There is happily no need to be greatly pessimistic on this point, as we can already perceive a tendency to the subdivision of property, which comes from the powers of the State as well as from land-owners or commercial companies. Thus the land law of 1907 was passed solely with the object of preventing large monopolies; it prohibits the acquisition for the benefit of a single person of any portion of the national domains of greater area than 6170 acres. The importance of this step will be understood, when we remember that the State has still to dispose of 212 millions of acres of desert land, suitable for agriculture, and situated in territories which are rapidly becoming peopled. On the other hand, there are certain business concerns which, as owners of enormous tracts of land, are dividing them into small lots, which they are offering freehold to prospective farmers at fairly moderate prices, and facilities of payment are offered at the same time. Among these firms we may mention the “Sociedad Anonima la Curumalan,” owning some 600,000 acres of land in the southern portion of the Province of Buenos Ayres, suitable both for cattle-raising and for agriculture, which is selling land at from £2, 2s. to £3 per acre, according to the quality and the situation, payable in three or four years; the payment by instalments being increased by an interest varying from 7 to 9 percent. yearly. The “Stroeder Colonisation Society,” which has exploited a large belt of agricultural country; the “Compañia de Colonisation del Rio de la Plata;” the “Estancia y Colonia Trenel,” founded by the great Argentine land-owner, Antonio Devoto, and a large number of other companies and syndicates are working on the basis of enabling the colonist to acquire his own land, and are doing successful business. A striking example of progress in this matter of the subdivision of property is furnished by the statistics of the Province of Córdoba for the years between 1898-1899 and 1905-1906. During this period 3,193,600 acres of land, out of a total of 9,823,300 acres, which represent the colonies and settled land of the province, have been sold to farmers; that is, nearly a third. Thanks to this subdivision, the number of colonists in this province who have become the actual proprietors of larger or smaller holdings has risen to 4568. What is happening in Córdoba is also happening more or less rapidly in the other agricultural provinces; and it is by this method that the Argentine will one day succeed in abolishing the _latifundia_, whose progressive disappearance is a condition of further development.