The period of _economic development_ is as yet of only fifty years’ duration: it is far from having reached the limit of its evolution; but we may judge of the amplitude which that evolution has already attained by means of statistics,[4] and by them we may foretell what the future holds in promise. [Footnote 4: The more recent figures cited in this Preface are taken, for the most part, from _The Statesman’s Year-Book_.] The population, estimated in 1861 as being 1,375,000, had by 1907 increased to 6,210,000. Immigration, varying from one period to another according to the economic condition of the European nations and the Argentine Republic, reached an annual average of 13,400 from 1860 to 1869: between 1903 and 1908 it amounted to 211,000 (emigration not being deducted.)[5] [Footnote 5: This emigration amounted to an animal average of 93,000 between 1903-1907; but the deduction was not made in the years 1860-1869. In 1907 there were 209,000 immigrants and 90,000 emigrants.] The area cultivated in 1895, the date of the first serious estimate, was 5,256,160 acres, of which 2,013,000 acres were under wheat;[6] in 1909 34·6 million acres were cultivated, of which 14·8 millions were in wheat. These 34·6 millions are only a small fraction of the 256 million acres which the Argentine appears to contain. [Footnote 6: The cultivated area was estimated at 849,000 acres in 1872.] The grain harvest, estimated in 1878-1881 at barely 400,000 tons, exceeded a million tons in 1895, and in 1907-1908 amounted to 5,523,900 tons, or 204,384,000 bushels. Although the bovine and ovine races have not greatly increased in numbers for the last twenty years, on account of the transformations effected by agriculture,[7] the exportation of wool, which was 660,000 quintals in 1869-1870, was nearly 2,000,000 in 1905, and it still amounted to 1-1/2 millions in 1907; the exportation of beef, reckoned in carcasses, was more than 60,000 head in 1900 and 463,000 in 1907. [Footnote 7: In 1875 an approximate estimate gave 13-1/2 millions of horned cattle and 57-1/2 millions of sheep; in 1907 the figures amounted to 25,844,000 and 77,580,000.] The first section of railroad was constructed in 1857. In 1865 the Republic possessed only 154 miles of railroad; in 1908 there were 14,643 miles. In 1865, the first year of which we have commercial statistics, the foreign trade amounted to £11,300,000; in 1907, it reached £113,000,000, and in 1908 £127,600,000. For several years there has been a very large excess of exports over imports; in 1908 it would seem to have exceeded £20,000,000.