This article examines some characteristics of the Argentine business elite between the end of the nineteenth century and the rise of peronismo in the mid-1940s. To do so, it discusses the ideas relating to this theme proposed by Jorge Sábato in his influential study, La clase dominante en la Argentina moderna. Sábato argued that diversification of assets in a wide range of operations constituted the defining aspect of the economic strategy of the late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century entrepreneurial elite. This hypothesis requires revision. Simultaneous investment in various economic activities also characterises other entrepreneurial classes in the Americas and in Europe, and for this reason does not offer a convincing account of the peculiarities of the Argentine bourgeoisie. Sábato paid little attention to what in more traditional accounts distinguishes the Argentine proprietor class (and, in addition, the economy as a whole) from its counterparts in other parts of the world: its privileged ties to land and to rural production. However, analysis of probate records confirm this picture, especially for the turn-of-the-century elite.