A factor of American politics which is as serious as the periodical revolutions is the development of the bureaucracy. In the still simple life of the nation the organs of the public administration are complicated in the most exaggerated manner. The budget supports a sterile class recruited principally among the Creoles, who prefer the security of officialism to the conquest of the soil. Energy and hope diminish with the almost infinite increase of the "budgetivores." Foreigners monopolise trade and industry, and {376} thus acquire property in the soil which has been inherited by a race of Americans without energy. A North American observer[1] writes that the great fortunes of the Argentines of American extraction have been made by the ever-increasing value of real estate, and are due to the natural development of the country rather than to their own initiative or enterprise. But the South Americans are on the way to waste these fortunes, and the fortunate colonists from Spain and Italy are gradually replacing them in the social hierarchy. According to a Mexican statesman, Señor Justo Sierra, the government in South America is an administration of employés, protected by other employés, the army. These nations, which are being invaded by active immigrants, are thus directed by a group of mandarins, and if the young men of these countries are not encouraged in commercial and industrial vocations by a practical education the enriched colonists will expel the Creole from his ancient position. A few writers defend the bureaucracy as the refuge, in the face of the cosmopolitan invasion, of the choice spirits of the nation: writers, artists, and politicians. "If foreigners dispose of the material fortune of the country," says a distinguished young observer, Señor Manuel Galvez, "it is just that we others, Argentines, should dispose of its intellectual fortune." A noble idealism, satisfied by an unreal wealth! But from the point of view of the national life this lack of equilibrium is disturbing. In face of the progress of the victorious foreigners who are making themselves masters of the soil, to shut oneself up in a tower of ivory would be the most complete of renunciations. In the organisation of the America of the future we must not forget the suggestions of Caliban. {377} Among the innumerable bureaucrats who devour the budgets there will not always be writers worthy of official protection; they will rather be recruited among an indolent youth, restive under any sustained effort. The encouragement of "choice spirits" must not be confounded with the unjustifiable maintenance of a legion of parasites. The _caudillo_ multiplies functions in order to reward his friends; nepotism prevails in the world of politics. The great political transformations of the future will be due to the development of the common wealth; new parties will appear and the bureaucracy will have to be considerably diminished.