PALPITATING SOCIAL QUESTIONS
_Existence of the Roto Discovered--Mob Rule in Valparaiso--Indian and
Caucasian Race Mixture--Disquieting Social Phenomena--Grievances
against the Church--Transition to the Proletariat--Lack of
Army and Navy Opportunity--Not Unthrifty as a Class--Showings
of Santiago Savings Bank--Excessive Mortality--Need of State
Sanitation--Discussion of Economic Relation--Changes in National
Tendencies--Industrial Policies to Placate the Roto._
In the fabric of Chilean social organization the warp is the
individual unit known as the _roto_. The roto constitutes the mass.
_Pelucon_, aristocrat, is a term transmitted from the old _régime_.
Violent objection is made to its use at the present day on the
ground that there are no privileged classes and that it never had
more than a restricted meaning. But it describes the antithesis
of the roto since his evolution into the proletariat began, and
it typifies a recognized social distinction, so that its use is
permissible. _Pelucon_ comes within the designation of the governing
classes and the one hundred families, and does not require further
explanation.
One morning in May, 1903, the Chilean government and the foreign
residents awakened to the existence of the roto as an organized
element in society, with destructive capabilities and the courage of
destructive tendencies. Disputes with the steamship companies had
resulted in a strike. That morning the mob seized Valparaiso and
took to burning property, pillaging, and killing. It was a wild mob,
but it had perception and direction. It burned the offices of the
Chilean corporation known as the South American Steamship Company,
and undertook to sack one of the newspapers, but it left unharmed
the property of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company, which was a
British corporation. Its grievances against both companies were
the same, but this Chilean mob would give no ground for foreign
intervention.
The authorities were blamed for the demoralization which the strike
developed. It was charged that the forces were at hand to quell the
disorder, and that a firm show of strength would have saved the
hundred lives which were sacrificed before the rioting and sacking
were ended. The inquiry was made why five hundred marines who were
available were not utilized. The sinister reply was that they had
refused to be used, that they had been on the point of mutiny when
it was attempted to use them. They were of the roto class, recruited
from the same ranks as the strikers. The exact truth never got to the
public. The Chilean government vindicated its ability to maintain
order and by the presence of warships and of troops silenced the
clamor of the timid English and French residents who were calling
for cruisers to be sent by their own governments.
Ultimately the strike was adjusted. But the conditions along
the coast as far as Pisagua also were bad. They were especially
threatening at the nitrate shipping-ports. The national authorities
kept a cruiser at Iquique, and moved down from farther north
additional troops. An outbreak of bubonic plague and the practical
cessation of all industry helped to prevent the repetition of the
scenes that had been witnessed at Valparaiso. Yet months afterward
the embers of unrest at Iquique were smouldering, and official
commissions were reporting “remedies for the grievances of the
working-classes.” A chain of trades unions under various names,
coöperative labor societies, mutual aid associations, brotherhoods of
workingmen, seamen’s unions, was in existence. The social question
was the palpitating one. The restlessness of the masses of the
population, including the roto classes, found another exemplification
in October, 1905, when Santiago for a time was under the control of
rioters. The immediate cause was the agitation against the tax on the
importation of cattle from Argentine. Back of it was the old-time
discontent and the feeling that the government was being managed
for the classes at the expense of the masses. The high cost of meat
was something that came home to the bulk of the population, and it
took to rioting, killing, and wounding as well as to destroying
property as the means of showing its dissatisfaction. The rioting
was not stopped until the police had been reënforced by the troops.
A generation ago J. V. Lastarria, the Chilean diplomat and historian,
asserted: “The Chileans are the most homogeneous, most enlightened,
most patriotic, and most united people of Spanish America, and they
know how to use in the most practical and most prudent manner their
political rights.” He also declared that the physical and social
elements of his country explained her salvation from the disastrous
anarchy which the other Republics had suffered and her progress in
all spheres of human activity.
This complacent judgment was not unjust, but in describing his
countrymen Señor Lastarria meant chiefly the higher stratum, the
governing classes. When he wrote, the robust race mixture was yet
going on, the amalgam of peasant northern Spain and of the Basque,
after two centuries of transplantation, with the fierce Araucanian
Indian blood. Not all of the aboriginal amalgam has been Araucanian.
There are ten distinct aboriginal tribes known in Chile, and in
the northern part the mixture has been more that of the Indians of
the historic Upper Peru or Bolivia. All of these tribes have been
habituated to hardship, and the grosser qualities of civilization
have been developed aggressively.
[Illustration: Group of Araucanian Indian Women]
The Chilean lower stratum of to-day is far from the refinements
of civilization. Its vices and its virtues are equally strong.
Among the virtues is native independence. The vices are of crude,
half-conscious brute power, with little restraint of the passions.
Out of the race mixing--the mingling of European blood not always of
the best and the Indian stock, with the Araucanian predominating--has
come the roto. I studied him in various places and under varied
conditions. He is not an individual for parlor-car company, or an
agreeable companion as to the physical senses in a journey in a
second-class train, nor yet so unpromising as usually he is painted.
In the ports he is found as a coast product. He is a longshoreman,
stevedore, boatman. The English word roustabout in a measure helps
to describe the Chilean roto, but insufficiently. It gives too
transitory an idea of the personality. The roto is no wharf rat.
He is a permanent quantity, a fixture in the social fabric of the
State, and he is a trade unionist.
In the agricultural regions the roto class is peon and is not so
marked, but it is the basis of the population. The day laborer in
the towns of the North who has more of the Aymará Indian blood
than of the Araucanian, and who possesses less instinct of class
organization than the longshoreman, also shows discontent. This
_wanderlust_ is one of the characteristics of the Chilean laborer.
He is born a nomad. Even the most highly paid laborers in the
nitrate fields refuse to be content and to stay. They are forever
moving on.
The outcome of the events of 1903 was that Chile discovered she had
a palpitating social question, and began to seek the horizon which
might bound the zone of unrest. Among the social phenomena observed
were the disproportion between the deaths and births, the excessive
child mortality, the emigration of Chilean peons to Argentina, the
constant movement of the migratory mass apparently without aim, and
the popular fever for striking. In these phenomena were discovered
conditions which showed the actual state of the lower stratum, but
the horizon was not complete. The Chilean observers did not note
the phenomenon of the roto’s slow perception of his own power, and
his dawning conviction that there were classes in the State, and
that in some way his class was down in the abyss. He was becoming
a proletariat.
The roto has many qualities in common with the higher classes. His
patriotism is fully as deep. Heretofore he has been willing to fight
at the dictation of the military commander, but the threatened mutiny
of the marines was a warning. At that very time the conscription was
going on, and an uncommon sullenness was shown by the conscripts
in the interior, and a vague resentment against being enlisted to
fight their brothers. This was when the necessity of employing the
army to break the strike was most openly discussed.
In relation to the nitrate fields the roto fails to see that the
high wages at one time prevailing there helped him, and now that
the pay is dictated by the trust his resentment grows. He has a
vivid grievance in the payment of his wages in scrip. In the early
days fortunes were made out of the saltpetre beds by officials and
private individuals who already were comparatively rich. English
parvenus little better than day laborers also gained riches. But
the Chilean laborer developed no successful nitrate operator, no
earner of day wages who became a millionaire. He seems to have been
treasuring this up until the culmination has come and he is asking
the question, How have the nitrates helped _me_? Though he furnishes
the chief revenues of the State and though he is not heavily taxed,
the proportion he bears is not in ratio to his wealthy employer.
This belief, undoubtedly, is one basis of the discontent. It may be
summed up that the roto feels that he is no better off than if Chile
did not draw an enormous income from the export tax on saltpetre.
He also cherishes a grievance against the Church. Heretofore his
devoutness or his superstition has been one of the bulwarks of the
hierarchy. It interfered little with his crude morality, his notions
of private vengeance, or his general conduct in the affairs of life.
In a certain manner he venerated the priest and the symbols of
ecclesiastical authority, and could be depended on to do whatever
was put upon him. But this submissiveness has gone. The Church is
a very large property-owner, and does not pay taxes in proportion
to the burdens of the nation. The proletariat has become imbued
with the belief that its aggressions are directed specially against
him.
This feeling in part may be due to the spread of socialistic
doctrines, though the socialistic propaganda in itself in Chile is
weak. So far as it has a standing, this is because the roto in his
protest finds the movement the only available vehicle of utterance
for his dissatisfaction. He is not socialistic by nature, because
what he takes by brute force from his weaker neighbor he expects to
keep for himself and not to turn over to the vague entity known as
society. The falling away of the roto from the Church is because
of its goods and property which escape taxation, because of the
feeling that his back is bent to the pack in order that a greedy
ecclesiastical power which claims spiritual dominion over him may
exist and pamper its ministers in luxurious idleness.
Another cause of dissatisfaction, which a foreign observer may note
more quickly than a native one, is the feeling of resentment that
there is no opportunity for him in the army and navy. He forever must
be of the ranks. He must fight the battles, but always in inferior
station. The enlisted man never can be anything else. Both army and
navy draw the line as severely as in the most exclusive military
organization of Europe. The common soldier or sailor is clay, a
mud ball, something to be kicked, but never to be recognized as a
human being with aspirations and ambitions. Yet it is the sailors
of this class, as much as the daring commanding officers, who by
their bravery and endurance have given glory to the Chilean navy.
But neither naval commander nor army officer yet realizes that this
clay is beginning to think, and to feel that something is wrong in
the political organization of the State when he who sustains the
State is nothing.
Among the qualities of the roto, whether in the army or the navy or
in the mass of the population, is persistence in his prejudices.
He is not easily changed from that which is taught him. I was in
Santiago during the celebration of the peace pacts with Argentina.
The governing classes and the merchants entered heartily into those
festivities. They knew that the prevention of war by the treaties
had saved the country from bankruptcy, even though war might have
brought territorial extension. But it was noticed everywhere that the
masses took no part in the demonstrations. They either were surly
or indifferent. They had been taught to believe that Argentina was
an enemy with whom they would have to make war and from whom they
would have a chance to take spoils. They could not readily change
about and join in the celebrations of peace.
If the roto in such a persistent manner retains the lesson that
has been taught him, how much greater will be his doggedness in
adhering to his self-taught lesson that something is wrong in the
social order, and that he is the one who is wronged?
In the economic discussion of the social movement, citations will
be made of the lack of thrift on the part of the roto classes, and
their unwillingness to do anything for themselves. This is loose
assumption, which is not warranted. On the seacoast he may be
reckless with his wages, but in the interior this is not true, and
I question myself whether it is true to the extent claimed even in
the seaports. In Santiago the _Caja de Ahorros_, or Savings Bank,
has between 49,000 and 59,000 accounts. The total deposits, as shown
in a late annual report, amounted to $3,625,000. Out of nearly
50,000 depositors, only 355 had balances of $1,000 and more. Of the
depositors under that sum, 1,409 were soldiers; 730 were private
employees; 311, servants; 1,020, students; 342, seamstresses; 255,
merchants; 102, farmers; 144, shoemakers; 67, laundresses; and
3,225 were set down as without profession. Presumably this meant
unskilled laborers. Santiago and its suburbs have a population of
300,000. While the aggregate of the deposits is not great, the very
fact that the Savings Bank carries 50,000 small accounts, and some
of them very small indeed, indicates no lack of thrift on the part
of the mass of the population.
In seeking the horizon of the social question one blot which may
be remedied has been laid bare. This is the excessive mortality. A
cause of the physical sturdiness of the roto who reaches manhood
is undoubtedly to be found in the survival of the fittest. That
brutal doctrine is exemplified in him. He endures harsh conditions
of life, lack of comforts, want of everything that is decent and
helpful, and when he does grow up it is as a robust animal only
half tamed by nature.
The figures on this subject are startling. The annual death rate
has been placed as high as 70 per 1,000 and frequently it is given
as 50 per 1,000. This is correct for the majority of the towns and
cities, but does not apply to the country as a whole. The official
statistics for a period of ten years, which I examined, did not
exceed an average of 35 per 1,000. But even that is nearly double
the normal death rate in temperate countries; and Chile, not being
in the torrid zone, is not subject to yellow fever and similar
tropical epidemics. The figures showed that the birth rate and the
death rate were almost balanced, since the birth rate ranged from
35 to 37 per 1,000. In 1895 the total births reported were 110,000,
and the deaths 92,000, leaving an excess of 18,000 births over
deaths. In 1898 the birth excess was a little larger. But in 1901
the births were 116,000 and the deaths 111,000, giving an excess of
only 5,000. In previous years the births were not larger and even
have fallen below the deaths. In a subsequent year a more normal
condition was shown, the births numbering 115,813 and the deaths
88,607. In the two big cities no natural increase was contributed
to the population. In Valparaiso Province with 243,000 inhabitants,
during a twelvemonth period there were 9,475 births and 9,674 deaths.
One year an epidemic of measles caused frightful ravages. In the
year 1900, in the city of Valparaiso, the births were 5,610 and
the deaths 7,170, and of the latter 2,245 were infants under one
year of age. During this annual period the death rate per 1,000 in
Valparaiso was 54.4. In Santiago Province, with a total population
of 434,000, the births numbered 16,074, and the deaths 17,798. This
excess was due to the city of Santiago, where there were 11,000
births and 12,500 deaths in a total urban population of 262,000.
The mean average death rate is a little higher than in Valparaiso,
though the latter is subject to the vicissitudes of seaports. In a
given year only one city of more than 10,000 inhabitants showed a
death rate of less than 50 for each 1,000. This was Antofagasta,
in which the proportion was 44 out of every 1,000.
Indifference to personal comfort and the inevitable results of
unsanitary living have helped to brutalize the roto, but it is
wide of the mark to say that he prefers this existence. Cleanly
and sanitary living are not so repugnant to him. What he needs is
guidance and example.
On the part of the State there is a remedy for this condition.
University settlements and similar movements for bettering the
condition of the poor through individual initiative are not yet
practicable. In a government where Spanish paternalism is inherited,
hygiene and sanitation are emphatically the province of the State
and of the municipalities which depend on it, since they do not
enjoy a large measure of home rule. A perception of this truth
has been shown in the disposition to treat the roto’s grievances
as a social question rather than as a political issue. When this
perception is translated into definite measures, his discontent with
the existing order will become less menacing. For the government
the lowering of the death rate and the increase of the birth rate
per thousand has both economic and political significance.[13]
13 A cabinet minister was thus quoted on this subject in a foreign
journal:
“‘You may put in the most up-to-date drainage, and introduce the
most admirable sanitary improvements, but you cannot induce the
low-class peons, such as form the bulk of the residents of this
and other Chilean cities, to use them. The housing arrangements of
the poorer classes are simply indescribable, and they live like
animals, crowded together in miserable rooms for which they pay an
exorbitant price. The people--and especially the respectable class
of employees--find it is impossible to secure clean and wholesome
accommodation. Even the smallest rooms in the most unattractive
houses are set out at absurdly high rentals--say from $10 to $15
(15_s._ 10_d._ to 22_s._ 9_d._) a month each room.
“‘Does the Government, then, do nothing to improve or control the
conditions of the poor classes and protect them from the extortions
and ill-treatment of the landlords?
“‘Unfortunately, no kind of sanitary or habitation laws exist at
the present moment; but I have often talked over the matter with
the President of the Republic, and both he and I are determined to
do something, if we can, later on. Things move slowly in Chile, you
know, and, although it may appear rather strange to you, coming
from a European country, Chileans are not accustomed to see, and do
not expect, radical alterations effected in their country. However,
you have touched upon a most important social question, and one
which I have had much at heart myself. Perhaps we may be able to
do something in the direction of improvement.’”
But is the economic and industrial relation of the roto to the
State understood? Yes. How often I heard it discussed, how often I
listened to the assertion made by Chileans, that Chile as a nation
has a rotten core, that the anomaly of a government riotously rich
through a single source of revenue and of a people superlatively
poor, cannot long continue!
I sat through one night with Señor A, and listened to his eloquent
and passionate indictment of his country and of the class of which
he was the exponent, for he was of the ruling families. Another
night it was with Señor B until the sun was breaking, and a third
time it was with Señor C until the lingering _habitués_ of the club
were calling for their morning coffee. The talk ran in the same
vein. The condition of the poor must be bettered. There must be a
change in economic policies; dreams of conquest must be given over;
the national revenues must be devoted to internal improvements;
foreign capital must be encouraged to go into other industries
than the nitrate gamble; the military party must be curbed.
“Then, Señor, there is a military party in Chile?”
“Ah, my friend, there is. Who can deny it?”
The military party was not a partisan organization, for it was only
reflected in the different political groups which were at variance
among themselves as to the details of their programme, though not
as to the main purpose. This was territorial accretion, and the
indefinite application of the nitrate resources for military ends
as the means for continuing the supremacy of the army and navy
elements. The reliance was the aggressive and sacrificing patriotism
which is part of the being of every Chilean, whether high or low;
hence the difficulty of combating it. But it took no thought of
the roto; therefore its weakness.
A series of swift events--some domestic, some international--checked
the militant military tendency. Through the peace pacts with
the Argentine Republic, Chile found the opportunity of freeing
herself from naval expenditures that were weighing her down. In
the construction and control of the Panama Canal by the United
States, her conservative statesmen were enabled to establish the
definite lines of both commercial and political relations with the
other countries of South America. By reason of the acuteness of the
financial and industrial crisis which prevailed in 1903, the depth
of the popular discontent was revealed, and the imperative need of
finding a remedy was disclosed. The roto had to be conciliated,
propitiated, humored, perhaps bamboozled a little, but always
with a view to bettering his material condition. A comprehensive
system of public works, railways, harbors, rivers, roads, and also
municipal improvements, was recognized to be the channel into which
the national income should flow.
It is the slow process of years during which the palpitating
problems sometimes may throb with pregnant intensity, but their
solution progresses in the degree that Chile adheres to industrial
and commercial policies, and recognizes the true function of the
masses in the political and social fabric of the State.