Faith in the progress of the country had grown much firmer through the fact of the peaceful presidential election. People trusted in personal and property guarantees, and the rural industries, using wire fences to enclose pastures, passed from the nomadic and route systems which the cowboy had opened up to civilization. But the adventurous element of the low class, result of the mixed races, and composed of uncultured men, asserted their rights to political equality, stirred up provincial revolutions and uprisings in the city of Buenos Aires, placing again in constant uncertainty industry and commerce and checking immigra tion. Yet through it all the new modes of communication and the work of Sarmiento little by little made stable the growth of civili zation.
As a result of wars and revolutions the scourge of cholera for two years decimated the country and an epidemic of yellow fever, brought from Brazil, in its turn for a third time destroyed the population on the banks of the Plata, whose death rate remained for years about 45 per thousand. In 1873 the population of the city of Buenos Aires was about 220,000, almost all whites; the whole population of the country was about 2,000,000, nearly a third part of them half-breeds. Stability of money was impossible, and the Provincial Bank closed its office of exchange. The wars of independ ence, revolutions and uprisings during the period of anarchy and tyranny, the war with Paraguay and the civil wars had reduced con siderably the masculine part among the creoles half-breeds, and negroes, so that the feminine clement made alliances with the European im migrants.
But the foreigner, who was indifferent to the quarrels of the political leaders and to the depreciation of paper money, which had fallen the ratio of 30 to 1, entered heartily into agriculture which had recently shown unusual results, and the political leaders became uncer tain of a field for their propaganda, warlike and personal.
Withal they had to solve the problem of the capital, tip to that date provisionally located in the city of Buenos Aires, which was also the capital of the province of the same name. In 1880, because of the presidential election, the national government, which was beginning to organize its small army in the conquest of the desert, reducing the nomadic tribes which existed in those regions, and which had tended the railroads to the distant provinces, and increased the schools, was violently pelled by the government of the province of Buenos Aires, which, with the help of the preponderant in the city of Buenos Aires, party preponderant by ex-President Mitre, resisted the entrance of the national forces. After many
bloody combats, however, the national forces triumphed and fixed forever the national capi tal at Buenos Aires.
The government of Buenos Aires province removed its capital in 1882, founding the city of La Plata on the banks of the river of that name, 57 kilometres from the city of Buenos Aires. The founding of this city of La Plata cost $30,000,000.
After the Paraguay War the two political parties ceased to exist. This gave rise to the founding of personalistic parties named for their leaders. After having lost the city of Buenos Aires in 1880 the party of Mitre re treated from the electoral struggle, and their chief, General Mitre, devoted himself to litera ture and high politics, becoming a famous fig ure in the nation, and popular with the masses, on account of his daily paper La Nation, which united the characteristics of the English daily and French review. The electoral withdrawal of the Mitristas gave opportunity to the party of Federal origin, which was under the trot of General Boca, who was then President of the republic, to take possession of all gov ernment positions, both national and provin cial.
Chile, having defeated Peru and taken from it the provinces of Tacna and Arica, now raised the question of the boundaries along the ridge of the Andes. Being short of squadrons and provisions to defend the desert coast of Patagonia and the valleys of the Andes, the Argentine government ceded a part and recog nized the claim of Chile to part of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego; and by common agree ment both governments left out the surveying of the boundaries of the land, thus allaying fears of a new war.
Although in the hands of the party of Fed eral origin and under a Federal Constitution, the national government adopted as its own the program of centralization laid down by Rivadavia, the founder of the Unitary party, and continued somewhat the work of progress begun by Sarmiento. It secured another loan from the Baring Bank for $12,000,000 gold, at the rate of 90 per cent and at 1 per cent interest, to be used in railroad extension. Two years later, in 1882, it obtained another loan of $9,000,000, gold, at the rate of 84 per cent and 5 per cent interest, to found a na tional bank, and immediately Parliament au thorized another loan of $20,000,000, gold, for public schools.