At the same time it must be owned that the existing railway policy protects the countries now under discussion from many of the greater evils of local land booms and speculation in Town lots; which in early North American days often left little but disillusionment as the share of inexperienced speculators and paved the way for equally disastrous railway competition. In Argentina and Uruguay, particularly in the former Republic, the great Railway Companies form something really very like the _Imperium in Imperio_ that the Argentines say they do. Their General Managers are quite as much diplomatic Ministers Plenipotentiary as they are actual Managers of railroads; and, consequently, require qualifications of which the chiefs of even our greatest British systems have no need. The work of a General Manager of a great River Plate railway system lies a good deal at Government House and with the leading men and politicians of the country. He must know how best to protect the vested interests of his Company and to pave the way for new developments in competition with newly arrived applicants and existing competitors. For such purposes he must combine firmness, serenity in protest if need be, with urbanity and the power to be all pleasant things to all men whose good-will is or may possibly be of use to his Company. The slight diversion of a projected new line is a small price to pay for the easy passage through Congress of the scheme of a whole important extension. A scheme which may menace the aspirations of an existing competitor or an expectant rival concessionnaire; either of whom may also command some “influence.” All this, however, however true, is a digression from the question under immediate discussion, namely, to what extent the railway has been a cause or an effect of the spread of agriculture in the River Plate. The real answer to this question appears to be that both the railway in these countries and the agriculture have inter-aided and are inter-dependent on one another in the inevitable development of a prosperity fore-ordained by a prodigality of natural endowment.