Not only has the National Government fostered large systems of irrigation
in and given irrigation to this Province, but it has also run a railway
connecting the City of San Juan with the Federal Capital; thus providing
another outlet for its grapes, wines and other produce.
An instance of the former commercial apathy of San Juan, and of its
neighbour Mendoza for that matter, was, not long ago, to be found in the
manner in which the growers of table-grapes allowed themselves to be
continually and methodically jockeyed by the fruit ring of Buenos Aires.
The worthies composing this ring were low-class, ignorant men, who
could only grasp the possibilities of monopoly and market rigging on a
very small scale. Their simple method was to put only a certain limited
quantity of fruit each week on the retail markets of the Federal Capital
and to charge exorbitant prices therefor. To the poor, three-quarter
Indian, ignorant people of the islands of the Paraná they said that
Buenos Aires did not care much for peaches, and so they only went there
once a week or so to fetch a few, at miserable prices, for market. The
rest of huge crops were left to rot on the trees. San Juan (and Mendoza)
were evidently given to understand that a similar situation existed in
regard to grapes.
How this could have been so is hard to understand, except on the ground
of extreme apathy on the part of the Provinces concerned, for lots of
vineyard owners live at least half the year in Buenos Aires, and could
have told of the scarcity and high price of fruit in that city.
However this may have been, the fact remained that so many kilos of
table-grapes, and no more, went down to Buenos Aires in specially
constructed trucks placed on the B.A.P. trains three days per week. Until
the General Manager, Mr. J. A. Goudge, decided to act in the better
interests of the Provinces concerned and, incidentally, also in those of
his company, by running grape trains six days a week.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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