Argentina is professedly a protectionist country. It is also professedly Republican, with a philosophic ideal of the greatest good of the greatest number. The two ideas, however, have not achieved a complete harmony. This was perhaps inevitable. Curiously enough, the vital industries of the country have not been favoured in any way by the fiscal system, which has been used to foster exotics and economic growths hardly suited to the conditions of the country. In the Argentine there can be no question of "Back to the Land"; there has never been any departure. But until the present chief of the Department of Commerce began his campaign for a rational tariff, there seems to have been a tacit assumption that factories constituted wealth. That the country should remain permanently agricultural was never advised. It was assumed that it must manufacture, and on this assumption the national policy was directed. As a matter of fact, there was probably no reasoned determination at all. Some industries existed originally before communication was established on the present great scale with the rest of the world. As time went on these suffered from outside competition, and protection was invoked and secured. Other industries were then started speculatively and for them similar protection was granted. If prevailing opinion is of any value, it was even impossible for an industry to succeed except by political jobbery. Even now the evil appears to be very far from removed, and the difficulties experienced by the English Railway companies are partly attributable to this cause. These have consistently refused to bribe, and it may be said that almost without exception they have adhered to this rule. The nearest approach to this form of persuasion is the nomination of influential Argentines to the local board of the company, and the retention of prominent lawyers for nominal services at a fixed yearly fee. Except for this no attempt is made to secure support in congress, and in all probability no payment has ever been made or promised by an English company in return for particular support for a definite proposal. The great privileges which the railways enjoy, especially in the matter of tariff, were granted in pursuit of a declared policy of encouragement to railway enterprise--a policy which no one there has reason to regret, as without it the country would never have emerged from its former lethargy.