In the Provinces the proceedings were rougher and readier; the comparative smallness of the communities enabling the Police Commissary to know the political views of all persons in his district. Did a would-be opponent of the ruling powers heave in sight, he was hustled as if to make room for others who had arrived before him, and if he were still foolish enough to persist in trying to vote he was arrested for making a disturbance, and locked up till the election was over. The Provincial Police Authorities could hardly be blamed for their share in this scandal, because the successful conduct of elections was really a _sine qua non_ condition of their tenure of office. Failure meant for them being almost immediately superseded. In Uruguay, no matter whether Reds or Whites (the two great political parties) were in power, the rural population, the true backbone of the agricultural country, were perennially in opposition: because they found that the atmosphere of the capital somehow or another always infected their rulers with ideas of government which, however splendid they might be in theory, were more often than not quite out of harmony with, and often contradictory to, practical agricultural needs and conditions. Thus, to cite an instance often referred to in this regard, it is not long since a German agricultural expert, specially imported with the best of intentions by the Government, showed them that wheat allowed to mature for a while in stacks had a greater commercial value in Europe than that thrashed simultaneously with reaping and shipped immediately. This is, in itself, undeniable fact; from which, however, the Uruguayan Government drew the conclusion that it would be well to pass a law making it obligatory, under penalty for not doing so, on every farmer in the country to stack all his wheat for a certain period before sending it for export. This proposal naturally raised an outcry throughout the country. Because a practice which presents little practical inconvenience and much advantage in an European country, where small wheat fields and a more or less damp climate are the rule, would be monstrously ridiculous in a land where grain is grown by the square league, and where, accidents of weather apart, the standing crops are well dried by the sun. Just imagine the enormous expense involved in stacking wheat over such vast areas as are covered by cereals in the River Plate countries. In which countries, moreover, the greatest of all difficulties in the way of production is the scarcity of labour! The stacking method would cost vastly more than the difference in the value between stacked and unstacked grain. Needless to say, this brilliantly conceived law was never passed; but the idea of it stands as an example of the doctrinaire tendencies of Montevidean statesmen of which the rural industries complain.