_Caneros_ and mill-owners have had to work together to settle the problem of labour. There was not enough at hand, and it had to be recruited elsewhere. Agents were sent all round--to Catamarca and Santiago del Estero, and even to the province of Cordoba--to collect and bring gangs of workers. They were a mixed, unsteady, undisciplined lot. The owners of the works advanced them money in order to keep them, and then, fearing to lose the money advanced, would not dismiss them for laziness and irregularities. These troubles are not felt as much now as they were at the time when the industry was expanding. The population of immigrant workers has settled down and taken root. Besides creoles it includes a small number of Italians and Spaniards; but while the creoles have been definitely incorporated in the sugar industry, the European immigrants use their savings to buy a bit of land and take to farming. In normal times Tucuman has all the labour it requires, but the harvest always compels it to seek help in other provinces. In May and June the agents, well supplied with money, set out for the Salado, the districts round the Sierra d'Ancasti, etc. The temporary attraction of Tucuman at this season is felt over a considerable distance. At Santa Maria, on the far side of Mount Aconcagua, 600 people--men, women, and children--emigrate for five months, and live on the cane-fields. The merchants of Santa Maria make them advances, in the name of the refiners, to the amount of about sixty piastres per worker. Further north the Tucuman _enganchadores_ come into collision with those from Salta and Campo Santo, and they divide the available labour between them. Some of the temporary immigrants settle down permanently every year, and swell the normal population of the sugar industry.