Pursuing their investigations, the Japanese Commissioners discovered that the great difficulty in the way of a direct trade between the Argentine and Japan consists in the fact that there is no direct line of steamers; but this obstacle might be overcome by an arrangement with the Toyo-Yusen-Kaisha Company, which would establish a direct service to Buenos Ayres _via_ Cape Town in forty-five days; at present the voyage takes seventy days. This arrangement would lead to a reduction of 75 per cent. on the freights. Flattering, however, as the prospects of this new market may seem, there is one item in the plan of the Japanese Government which gives rise to considerable reflection on the part of our Argentine statesmen: namely, the proposal to introduce Japanese agricultural immigrants into the Argentine; that is, immigrants whose presence would in many ways be inconvenient; against whose presence the United States and other countries have reacted, and whose very presence in the Argentine would be contrary to the sense of the Argentine Constitution, which imposes upon Congress the duty of encouraging _European_ immigration. In concluding this study of the foreign trade of the Argentine Republic and its remarkable development, we cannot do better than quote the enthusiastic words by which an Argentine statesman terminated a study of the same question, thus summarising all the various elements which concur in the development of the commercial activity of the nation: “Despite the scanty population, and the small proportion of our agricultural resources which has as yet been exploited, the production of the Argentine is considerable. The herds grazing in our pastures show the state of progress which stock-raising has attained; the harvests which cover the plains of Santa Fé and Buenos Ayres have made the name of the Argentine Republic known on the markets of Europe as that of a flourishing agricultural country; sugar, the product of the cane-fields of Tucuman, has enriched that Province and the national industry, and very shortly the vines grown in the valleys of the old Province of Cuyo will achieve a yet wider development, and will give still more abundant vintages. “The smoke-stacks of manufacturers overlook many of the cities of the Republic, and certain native products are now being transformed, as raw material, into finished articles by the nation’s labour. Industries based upon the vitality of our production, and supported by the public powers solely in a rational and equitable degree, are developing themselves without being forced to resort to the exaggerated and always mistaken assistance of an excessive protectionism. In short, our foreign trade, upon whose promising results we have already commented, will in its turn fortify the economic organism, which is the basis of the welfare and the power of nations.”[83] [Footnote 83: See _Memoria del Departamento de Hacienda_, by T. M. Rosa, 1899, vol. i., p. 170.]