Bychinsky, 1920: 34). In the absence of the men,
Ukrainian women cleared the land. Everywhere these sturdy
migrants built close-knit communities, and by World War I,

many of the early arrivals were achieving modest prosperity

(Yuzyk, 1953: 43-45; Lazarowich, 1967).
The origin of the Eastern European migration to Argentina
and the circumstances under which this population arrived and
settled differed significantly from the Ukrainian migration to
Canada. Few Ukrainians made the voyage to the pampas, and
although a substantial Polish migration took place in the 1920s,
most of these people went to the cities or to the frontier
semitropical territory of Misiones, where the federal government
was making land grants available. Eastern Europeans on the
pampas came primarily from the Russian Empire; they formed a
large part of the 98,000 "Russians" who arrived and remained in
Argentina between 1857 and 1924 (Willcox, 1929: I, 544). Of
those who ventured to the pampas to farm, most were not ethnic
Russians. One group, in fact, was not Slavic but Russo-German
or "Volga German." These people had lived within the Russian
Empire since the time of Catherine the Great and began to
migrate to Argentina in 1877. They were scattered around the
pampas in tiny agricultural colonies in Buenos Aires, La Pampa,
and especially in Entre Rios, where they were most numerous.
They were extremely industrious-indeed indefatigable-farm-
ers, and they were known not only as people who loved the soil
but who also formed a deep attachment to their new homeland.
Nonetheless, the Volga Germans also maintained their ethnic
homogeneity. Unlike many Italian and Spanish farmers, they did
not intend to return to Europe, and in Argentina they typically
bought their own farms and lived in villages (Jefferson, 1926:149-
153; Reynal O'Connor, 1921: 143-146; Koch, 1977: 224-228).
The largest group of pampas farmers who migrated from
Russia were Jews; they settled in rural Argentina as part of a
major colonization scheme. Appalled by growing persecution of
Jews in Russia, the wealthy Dutch Jewish philanthropist Baron
Maurice de Hirsch established the Jewish Colonization Associa-
tion (JCA) in 1891to transport and settle East European Jews on
lands that the association acquired in Argentina. (The JCA also
tried to establish farming colonies in the prairies. Early attempts
failed, but by 1903, a small Jewish colony existed in Saskatche-

wan, Macdonald, 1966: 220-224.) By 1925, the JCA had pur-

chased 617,000 hectares in Argentina and founded 10agricultural
colonies, primarily in Entre Rios but also in Santa Fe, Buenos
Aires, La Pampa, and Santiago del Estero. At the high point of
their population, during the mid-1920s, the Jewish colonies
contained about 20,000 people in farm families, 13,000 artisans
and tradespeople, and 5,000 non-Jews (Elkin, 1979: 125-143;
Winsberg, 1968). At this time, about 20% of all Argentine Jews
were in rural areas and as late as 1935, 5.8% of employed
Argentine Jews were in agriculture. Despite the international
interest that these colonies aroused, they were only partially
successful. Most of the Entre Rios land they occupied was only
marginally suited for wheat growing; in these circumstances, the
75- to 150-hectare farms each colonist purchased were too small
to be very profitable; as one saying went (Elkin, 1979: 137), they
were "too little to live on, too much to die from." Colonists
bought their plots at prices below current market levels on long-
term payments from the JCA, but its French Jewish adminis-
trators were often inflexible. Nor would the JCA grant land from
its reserves to sons of established colonists. As a result, according
to Elkin (1979: 137), "the JCA colonies became part of Argen-
tina's persistent latifundia-minifundia complex of problems."
Despite these obstacles, many Jewish farmers made substantial
progress. Gauchos taught them how to ride, herd cattle, and
shoot. They organized the first major system of cooperative credit
and purchasing associations in rural Argentina. Unlike most
pampas farmers, they had schools at an early date. Jefferson
(1926: 156) remarked that a Jewish farmhouse he visited "wasthe
most civilized farmer's house in the Argentine." Nonetheless,
agriculture in the colonies remained a risky business, and by the
1930s they experienced a steady loss of population when many
Jews, especially the young, departed for the cities (Winsberg,
1969).
Conclusions
The Volga Germans and Jews in Argentina were exceptions in
the general pattern of massive rural immigration. They became

landowners and formed communities, while most Southern

Europeans did not. Indeed, immigration did not fundamentally
change the prevailing social or political systems in either the
pampas or the prairies. The millions of Europeans and Americans
who propelled the spectacular growth of Canadians and Argen-
tine export agriculturequickly adjusted to prevailing systems of
land tenure and patterns of social and community life. Although
immigrants contributed greatly to agrarian protest movements in
both countries, neither the political protest movements of the
prairies nor the pressure groups of the pampas succeeded in
ending the control over agrarian economic policy that the
dominant political groups in Canada and Argentina exercised.
Pampas farmers remained primarily tenants living in a rootless
rural society, while prairie farmers remained smallholders in
highly organized rural communities. Both remained peripheral
groups in the larger national frameworks which have since
experienced rapid industrialization and urbanization.
NOTE
1. Argentina did not take another national census until 1947, so it is impossible to
make an exact comparison between the prairie and pampas populations in 1921and 1931,
when Canada took its next regular 10-year census.
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Carl E. Solberg is Professor of history at the Universityof Washington, Seattle. He

has published Immigration and Nationalism: Argentina and Chile, 1897-1914
(University of Texas Press, 1970), and Oil and Nationalism in Argentina: A History
(Stanford University Press, 1979). His current research project is a comparative
history of wheat agriculture in the Canadianprairies and the Argentine pampas,
1870-1940.


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Peopling the Prairies and the Pampas: The Impact of Immigration on Argentine and Canadian

Agrarian Development, 1870-1930

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PEOPLING THE PRAIRIES

Separated by many thousands of miles and very different

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1975: 34-35). Indeed, Argentina and Canada contained two of the

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Ten Year Period Canadaa Argentina

Totals 933,000 3,957,376

article examines and compares Argentine and Canadian immi-

Government Policies: Immigration and Land Tenure

Although both governments, particularly between 1880 and

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t9a 19Sl4b ~ Average Yearly

Argentina 1,856,490 7,885,237 133,972

Why did Canadian immigration lag so far behind the Argen-

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(Macdonald, 1966: 116). And this campaign presented Argen-

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massive immigration. And the lack of a competing immigrant

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 23:48:42 PM

This fact was of prime importance to the development of

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migrate to Canada. Indeed, some of Canada's leading intellec-

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Regional % of National Regional % of National Average

Pampasc 772,216 42.2 4,227,988 53.6 76,795

Argentine farmers were seldom saddled with large fixed debts.

Immigration and Demographic Change

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clustered primarily along the Paranai River and in the coastal

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SOURCES: Argentina (1916-1917: I, 202); Canada (1933-1936: III, 518-23).

interwar period. Argentine farmers, as a consequence, could

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Country and Immigrants Native Born Total Farmers

Prairie Total 133,159 63.8 75,612 36.2 208,831

Ar, entina (1914)

Pampa Total 73,690 70.5 30,827 29.5 104,517

SOURCES: Argentina (1916-1917: V, 309-16); Canada (1912: VI, 52-229).

INTERNA L MIGRA TION

When Canada acquired the prairies from Hudson's Bay

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SOURCES: Argentina (1916-1917: V, 309-16); Canada (1924-1929: V, 78-9).

from the farming districts of Ontario. This quickly became a

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progress and political participation took deep root in the prairies.

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When Argentine internal migration did take take place, it

Despite the Canadian government's desire to attract British

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Canada 82,194 32.1 88,586 30.7

SOURCES: Canada (1924-1929: V, 78-9); Canada (1933-1936: VIII, ccxi-ccxiii).

If the British hesitated to go to Canada to farm, they positively

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For Argentines, a particularly poignant aspect of British

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AMERICAN IMMIGRA TION

Canada also had access to another group of immigrants that

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SOUTHERN EUROPEAN IMMIGRA TION

In sharp contrast with Canada, immigrants to the Argentine