The Argentine organization is under the direct control of the Ministry of Agriculture[40]; an indefatigable Government Department the immensely wide sphere of whose work is ever increasing; Division being added to Division as need arises from the ever-increasing number of the branches of National Industry, whether agricultural or not. For instance, it is only quite lately that anything like complete official statistics have been obtainable in relation to internal manufactures. The country regarded itself, as it was regarded abroad, as purely agricultural in the broad sense including Live Stock production. Now these statistics are regularly issued by the “Division of Commerce and Industry” so admirably directed and watched over by Señor Ricardo Pillado; a veteran the list of whose valuable economic services to the State dates from the financial renaissance which followed the disastrous year 1891; in which renaissance he played a very leading part. Señor Pillado was largely instrumental in the devising and carrying into execution of the drastic financial remedies rendered necessary by the culminating abuses of the Juarez Celman regime; and it is to his practical and patriotic genius that the Argentine statistical diagrams and many other statistics of that country reproduced in this book owe their existence and annual reappearances in the simple and striking forms which is their very salient feature. THE DEVELOPMENT OF ARGENTINE AGRICULTURE, 1896-1913 CULTIVATED AREAS IN HECTARES[41]