If the different foreign elements
contributed by the Latin peoples
fuse so readily into an Argentine
race, it is none the less true that
Spanish metal bulks the heaviest in the ore.
Language, literature, history, give a bias from
which none can escape. The ancient branch
transplanted to this youthful soil sends up its
shoots towards another heaven, but the original
sap circulates unendingly in the living tree.
The Argentine is not, and firmly refuses to be,
a Spanish colony. It has successfully freed
itself from the historic shackles—those of theocracy,
first of all—which have so disastrously
tied and bound the noble and lofty impulses of
a people eminently fitted to perform exalted
tasks. And hence, notwithstanding a large
alluvion from Italy, symbolised by the monument
to Garibaldi, notwithstanding the growing
influence of French culture, the atavism of
blood preserves an indelible imprint which will
characterise the Argentine nation down to its
most distant posterity.
The visit of the Infanta Isabella on the occasion
of the Centenary Fêtes in honour of the
independence was a happy thought on the part
of the Spanish Government. The Princess, escorted
by M. Perez Caballero, the present
Spanish Ambassador in Paris, was everywhere
received with rapturous enthusiasm. It was
easy to see that the struggles of the past, now
relegated to the annals of the dead, had left no
bitterness in the people's heart. There was universal
pleasure at the graceful action of the now
reconciled parent in thus stretching a hand to
the son who, with impetuous ardour, had thrown
off the yoke of dependence, and the public found
a subtle pleasure in showing that the chivalrous
courtesy which is part of the tradition of the
race had lost none of its flower in this American
land. After the severe measures taken to repress
anarchical violence, a rumour spread that
the life of the President of the Republic was in
danger. Perhaps there was nothing in it. Unfortunately,
it was one of those things that can
only be verified by experience. At all events,
the Infanta Isabella chose to ignore the danger.
With the utmost simplicity, but also with the
utmost courage, she showed herself everywhere
by the side of the Chief of the State, and to
the lasting credit of the Argentine reputation,
everywhere she was greeted with hearty
applause.
Here, then, is a base, immutably Spanish
through all the changes that one can foresee,
together with a fusion and perfect assimilation
of the Latin elements in the immense influx of
European civilisation: such is the first condition
of Argentine evolution to be seen and studied
in the city of Buenos Ayres. To make the picture
complete, we must notice an important
contribution of Indian blood that is very marked
everywhere. I shall return to this later. As for
the national character, since I am only jotting
down a traveller's impressions, and not attempting
to present to my readers a didactic study, it
is, I think, better to allow its features to spring
naturally from the subject under consideration
as we go along, rather than first to make statements
that I must next attempt to prove.
I have already mentioned the extreme kindness
of Señor Guiraldès, the City Lieutenant, who is
for the Argentine capital what M. de Selves is
for Paris. Like our own Prefect, he is appointed
by the President of the Republic, and I may say
that although there are inevitably from time to
time differences with the Municipal Council, the
system has given good results as applied to a
place in which there are so many conflicting
elements. Señor and Señora Guiraldès, like all
the upper class of Argentine society, possess the
most perfect European culture, and they do the
honours of their city with a charming grace
that delights the foreign visitor. Now that I
am at a distance from them, I consider that
I may with propriety pay sincere homage to
their courtesy. Whenever I found I had a little
time to spare I used to telephone to Señor
Guiraldès, who had once for all placed himself
at my disposal. He invariably replied by hastening
to my door, and together we consulted
as to tours of inspection; it was agreed that I
should choose the institutions to be visited so
that there might be no suspicion of collusion.
In this way I was enabled to visit all the State
or municipal establishments that interested me.
When by chance we found some evidence of
official oversight, Señor Guiraldès's satisfaction
was boundless.
"At least," he cried, "you will not tell me
that your call had been announced beforehand."
Then, to check any inordinate vanity, I told
him the tale of an adventure that happened once
to a certain Minister of the Interior who visited
the prison of Saint Lazare.
A ring at the bell.
"I want to see the Governor."
"He has gone up to town."
"Then I will see the chief clerk."
"He is away on leave."
"The chief warder?"
"He is laid up."
"Can I speak to the Sister Superior?"
"She has just gone out."
"Well, are any of the prisoners at home?"
The gaoler, smiling amiably: "I believe so."
Argentine officials, like their French brethren,
are both fallible and zealous, and while it was
impossible that in so many visits there should
be no ground for criticism, yet I am anxious to
declare publicly how admirably kept were the
schools, of whatever degree, the hospitals, asylums,
refuges, and prisons; they were not only
adapted to all the requirements of therapeutics,
hygiene, and the canons of modern European
science, but they showed a genuine effort to do
better than the best. I should have been glad
to have there some of those who make a practice
of disdaining these countries that started
very long after us, but that can already give
us some salutary lessons through institutions
such as those I have named, which are here
brought to a pitch of perfection that is in many
cases unknown with us.
My readers will not expect me to take them
with me round all the establishments that I
visited with Señor Guiraldès. They would fill
a book, and I should need to dip into the innumerable
volumes of reports and notices which
Argentine benevolence added to my personal
luggage. This, however, does not come within
my subject.
None will be surprised that the schools attracted
my attention first. The School Question
is too vast to be handled here in detail. But
I saw professional schools (Écoles industrielles
de la Nation), and primary schools that would
be models in any land. All the arrangements
irreproachable, and the children scrupulously
clean. Demonstration lessons in abundance.
Lessons on the land and its mineral, vegetable,
and animal productions, specimens of each being
passed from hand to hand, accompanied by explanations
summarised in synoptic tables. A
lesson on the anatomy and physiology of the
lungs was illustrated by the breathing organs of
an ox and a sheep (higher primary class for
young girls), which appeared to awaken great
interest among the scholars. Specimens in
pasteboard coloured like life, showing the different
parts of the organism, allow these rudimentary
demonstrations to be carried fairly far.
The primary schools, under the management
of the National Educational Council, are free,
and include the school material obligatory in
theory for children of from six to twelve years
of age. But the population of Buenos Ayres
grows more rapidly than its schools. Hence the
inconvenient expedient has been adopted of dividing
the pupils into two categories, one attending
school of a morning and the other of an
afternoon, with the result that one half the
children are always wandering about the streets
while the others are drinking at the fountain
of knowledge. This is a system that has nothing
to recommend it. It is difficult to understand
why the Argentine capital postpones making
a pecuniary sacrifice which is certainly not beyond
its means, and which is imperatively necessary.
The criticism is the more justifiable in
that untold sums have been spent on certain
buildings which are veritable palaces, as, for
example, the President Roca School. About a
hundred private, lay, or denominational schools,
kept for the most part by foreigners, take in
the children who are crowded out of the public
schools. At Buenos Ayres, as in other parts of
the country, the number of pupils in this category
is far too large. There are provinces where
the deficit of schools is such as to constitute a
real scandal in a civilised
nation.
[12]
I shall never forget the heart-broken tones of
a child of ten whom I met in the Pampas of
the Buenos Ayres province and whom I questioned
as to his occupations.
"I want to go to school. Papa does not want
me to."
The father was a Mexican. The eyes of the
child thus condemned by paternal stupidity to
mental darkness were full of intelligence. How
much trouble we take to make the best of our
land! How apathetic we are when it is a question
of developing the greatest force in the world,
that which sets in motion all the rest—human
intelligence! Is it not inconceivable that in
France, after nearly half a century of labour,
we still find every year a large number of wholly
illiterate men among the conscripts called up to
serve with the Flag? This state of affairs, which
is sad enough at home, would be reckoned a
great success in the Campo, where distances are
such that the children have to go to the primary
schools on horseback, as I have elsewhere mentioned.
But when a school is within reach, the
folly of parents must not be permitted to debar
their children from its advantages.
The municipal and State schools are entirely
undenominational. This rule obtains throughout
the Argentine, where it is accepted without
a murmur. The numerous religious Orders have
their own private schools in virtue of the recognised
principle of liberty of teaching. It might
surprise a European to see that the Catholic
clergy of the Argentine do not attempt to fight
the undenominational character of the public
schools which elsewhere has aroused such violent
hostility. To my mind this cannot be explained
by a want of religious fervour amongst priests
and monks in the Argentine. But circumstances
which it would take too long to explain have
taught the Argentine clergy to make an outward
practice of toleration. If questioned on the
subject, the Argentino will reply: "Our clergy
hold themselves aloof from politics."
And this seems to be the case. The religious
world appears to be no party to political differences.
The social influence of the Roman
hierarchy is none the less powerful on what remains
of the old colonial aristocracy and (with
few exceptions) on the women of the class known
as superior. Practically, the official relations
of Church and State in the Argentine approach
very close to separation.
I shall say nothing of the secondary schools
and colleges, of which I saw but little. They
are placed under the immediate control of the
Minister of Public Instruction. There are no
resident students. This, in the opinion of all,
is the weakest spot in their educational scheme.
Amédée Jacques, one of the exiles of our December
coup d'état, introduced our classical curriculum
into the Argentine, but it met with no
success. Since that time, here, as at home, there
has been strife between the partisans of the
classic and those of modern, or even technical,
education. Great battles have been fought, and
the only result is that the cause of education
has suffered from both parties. The opening of
a French lycée, which I have reason to believe
will shortly take place, may help to restore the
classics to the position which in my opinion they
ought to hold in every civilised country.
In certain branches higher education has made
great strides. Law and Medicine in particular
have a staff of eminent men in their colleges.
Any man who has made his mark in Europe is
sure of a choice audience there, drawn from both
professors and students. I had the pleasure of
being present at the first of Enrico Ferri's lectures
at the Law schools. His subject was
Social Justice. The powerful and glowing eloquence
of the orator was never displayed before
a public better prepared to profit by his lofty
teaching on humanitarian equity.
It is not in vain that so many young Argentines
have made their way to the universities
of France, Italy, and Germany. As soon as I set
foot in the hospitals here I had an impression
that I was in the full stream of European
science, and that the Argentinos were determined
to be second to none in the perfection of their
organisation.
I noticed an excellent bacteriological institute
managed by a compatriot of ours, M. Lignères,
and some agricultural schools that are turning
out a competent body of men for the development
of the Pampas.
The hospitals impressed us very favourably.
The New Hospital for Contagious Diseases,
situated some kilometres from the centre of the
town, comprises a series of model buildings, all
strictly isolated, of which each is devoted to a
special disease. At the Rivadavia Hospital, for
women only, the Cobo wards (for pulmonary
tuberculosis and surgical operations) are particularly
admirable. Everywhere the latest improvements
as regards the appliances for the
patients, the sterilising halls, and operating
theatres, and also as regards surgical appliances.
Nothing has been overlooked that can increase
the efficaciousness of the hospital schools: amphitheatres
for classes, diagrams, specimens, etc.
The laboratories are so luxurious that they
would make our own hospital students envious.
It was here that Dr. Pozzi, our eminent compatriot,
performed in May, 1910, a series of
operations, every one of which proved successful;
while his German fellow-practitioner, whose
scientific acquirements are unquestionable, met
with very different results. The same may be
said of Dr. Doléris, who held a course of demonstration
lessons in Buenos Ayres, and whose
operations were also crowned with entire success.
The Rivadavia Hospital has a fine annexe
of supplementary work: consultations for outpatients,
electro- and radio-therapy, dispensary,
etc. I must also mention the sumptuous recreation-rooms
for the use of convalescents, and the
gardens, exquisitely kept.
In the maternity wards (at Alvear as at
Rivadavia) we find the same care for ultra-modern
comfort, combined with the strictest
cleanliness. I must not forget a very curious
obstetrical museum with diagrams, anatomical
specimens, and a series of admirable preparations
exemplifying the different stages of gestation.
A small cradle should be noticed (a
German invention, I believe), ingeniously attached
to the mother's bed and taken down with
a single movement of the hand. Very happy
instance of simplification. Everywhere—in the
design of the buildings, in the fittings, laboratories,
sterilising- and operating-rooms—the influence
and products of Germany were patent.
On the other hand, the French culture of doctors
and surgeons, masters and pupils, was easily
discernible, and all were greatly indebted to the
classics of our Paris and Lyons Faculties. I
could not see the evidences of this in the hospital
libraries without remembering regretfully the
churlish reception that is given in some of our
hospital schools to modest foreign savants.
At the same time, I will not conceal the fact
that Protection of the most extreme sort flourishes
among the Argentine physicians, who are
very anxious to defend themselves against European
competition. I was told that there are no
less than thirty-two examinations imposed on a
doctor from the Paris Faculty before he is permitted
to write out the simplest prescription for
a gaucho of the Pampas. We may be allowed
to find these measures highly exaggerated.
There is a splendid Asylum for Aged Men
kept by French Sisters of Charity in a condition
of the daintiest cleanliness, and managed by
ladies of the city. The Argentinos claim that
their women are very zealous in all charitable
works. Doubt was thrown recently in the
Chamber on this statement. I am not competent
to judge.
One original institution—the Widows' Asylum—is
a sort of settlement composed of small
apartments of one or two rooms, on a single
floor. In the courtyard opposite the gate is a
small shed, in which is placed a stove for
open-air cooking, possible in this fortunate
climate all the year round. The rents are
very low for widows having more than four
children.
The lunatic colony of Lujan, to which its
founder and manager, Dr. Cabred, has given the
significant name of The Open Door, deserves a
more detailed description. It consists of an
estate of six hundred hectares on the Pacific
Line seventy kilometres from Buenos Ayres, and
here twelve hundred patients are accommodated
in twenty villas—graceful chalets, surrounded
by gardens and containing each sixty patients.
These villas are fitted up with everything necessary
for clinotherapy and balneotherapy, with
fine recreation-rooms. The colony is enclosed
by a line of wire; not a wall, not a wooden fence—everywhere
unrestricted freedom and a wide,
open horizon.
We have erected a monument in Paris to the
memory of Pinel, in which he is represented as
breaking the chains which mediæval ignorance
heaped on the mad inmates of Bicêtre as late as
1793. But if you visit our asylum of Sainte-Anne,
you are tempted to ask in what this
"modern" establishment differs from an ordinary
prison. I hasten to add that in the other
asylums of the Department of the Seine we are
beginning to develop the open-air treatment.
Long ago the system of placing certain patients
out in the country amongst peasant families was
planned and adopted. The Open Door treats all
mental patients, of whatever degree of madness,
on the plan known out here as "work performed
in liberty." In the confusion of cerebral
phenomena the widest freedom is given to the
reflex action of unconscious or quasi-unconscious
life. If a patient has learnt a trade, he finds at
once in The Open Door an outlet for his energies,
for it is with the labour of the lunatics
that the carpentering, masonry, scaffolding, etc.,
of these villas was executed. Those who have
no trade are given a technical education, and
often acquire great skill. The difficulty is to
persuade the newcomer to begin to work. If
he refuses, he is left alone. "He is left to feel
dull." Then he is invited to take a walk, and
once on the spot where work is proceeding, he
is offered a tool that he may do as the others
are doing.
"I have met with only one refusal," said Dr.
Cabred. "One patient tried calmly to prove
to me that life was not worth the labour necessary
to preserve it. I must confess that he
nearly convinced me, and I often try to find the
flaw in his reasoning, though never, as yet, with
success. It is a little hard when the apostle of
lunatic labour is brought to ask himself if the
lunatic who refuses to work is not acting on a
better reasoned conviction than his more submissive
companions. At any rate, he is the only
man in the colony who does nothing. He spends
his time reading the paper or dreaming, without
saying a word. When I go to see him he mocks
at me, declaring that it is I who am the fool,
and, indeed, to support his laziness is not, perhaps,
the action of a sane man."
There is not a strait-waistcoat or a single
appliance for restraint in the whole colony.
Excitement or attacks of violence all yield to
the bath, which is sometimes prolonged to
twenty-four or thirty hours if necessary.
Separate chalets for the manager and his staff,
for the water reservoir, the machinery, laundry,
dairy, kitchens, workshops, theatre, chapel. Outside,
agricultural labour in every form, from
ploughing to cattle rearing. Only the superintendents
who direct the work are sane, or supposed
to be. In spite of this assurance it is not
without alarm that one watches madmen handling
red-hot irons or tools as dangerous for
others as themselves. As may be supposed, they
are not put to this kind of work until they have
been subjected to long trials.
Our visit to The Open Door lasted a whole
day, and still we had not seen everything. From
first to last we were followed by a mad photographer,
who took his pictures at his own convenience
and reprimanded us severely for rising
from lunch without first posing for him. Four
days later a series of photographs, representing
the various incidents of our day at The Open
Door, was sent to me, bound in an album—by
a madman, of course, and sent by another madman
to a person mad enough to believe himself
endowed with reason.
Need I add that we had been received to the
strains of the Marseillaise and the National
Argentine Hymn, performed by a mad band,
which, all through lunch, played the music of
its repertoire! Ever since, I have wondered
why a certificate of madness is not demanded
from every candidate for admission to the Opera
orchestra.
As for journalism, do you suppose that no
room was found for it in The Open Door? The
excellent Dr. Cabred is not a man to make such
omissions. We were duly presented with a copy
of the Ecos de las Mercedes, a monthly paper,
written and published by the madmen of The
Open Door, with the intention, perhaps, of making
us believe that other journals are the work
of individuals in full possession of their common-sense—prose
and poetry; articles in Spanish,
Italian, and French; occasionally a slight carelessness
in grammar and in sequence of thought,
but, on the whole, not wandering farther from
their subject than others.
Finally, to wind up the day's proceedings, we
were treated to a horserace ridden by lunatics.
Sane beasts mounted by mad horsemen, galloping
wildly, by mutual consent, in a useless effort
to reach a perfectly vain end. Is not this the
common spectacle offered by humanity?
Meantime, one honest madman of mystic tendencies,
decorated with about a hundred medals,
pursued us with religious works, from which he
read us extracts, accompanied by his blessing.
I wondered whether this form of exercise was
included in Dr. Cabred's programme, since he
claims to make his lunatics perform all the acts
of a sane community. A similar scruple occurred
to me at noon, when I was invited to
take a seat at a well-spread table.
"Is your cooking done by madmen?" I inquired,
not without anxiety.
"We have made an exception in your favour,"
was the contrite reply.
And now another question arose to my
lips.
"Since you have clearly proved that the mad
are capable of performing any kind of task, will
you tell me why you give yourself the lie by
placing at the head of The Open Door a man
who appears to me in possession of all his
faculties?"
"Yes; that is a weakness," replied the Doctor,
laughing. "But, after all, what proof have you
that I am not literally fulfilling all my own
conditions? Did I not tell you that one of my
patients, who may quite possibly be the most
enlightened of us all, pronounced me a raving
lunatic when I invited him to work? If he is
right, then all is as it should be at The Open
Door."
I did not wish to vex the kindly doctor, who
is the architect of so admirable a monument, but
there was still a doubt in my mind: Was it
possible to give the illusion of freedom to these
madmen by merely suppressing the walls? They
offer no resistance when called to co-operate in
all kinds of open-air labour, and find, if not a
cure, at least relief from their malady in this
simple treatment; but did they really believe
themselves free? I did not ask the question,
for the answer was given by an old French gardener,
one of the inmates of The Open Door,
who, over-excited by our presence there, suddenly
began to rave.
"For twenty-five years," he shrieked, "you
have kept me prisoner here!"
Here, then, was a man whose life was spent
out of doors at the work with which he had been
familiar all his life, and, although no sign of
restraint was visible, he was conscious of imprisonment.
It is true that modern determinism
has reduced what we call our "liberty" to
the rigorous fatality of an organism which leaves
to us merely the illusion of free
will,
[13] while imposing
on us the impulse of some superior energy
that we are forced to obey. Oh, Madness! Oh,
Wisdom! Oh, vacillating sisters! is it indeed
true that you wander hand in hand through the
world?
To whatever philosophic solution our own
madness or reason may lead us, let us hasten
to conclude the subject by stating that The Open
Door is a model establishment, which, thanks to
Dr. Cabred, enables the Argentine to give the
lead to older peoples. I will only add that it
is the rarest thing for a patient to escape (if
I may use so unsuitable a word), since the
natural conditions of the surrounding Pampas
would render life therein impossible; and the
lunatics on the way to recovery who are given
leave of absence to stay a few days with their
friends before being finally set at liberty invariably
return punctually to the colony. Who
can tell if some lunatic, restored to reason,
might not secretly refuse to believe himself
cured, and elect to pass the rest of his days
happily at work under the glorious sky amongst
these peaceful creatures, where the troubles and
worries of the world, with the eternal competition
and conflict which are the scourge of our
"sane" existence, are unfelt and unknown?
Such a case might lead Dr. Cabred to put up
a similar establishment for the wise.
From the lunatic asylum to the prison is not
such a leap as some of us may think. The asylum
lifts out of the relative orderliness that we
have managed to establish in the conditions of
civilised life all those who, by lack of mental
balance, might introduce unbearable disorder.
And might not this elemental definition be
equally applied to the one or the other class
of unfortunates? I beg my reader not to be
alarmed at the fearful gravity of the problem.
If it be true that no philosopher has ever been
able to find a solid foundation for the right that
man has assumed to "punish" his fellows for
transgressing his laws, at least all will readily
admit that, notwithstanding some obvious imperfections,
society has attained to manifest
superiority over the state of barbarism in which
brute force alone rules, and that it is therefore
inadmissible that those who would transgress
the general laws on which society has been based
should be allowed to destroy the fabric so
laboriously built up.
In moving out of its path those who would
live within its pale in defiance of its laws, society
but exercises its natural
right.
[14] The real question
open to dispute is rather the treatment to
be meted out to these rebels. In the primitive
code of the talion nothing was more simple—an
eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth—thou hast
killed; I kill thee. Thou hast inflicted injuries;
I in my turn shall injure thee, and I expect to
deter thee from future crimes by fear of the
pain in store for thee. Such "justice" has the
double advantage of being speedy and readily
comprehended of a rudimentary intelligence as
long as the temptation has been resisted. But
when evil instincts, that none asks of Nature,
have caused the fall of delinquents, the morbid
moral sense, more or less distorted, which urged
them on to violent deeds, makes them conscious
solely of the violence of which they are now
the object, and drives them to take sinister revenge.
Thus they are prevented from exercising
their calmer judgment, from which, by the mere
force of reaction, there might spring a desire and
hope for a new life within the pale of the established
order of things.
And seeing it had been left for 1793—the epoch
of a universal outburst of fraternity, manifested
first by the permanent institution of the guillotine—to
give us in Pinel a man of enough simple
common-sense to break the chains that bound
the mad, is it unreasonable to think that without
freeing criminals (since not even at The Open
Door are the lunatics let loose upon the public)
one might yet seek some system of improvement
and reformation to be applied in the establishments
in which we keep our prisoners? There will
always be some incurables—that is certain; but
because incurables exist in every hospital and
asylum, ought we to argue therefrom that it is
useless to fight against an evil that is beyond
human powers?
The reader may suppose that I should not
have ventured to set down these considerations
of social philosophy without a good reason. The
principles I have thus summarised, at the risk
of wearying those who look only for amusement,
are now held by every criminalist worthy the
name. But since this new conception makes its
way very slowly with even the best-intentioned
of Governments, which are the more strongly
imbued with the prejudices of the masses in
proportion as they are the more impregnated
with the democracy, and since the transformation
of our existing prisons would be very costly,
we have as yet not got farther than the inclusion
of the words "reform" and "amendment"
on programmes that are very far from being put
in execution.
Shall I give an example? It is evident that
the time-sentence must inevitably restore a
prisoner sooner or later to society. Is not,
therefore, the public interest bound up in his
returning with a good chance of leading a
regular life, and not falling back into the disorder
that was the cause of his temporary removal?
And is not the very first condition of
this fresh start the possession of a trade with
sufficient skill therein to ensure some chance of
success? If, then, we can give technical instruction
in our prisons, and at the same time improve
the intellectual and moral standard of the
prisoner; and if, on his discharge, we can place
the man whom society has thus—temporarily
only—removed from its midst, in a position immediately
to earn an honest living, instead of
throwing him on his own resources, to be again
confronted with the same temptations—would
not society in this way infinitely multiply the
sum total of the probabilities that its money
and trouble would have the desired effect? I
think, in theory, this argument will be readily
admitted. Unfortunately, the difficulty is that
it is much more economical to draw an immediate
profit from prison labour than to reverse
the problem and spend more in order to
place an instrument of reform in the hands of
the delinquent, with always, of course, a risk of
failure.
In the United States great progress has been
made in this direction, and if I appear to have
gone a long way round to introduce my readers
to the Central (men's) Prison of Buenos Ayres,
my excuse is that to my mind the Argentine
Republic has far surpassed all that has been
attempted hitherto in this department of work.
And to say truth, I feared that in bluntly and
without comment giving a description of what
I have been permitted to see, I might jar the
spirit of routine that has taken hold of certain
communities, notwithstanding their revolutionary
changes of appellation.
I shall say nothing of the material side of the
place, which very much resembles our own
prisons. The prisoners are locked into their
cells at night, but by day they are told off into
the different workshops which are intended to
perfect them in their own trades or give them
a new one. The wages question is placed on
much the same basis as with us, except that,
the food being more abundant, the men are able
to put aside the greater part of what they earn.
(The diet consists principally of perchero—boiled
beef—the staple article of food amongst
the masses.) Conversation is allowed, but only
in a low voice, and as long as work is not hindered
thereby. Rations are distributed in the
cells by the prisoners themselves, who take their
meals with the door open, and frequently add
a cigarette to the menu. There are books in
every cell, with the essentials of school stationery.
There are fourteen classes and fourteen
masters. All the inmates attend the adult
classes, which include such subjects—in addition
to the theory of their own special technical
work—as history, hygiene, morality, and in each
an examination is held at the end of the year.
Both Governor and masters testify to the general
application of the pupils. The land surveying
class grows with special rapidity, in view
of the constant demand for surveyors in the
Pampas. A vast lecture-hall, which makes a
theatre when required, is decorated with drawings,
casts, and charts by the hand of the pupils.
Lectures are given both by masters and prisoners
when the latter are sufficiently advanced, or
when their former studies have qualified them
for the task. On one occasion M. Ferrero, who
has, I believe, published an account of his visit
to the Central Prison of Buenos Ayres, was
present when a prisoner gave a lecture on
prehistoric America.
"And the old offenders?" I asked as I went
out.
"There are some," replied the Governor, "but
not many. Our system of re-education is powerfully
backed up by the permanent offer of work
from all parts of the Pampas. Moreover, the
greater number of our crimes are what are called
'crimes of passion.' The Italian and Spaniard
are equally prompt with the knife. A large
number of these men have killed their man in
a fit of furious excitement, but they will be
thought none the less of for their 'irritability'
when they return home. Our point of view is
this: Every time a man commits an offence or
a crime, it becomes the duty of the community
to begin, immediately, the work of re-education.
Probably in no country shall we ever do all we
might for the individual offender. But when
one member of the social corporation falls he
must be made over again. This is what we are
trying to do, and I admit it is the greatest joy
to us to see the success of our efforts. I have
seen most of the prisons of Europe. Did you
notice amongst our inmates that expression of
the tracked beast which you find on all your
prisoners? No. Our inmates have one idea
only—to begin life again and to prepare, this
time, for success. This is the secret of that
tranquil, confiding air of good children at their
task which you must have observed on so many
faces; and this, perhaps, takes the place of
repentance, which is not given to all."
"And you are not afraid your comfortable
building will prove an attraction to people
who are at a loss to know what to do with
themselves?"
"That has not happened so far. Such a fear—though
I cannot believe you are speaking
seriously—shows you do not take into account
the superior attraction for every human creature
of liberty."
With that I left, having learnt a very interesting
lesson from the Argentinos, whom so
many Europeans are generously ready to teach.
