IMMIGRATION. The chief cause of Brazil's backwardness is its lack of a skilled, intelligent, industrious population. Nothing is more natu ral, therefore, than that the Brazilian Govern ment should try to attract European immigra tion by offering the immigrants abundant land to settle on. The immigration laws of Brazil, like those of Argentina, were drafted solely with that end in view, but have never been carried out with the persistency or ability which has marked the policy of the Argentinians, and there fore have not been crowned with the same degree of success. From the earliest time most of the im migration into Brazil came from Spain, Portugal, and Italy. The German immigration which be gan in 1825 soon reached considerable propor tions under the fostering care of the Hamburg `Kolonisationsverein,' so that by the end of the seventies there were from 150,000 to 200,000 Germans in the country. These people were at tracted to the southern States of Brazil—Rio Granule do Sul. Santa Catharina, and Silo Paulo— where the Government offered them, in addition to free transportation from Europe to the place of destination, from GO to 125 acres of land per family and furnished provisions, implements, and seeds until the time of the first crop. The land was not given free to the settlers, but sold at the low price of from $1 to $2 per acre, to be paid to the Government in from seven to ten years. The object of the Government in settling the southern States was not only to increase the population in the most thinly settled parts of the country, but to create a European population capable of raising European agricultural products in the region best adapted for that purpose. That would create a cheap food-supply for tire more northern States, which could then be entirely devoted to the cultivation of the more valuable tropical crops of coffee, sugar, etc.
The plans succeeded so well that the Govern ment was soon afraid of the preponderating in fluence of the German population in the south, and began to favor the immigration of Italians the newly arrived immigrants in road-building on the land which they were to settle. This naturally led to a decline in immigration, since the newcomers found it difficult, if not impossi ble, to save enough from their small earnings as laborers to buy land and cultivate it. In 189t
the Government enacted a new colonization law favoring colonization by strong financial com panies willing to invest large sums of capital for the purpose. Any company could purchase from the Government great tracts of land at twenty cents per acre, which they were to resell to colo nists whom the companies were to bring into the country at their own expense. The Government was to pay the companies a subsidy of $230 for each family brought in, and $700 additional for each mile of road laid out. The terms of the ROW law were so favorable that companies im mediately formed and secured concessions for more than 150.000 square miles of land. But the political troubles which set in in 1893 put an end for the time being to all financial aid to im migration by the Govermnent. In all, the Gov ernment spent about $25.000,000 on immigration until 1890. The total immigration in the decade of 1880-90 amounted to nearly -100,000. In 1890, it was 107,000: 1891, 217,000; 1895, 170,000; 1898, only 5.1,000.
EbucATIoN is in an extremely backward state, especially in the interior of the country. Pri mary instruction is free, and every parish is supposed to possess one teacher for boys and one for girls, but in fact, the number of pupils at tending the elementary schools constitutes but a very small fraction of the population of school age. The percentage of illiteracy for the entire nation is over eighty. In the cities on and near the coast tire level of general culture is much higher, for they contain all the institutions of secondary and higher learning controlled by the Federal Government. At Rio de Janeiro are the two high schools, known jointly as the Gymnasia Nacional. There are schools of medicine at. Ba hia and Rio de Janeiro, schools of law and politi cal science at Silo Paulo and Pernambuco, four military schools giving courses in civil engineer ing. a naval academy. a polytechnic school. a school of mines, a number of agricultural schools, a conservatory of music, and an academy of tine arts. The larger cities have museums and li braries, and the National Library at Rio de Janeiro has a magnificent collection of printed volumes, manuscripts, and iconographical exhib its. numbering, in all. over 525,000 pieces.