the desert alone, or with a single companion, hunting for rich veins of
copper ore, a good living at least was the rule; when the discovery of a
considerable deposit warranted the introduction of simple machinery, a
few employés, transport animals, etc., many little and big fortunes were
made. The buyers and smelters of last century also earned satisfactory
returns. But, curiously enough, the huge organisations utilising immense
masses of lower-grade ores, employing thousands of men and most modern
machinery, with smelters at the mining camp, are generally stated to be
run at a loss. There are reasons why such statements should be accepted
with reserve, but looking at the matter purely from a Chilean angle it
is at least questionable whether an industry which yields nothing to the
national treasury in the way of export dues upon the mineral shipped
out, and which draws many thousands of men from agricultural zones to an
isolated and entirely artificial life under conditions tending to lower
the standard of citizenship, has a sound _raison d’être_. Possession of
the large Chilean copper deposits, whether operated at all, or operated
without profit, does however enable a group of powerful interests
controlling copper in North America to control also the copper markets
of the world: for after North America, Chile is the scene of the
greatest identified copper areas, the two series of mines together
producing over 60 per cent of the total international output.
At the present time, that is to say, at the end of 1921, the situation
in Chile with respect to copper is briefly this: there still exists,
throughout the copper-sown regions of Coquimbo and Atacama provinces, a
diminishing number of small mines following rich veins of the ore. Some
of these are little more than holes in the ground, others are worked by
organised companies with good machinery, housing several hundred workers
and owning their own system of transport, as the Dulcinea mine in
Copiapó. But almost everywhere the rich lodes, containing anything from
8 per cent of copper upwards, are disappearing; they have been hunted
for centuries, and although scientific examination of these immense
regions would no doubt reveal many unsuspected rich deposits, the
accessible mines have been worked out to a considerable degree.
No more striking example of the rise and fall of a copper mining centre
is to be seen in Chile than at the deserted city of La Higuera. It lies
just off the road leading from La Serena (Coquimbo) to the iron mountain
of El Tofo, upon a tiny thread of a stream trickling from the steep and
tumbled mountains. The city lies in the shallow cup of an immense
hillside, a patch upon the sandy and orange waste; numbers of black
dumps mark the sites of old copper mines, a score of chimneys stand
among the silent machinery of abandoned mines. At least a thousand
houses make, from a distance, a brave showing.
But at the approach of the infrequent visitor in automobile or on
horseback, the houses are seen to be windowless, empty; nothing moves in
the sun but a stray cur or two, until presently an old woman with a
child at her skirts peeps from a makeshift shelter. The whole place is
dead; not an engine is working, not a gang of workers moves upon the
great spread of properties. The exhaustion of rich veins, difficulty of
competition with metal produced at less expense in a fallen market,
coupled with tangled litigation, has brought back silence to this
strange spot in the mineral-strewn mountain spurs that here crowd down
almost to the sea.
The day of La Higuera is not long past; the mines of this
extraordinarily rich region were actively productive during the present
century. But a similar fate has already closed down very many smaller
groups of mines, as it closed down smelters from Arauco to Antofagasta.
In the prosperous days of the industry last century, when Chile was the
greatest copper-producing country in the world, a big fleet of sailing
ships, copper-bottomed, fast, with a famous list of captains, voyaged
constantly between Swansea and the Chilean coast by way of Cape Horn,
bringing British coal and merchandise and returning with bar copper or
rich ores. A whole colony of Welsh set up the first scientific furnaces
in Herradura Bay, just outside Coquimbo Town, and at a dozen points the
little smelters of Copiapó and Coquimbo were busy; simple methods were
used with profit, and many Chilean residents recall the time when the
stem and stalk of the _cardón_ were always used to obtain a fine clear
fire when annealing copper.
_El Teniente and Chuquicamata_
The most spectacular of the large copper mines in operation today in
Chile is that of El Teniente, situated on the rim of an ancient crater
of the Andes east of Rancagua, the nearest main line railway station.
Sewell, the little town of mining employés, is connected with Rancagua
by the private line of the Braden Copper Company, 72 kilometres in
length, climbing from Rancagua’s altitude of 513 metres, or about 1600
feet, to the mining camp’s height above sea level of 2140 metres, or
some 7000 feet, on the side of a terrific gorge in a tangle of rocky
mountain shoulders and peaks. The main ore bodies lie above the site of
the town and plant at altitudes ranging from 9000 to 11,000 feet, one
peak, El Diablo, on the crater’s edge, rising to 13,000 feet.
[Illustration: Sewell Camp at Night.]
[Illustration: Sewell (El Teniente Copper Mines) near Rancagua.]
The amount of copper ore found in masses on the circular rim was
calculated at the beginning of 1920 as 174,500,000 tons of 2.45 per
cent, with (probably) 92,000,000 tons of 1.91 per cent ore in sight,
with, in all probability, other large deposits in the vicinity. The main
body now under exploitation yields a low-grade ore containing an average
of 2½ per cent of copper in the form of sulphides. The ore is brought
down to the plant by a railway line protected by sheds from the deep
snow falling and standing for six months of the year; is crushed very
fine, treated by the oil flotation system about which so much litigation
has raged, and smelted by three processes during which the copper is
freed from sulphur and iron. A small quantity of gold and silver remains
in the bars shipped to market. Crushing 5000 tons of ore per day, a
production of 100 tons of bar copper is at present possible; plans are
also under way for new mills at a snow-free site on the railway line to
Rancagua, at a spot where the junction of the Coya and a canal from the
Cachapoal River forms a waterfall of 422 feet, yielding hydraulic power
sufficient for the generation of 40,000 H.P. A new power house recently
completed, on the Pangal River, another nearby Andean torrent joining
the Cachapoal and Coya, adds to the equipment by which the Braden
Company contemplates 10,000 tons of daily crushing, operations which
should result in the production of over 70,000 tons of bar copper each
year. Paralyzation of international markets has so far checked the
materialisation of these plans, and during 1921 the plant was operated
at no more than half its capacity. The most prosperous year which the
mine has had so far was that of 1918, when El Teniente produced nearly
35,000 metric tons of bar copper, out of the Chilean total production of
rather more than 102,200 tons: a year later, 1919, the Braden Company
sold and shipped only 10,000 tons of bar copper.
Rancagua, a somnolent little town lying about 70 miles from the Pacific,
has no direct rail communication with the sea, and derives what
liveliness it possesses from its position upon the main line to
Santiago, its chief market, and as the terminus of the Braden Company’s
electrically-operated line to El Teniente or rather to Sewell—which has
an older name, Machalí. At times the activity resulting from the mine’s
access to this town, and this town alone, is regarded without any
pleasure by the townsfolk, for when strike trouble occurs there is
likely to be a descent of discontented workmen and families. Such an
occasion occurred at the time of the disorders at the end of 1919, when
an army of expelled men with their families walked down the narrow track
from Sewell to Rancagua, and although the journey of 72 kilometres
occupied some three days, and the spirit of the strikers was reduced by
their experiences, Rancagua was alarmed and embarrassed by their
presence.
A curious mixture of workers finds its way to this and other mining
camps of Chile. The bulk consists of the hardy Chilean himself,
concerning whose good qualities no employer of intelligence and feeling
has any doubts: he is strong, trustworthy, kindly—but can be roused by
drink or anger to violence. Treated well, he is the best element among
massed groups of workers. But side by side with the genuine and sound
Chilean is not only the malcontent roaming from north to south, from
camp to camp, according to his own will or the exigencies of the Ley de
Residencia, but the “hard case” from half a score of different
countries. The mines are refuges for every variety of man who is down
and out: they offer fertile ground for the sowing of Bolshevik
propaganda or the seed of the I. W. W. of California, whose flag has
been seen more than once flaunted in Chilean streets. The curious
artificial life of the camps, with its poor rewards, the lack of healthy
recreation, of the sight of the horizon, of birds and fields and
flowers, of any interest at all but that of daily toil, lends itself to
the development of grievances.
From Rancagua to Coya the line is open to the public, the pleasant and
famous Baths of Cauquenes lying in the deep green gorge of the Cachapoal
River followed by the track. Casual visitors to the camp at Sewell are
however not encouraged: there is a wary eye kept upon possible purveyors
of such forbidden joys as alcoholic liquors. El Teniente is as “dry” as
managerial care can make it, but the fact that 1200 to 2000 bottles of
whisky and brandy are seized every year by the camp detectives without
putting any end to the attempts of the _guachucheros_ (bootleggers)
appears to prove that enough liquor gets through to make the business
pay. Despite this lack of welcome to the unintroduced stranger, however,
Sewell is hospitable to the visitor, and any accredited person receives
pleasant courtesies.
The rail automobile which takes such visitors from Rancagua to the camp
offers by far the most agreeable form of travel; the bright green fields
and sub-tropical verdure of the sheltered plain country gives way to
deep folds of mountain spurs, and presently, rising into colder air,
vegetation is reduced to a few hardy shrubs and mosses, and the violet
and tawny shoulders of the Andes rise from the banks of the racing
river. When I visited El Teniente the mountains were bare; their rocky
sides, steep, incredibly scored and peaked, took on at sunset and dawn
brilliant hues of rose and flame; but before I left the first snow fell,
transforming the whole country in a single night. A thick blanket filled
the crevices of the sheer rocks, black ridges and points alone emerging;
the piled tenements of the miners, clinging like birds’ nests on the
face of a cliff, were blanched, half-buried, pathless. Communication
with the outer world, by the single line down the ravine to Rancagua,
was actually not much more restricted, but with the blocking of even the
few mountain tracks open in summertime the isolation of the camp was
emphasised.
There are about 2800 miners engaged at El Teniente, but the total
population of the camp, including the workmen’s families, the officials
(chiefly North Americans), employés of railways, stores, etc., is
usually over 12,000. All this artificial town hangs precariously on a
steep slope immediately opposite to the jagged crater where the huge
copper deposits are embedded. Formerly, rows of camp buildings were
built on the mine’s lower slope, but avalanches of soil, rock and snow
necessitated the removal of dwellings to the present site, at the
7000-foot level.
Scarcely a sign of mining operations is visible from across the mountain
chasm, although work has been going on here for at least 200 years.
Owing to the treacherous nature of the country rock and danger from snow
slides during six months of each year, the ore bodies are now attacked
from below; entrances to the intricate system of shafts and subterranean
passages are lost in the rugged crenellations of the old volcano. Yet
the place is honeycombed: one tunnel, starting from the more recently
approached Fortuna side, runs all round the three-quarter-mile-wide
crater; there are innumerable hoists, ore-passes, shafts, galleries and
tunnels, that, with the railways and powerful machinery and gangs of
workers, comprise an industrial town hidden in the mountains.
The second large copper property operated by the Guggenheim interests in
Chile is at Chuquicamata, in the high deserts of the province of
Antofagasta, at about 11,000 feet above sea level. The region has long
been famous for its copper-ore deposits, and small, rich veins have been
worked during and since colonial times.
Most of these high-grade ores have been exhausted near the surface,
whatever may lie hidden in the heart of the region: the principle
adopted by the Chile Copper Company, as that of the Braden, is to attack
large bodies of low-grade ore upon a big scale and in a scientific
manner. But “Chuqui” is an open-air mine situated on a tawny desert, in
extraordinary contrast with El Teniente, and the actual processes
employed are different because the two bodies of ores differ in
composition.
[Illustration: Sewell (El Teniente Mine) in the Snows of June.]
[Illustration: Railway between Rancagua and El Teniente.]
Chuquicamata is reached by way of the Antofagasta and Bolivia Railway.
An all-day ride from Antofagasta Port takes the traveller across the
flaming nitrate pampas, waterless, without a sign of green, winding
upwards until the air is chill and the wind bleak. At sundown, when the
station of Calama is approached, the altitude of nearly 8000 feet has
been attained. In the distance the lights of the mining camp flicker at
a higher level; Calama itself shows a brilliant flare of green, for here
is the river Loa and a little modern town with fields and orchards
superimposed upon very ancient remains. Gold, pottery, and textiles
showing Inca influence have been found in the old cemeteries of Calama.
There is from Calama a small branch line of a few miles running to Punto
de Rieles, and some use is made of this to ship merchandise, etc., to
and from the Chuquicamata camp: but a private line is projected, and a
number of company motor cars traverse the road across the saffron desert
between the main line and the mines, ignoring Punto de Rieles as much as
possible. That ramshackle village is, indeed, little more than an
impudent hanger-on of the big works; practically every little frowsy
shack is a saloon or a gambling-den, more than one of the most
enterprising brothel-keepers being white ex-employés of the camp. Even
were any serious attempt made to operate Chuquicamata as a “dry” camp,
the existence of this terminus-village a mile away would counteract
these efforts.
The great ore bodies of Chuquicamata lie in a range of low, pale-hued
hills rising gently from the shelving, wind-swept, dust-strewn plain;
the chief mass of ore is easily attacked by steam shovels placed upon
four or five different levels cut along the face of the most accessible
slope, a system of light railways carrying the blasted-out rock, often
of the beautiful blue and green tints exhibited by copper sulphates, to
the plant in a shallow saucer below. Here also are the residential
quarters of this isolated camp, where there is neither vegetation nor
water, and a dust-laden wind prevails over the cold, widespread
territory, bordered only by the snow-crowned peaks of such Andean giants
as S. Pedro and S. Pablo.
The Chuquicamata ores are, chiefly, basic sulphates of copper, yielding
about 1.7 per cent of the mineral. The present plant has a crushing
capacity of 15,000 tons per day, which amount should produce 200 tons of
bar copper. As work goes on all day and every day, this production if
sustained would produce in twelve months over 70,000 tons of
electrolytic copper, a quantity which Chuquicamata has not yet recorded;
the mine’s best year so far was that of 1918, when a total of
101,134,000 pounds of electrolytic copper was produced, or about 45,000
tons. The leaching or lixiviation process is employed here: the ores,
crushed fairly fine, are soaked in a solution of copper sulphate for 48
hours, during which period the copper in the introduced ore is drawn
into the liquid. This, when chlorine has been extracted, is poured into
vats through which strong electric currents are passed, causing the
copper to be deposited in metallic form upon the copper sheets suspended
therein. The sheets and the deposited metal are melted and cast into
bars, the process producing a high-grade electrolytic copper bringing
top market prices. Eight hundred million tons of low-grade ore are
stated to be in sight at Chuquicamata, and a plant capable of turning
out 600 tons of bar copper daily is talked of.
Power for operating the Chuquicamata mine, works and camp is derived
from Tocopilla, 100 miles distant on the seacoast, where the company’s
plant is situated. Transmission lines follow the course of one of the
nitrate railways from the port to El Toco, thence running out across the
desert, where a highway also extends. Since no fuel exists in this
northerly region, nor are there water-falls available, the plant uses
petroleum imported from North America to generate the power required.
Chuquicamata employs about 2000 Chilean or Bolivian, with a small
sprinkling of Peruvian, workers, housed under conditions which leave
something to be desired. Many of the huts are made of sheetiron, with
partitions dividing the rooms; the floors are of mud, and an opaque
substitute for glass obscures the window space in too many cases. The
better-class houses are insufficient for all the native-born workers,
and it is not surprising that a degree of discontent has more than once
been fomented in the camp. Daily wages run higher here than at El
Teniente, averaging over nine Chilean pesos per day as against rather
less than eight pesos, but this raised scale does not compensate for the
greater cost of living and other disadvantages. Fuel is one of the
serious difficulties; coal is almost unknown, and the employé’s
womenfolk are seen cooking over a charcoal brazier, or a fire made of an
umbelliferous plant from the mountains (_llareta_), or a few pieces of
wood brought from long distances. A great deal is said by the company of
the Welfare Work Department: its most striking exemplification is in the
big clubhouse which, well equipped and decorated, is however used almost
exclusively by the North American officials and their families.
In addition to the two big mining plants at El Teniente and
Chuquicamata, the Guggenheim interests in Chile include the
old-established smelters at Carrizal and Caldera ports: the latter, in
common with all the smelters founded during the last century, took only
high-grade ores, the average of the mineral accepted here working out at
about 10½ per cent of copper. These works turned out over 5000 tons of
copper ingots in 1918, but were closed in 1921, following the slump in
prices.
Chuquicamata is operated by the Chile Copper Company, a subsidiary of
the Chile Exploration Company; El Teniente is operated by the Braden
Copper Company, which is owned by the Kennecott Copper Corporation, one
of the Guggenheim creations also controlling Alaskan and Utah copper
properties. The Braden Copper Company is stated to have shown a deficit
of $1,500,000, United States, in 1919.
_Pudahuel and Potrerillos_
Geographically speaking, there lie between El Teniente and Chuquicamata
two other large copper deposits acquired by North American interests
since the European War. Between Santiago and the sea lie the Pudahuel
mines, identified at least a hundred years ago, worked for their rich
surface veins, and now owned by the Andes Copper Company, a subsidiary
of the Anaconda interests. Immense masses of low-grade ores, rivalling
those of the Guggenheim interests in extent, are said to be available,
but although in 1920 projects for a big plant were under active
development, work was slackened by depressed markets and the operation
of the deposits is not yet in sight.
A similar fate has befallen the widely heralded plans connected with
another Anaconda property, a huge deposit of low-grade copper ores at
Potrerillos, in the Andean spurs east of the railway junction at Pueblo
Hundido in Atacama province. The main ore bodies lie in a ravine about
12,000 feet above sea level and consist chiefly of sulphides and oxides.
At the time when I visited the region in late 1920 the treatment of
these ores had not been decided upon, and no machinery installed,
although an expensive housing scheme had been carried out at the mine. A
railway between the tiny village of Pueblo Hundido, a handful of houses
in the middle of an apricot-hued desert, and the high-placed mine were
in operation; and a power plant, burning petroleum, had been set up at
Barquito, on the coast a few miles south of Chañaral, the transmission
lines running out across the sandy waste for some 130 miles.
Work on the Potrerillos installation was suspended about the middle of
1921, before a single ounce of copper had been produced. High above the
copper deposits are extensive beds of sulphur, and upon the extraction
of this mineral, needed in certain processes employed in treating
low-grade ores, a certain amount of work has been done.
There are 16,000 mines of copper registered in Chile, covering an area
of 57,000 hectares upon which the mining tax of ten pesos per hectare is
paid. Of the producing establishments, Chuquicamata and El Teniente are
by far the greatest, exporting in 1918 nearly eighty per cent of Chile’s
total production. From the Caldera smelters was shipped a total of 5217
metric tons; Catemu produced 3790 tons; Gatico, 3708 tons; Naltagua, a
French property, 3653 tons. Small quantities came also from El Volcán,
El Hueso, and the Chañaral smelters, also in French hands. For the last
ten years Chile’s output of copper in comparison with the total world
supply has varied between 4 per cent in 1911 and 1912, and 8 per cent in
1918. By far the greatest producer of copper today is the United States,
with a highest record of 880,000 metric tons in 1916, followed by Japan,
shipping her highest recorded figure in 1917, when 124,000 tons was
produced; Mexico, 75,000 tons; Canada, averaging 50,000 tons; and Peru,
45,000.
_Iron_
The story of Chile’s iron deposits and works offers one of the most
curious chapters in her mining history.
The most important of the identified deposits lie in the desert country
north of Coquimbo, the fields at El Algarrobo and Algarrobito in the
Department of Vallenar, Atacama Province, having interested a German
firm some years before the war. No practical results were achieved,
although the region recorded a small export of manganese, from the
Astillas beds, until economic conditions checked these shipments soon
after the beginning of this century. Proximity of quantities of
manganese ore to the iron fields, reported as being of immense extent,
has raised repeated hopes for the foundation of a great industry, but
the crux of the problem is the absence of adequate fuel or water
supplies, and the unproductivity of a sterile territory.
The only works so far established in connection with Chilean iron ores
depend upon what is the most remarkable ferruginous deposit on the West
Coast, paralleled only by the Itabira peaks in Brazil and the iron
mountain of Durango in Mexico. El Tofo, some forty miles north of
Coquimbo town, and fifteen miles from the Pacific, is a round hill
practically composed of hematite ores running over 65 per cent pure, the
quantity in sight totalling at least 300,000,000 tons. The hill stands
among an imposing array of rolling mountains, and both dwellings and
mine workings are daily enshrouded in seas of white mist.
Early in the present century this huge deposit was acquired by a French
company, the Société Altos Hornos de Corral, which mined a quantity of
the ores and transported them by light railway to the little bay of Cruz
Grande and thence to the south where, at the port of Corral in Valdivia
province, a smelter was erected, the first experimental production of
pig-iron taking place in 1910.
The company was fortunate in obtaining from the Chilean Government
various privileges, including the concession of 58,000 hectares, or
about 145,000 acres, of southern forest land, estimated to be capable of
yielding 50,000,000 cubic metres of fuel wood. The Prudhomme process is
employed at Corral; wood fuel alone is required, and an important item
in the calculated income from the operation of the plant is that of the
sale of by-products (charcoal and alcohol) obtained from the wood, in
addition to the output of the blast furnaces. The plant was built to
produce 50,000 tons of pig-iron annually, and would require for this
purpose nearly half a million cubic metres of fuel wood; the
expectations of the company have, however, not been realised, and when I
saw the plant in 1920 it had been inactive for several years. A week of
trial under the auspices of Chilean Government engineers headed by Dr.
Manuel Prieto was undertaken in July of the same year, and an optimistic
report issued: a few noteworthy points are quoted below.
With regard to the cost of production, the report states that the iron
ore costs at Cruz Grande nearly ten pesos per ton (the peso in mid-1920
being worth about one shilling): but the sea freight, unloading at
Corral, and transport to the smelter cost 14 pesos per ton. Despite the
high freight charge, the cost of producing the 345 experimental tons
worked out to only 152 pesos per ton, a quantity of the company’s ingots
finding a sale at 345 pesos per ton. If the calculation is correct that,
working sustainedly, the smelter could produce pig-iron at all in costs
of about 55 pesos per ton, the only problem is that of finding
sufficient local or other South American markets prepared to take yearly
50,000 tons.
To obtain this quantity, the engineers estimate the employment of 70,000
tons of iron ores, purchased from El Tofo at 8.40 pesos per ton. The
famous iron hill is no longer operated by the French Company, for during
the war the deposits were leased to the Bethlehem Steel Iron Mines
Company, and an extensive establishment created. A contract exists by
which the Bethlehem interests guarantee to supply a maximum of 100,000
tons of ore free on board at Cruz Grande to the Société Altos Hornos,
for thirty years.
If the fate, so far, of the Prudhomme smelter at Corral is misty despite
high promise, that of the big installation at El Tofo is no less
clouded. As soon as the Bethlehem Company took possession, large sums of
money were spent on an entirely new installation. Land was acquired at
Cruz Grande, an oil-burning power plant set up, the railway line rebuilt
and electrified, and a loading basin for the Company’s special
ore-carrying steamers, each of 17,000 tons capacity, cut out of the
solid rock. The basin is 500 feet long by 40 feet wide, and on the dock
side are 17 chutes each with a storage space for 20,000 tons of ore,
operating electrically, and built to discharge their contents into 17
hatches so that each ship would be loaded in four hours’ time.
At El Tofo itself electric shovels attack the face of the hill on four
or five levels; the crushing machinery is, like the ore-carrying outfit,
the most modern that Bethlehem’s experience has evolved; strings of
dwellings for workmen and officials stand upon the spur leading to the
iron hillside. The Company’s intention, I was informed by the sole
official left in the silent camp, is to ship the rich ores of El Tofo to
Sparrows Point, Maryland, where special equipment has been built to
unload the Cuban ores imported by the Bethlehem interests. The haul from
Chile is however considerably longer than from Cuba, and although
transit by way of the Panama Canal has brought the Atlantic Coast of
North America into closer commercial touch with the West Coast of South
America, the cost of freight or other equally powerful reasons have
prevented materialisation of the original plans. In more than one
instance, wealthy firms making immense sums of money during the great
war appear to have placed capital in investments far afield from which a
return was not desired for reasons having a certain relation to the tax
collector; and whether or no these considerations had any bearing upon
the acquisition of large copper, iron, tin and silver deposits in
various parts of South America by powerful companies, the fact remains
that vast mineral resources have been added to the properties of a
comparatively small group, and that their active operation may in the
future affect international markets.
Early in 1921 announcement was made to the effect that a concession for
thirty years of 140,000 hectares of forestal land in Llanquihue Province
had been granted to a German firm, for the installation of large iron
works. At the same time the concessionaires, who were stated to be
engineers representing the Krupp firm, secured an option upon the Pleito
iron ore deposits in Coquimbo and another series of mines in Atacama
known as the Zapallo fields. Several Chilean newspapers, including the
energetic _Mercurio_, took exception to the land grant, pointing out the
possibility that Germany was evading the spirit of the Treaty of
Versailles, prohibiting her from manufacturing arms or guns within her
own territory, by setting up big iron and steel factories upon foreign
soil; it was also objected that the territory conceded includes a
considerable part of the forestal reserves left in South Chile. A strip
of woodland two kilometres wide had been reserved by the Chilean
Government between the concession and Lake Todos los Santos, and with
this exception the German grant extended from the lake to the foot of
Calbuco volcano, with water outlet to the Pacific by way of an arm of
the Gulf of Reloncaví. The Petrohue River is said to offer power for
large hydraulic installations, and two other and smaller streams also
run through the grant.
Ore from the north would, according to the plan, be transported to
wood-burning smelters in the south. But difficulties arising from the
claims of property-owners in the conceded tract of forest appear to have
checked the scheme; the concessionaires announced their withdrawal in
early 1922.
The attitude of the Chilean Government is, quite naturally, that it is
desirable for large industrial development work to be promoted: and that
the concession of forestal land given to the German interests would have
been gladly granted to other nationals making similar propositions.
_Gold and Silver_
In early colonial days there was a fair yield of gold from Chile,
chiefly obtained from the sands of the southerly rivers and deposits, as
those of Tiltil, situated in the mountains between Valparaiso and
Santiago, and the shining sands of the river beds of Huasco. It is
estimated that from the days of the first settlement to the end of the
fifteenth century Chile produced 131,000,000 pesos’ worth of gold,
63,000,000 worth in the sixteenth century and 167,000,000 in the
seventeenth.[6] After Independence and the encouragement of foreign
enterprise, production rose in less than fifty years (1801 to 1850) to
226,000,000 pesos (all these calculations being reduced to pesos of
eighteen pence for purposes of comparison), but weakened abruptly when
the deposits of alluvial gold, eagerly sought and worked, became
exhausted by the end of the century. The present yearly production of
gold averages about 2,000,000 pesos, chiefly from the Alhué mines near
Rancagua.
Footnote 6:
Betagh, writing of conditions in 1720, says that there were gold mines
at Copiapó, “just beyond the town and all about the country likewise,
which have brought many purchasers and workmen thither, to the great
damage of the Indians; for the Spanish magistrates take away not only
their lands but their horses, which they sell to the new proprietors,
under pretence of serving the king and improving the settlements.” He
also noted the saltpetre, lying “an inch thick on the ground” in the
north, and says that the country is full of all sorts of mines. About
the year 1709 two lumps of gold found near the Chilean frontier, one
of which weighed 32 pounds, was brought by the Viceroy of Peru, Count
Monclove, and given to the King of Spain. In another washing place
near Valparaiso belonging to priests gold nuggets are found, he says,
ranging from a few ounces to one and a half pounds in weight.
The present production of silver is also a shadow of its former record.
Once upon a time rich silver mines were worked at Uspallata, near the
Pass; these were already abandoned in 1820, when Peter Schmidtmeyer made
his journey. Chile never rivalled Potosí, where travellers of the early
sixteenth century (before the amalgam process was introduced in 1571)
might see 6000 furnaces shining together at night upon the famous hill;
but her mines recorded a splendid total in one quarter-century, 1876 to
1900, when 432,000,000 pesos’ worth of silver was produced. Lowered
international prices and the exhaustion of rich veins so reduced the
industry that in 1915 only 1,000,000 pesos’ worth was produced, and
although later years have reached values of over 3,000,000 pesos, future
great production depends upon new discoveries and scientific operation.
The mining engineer still has much work to do in the deep folds of the
Chilean Andes, while the sands of the islands south of the Strait of
Magellan have yielded, and are likely to yield again under good
management, rich harvests of gold.
_Coal_
The coal industry of South Chile owes its greatest impetus to the energy
of Matias Cousiño, who organised development dating from 1852; but
mining for commercial purposes began as far back as 1840, when a field
near Talcahuano began to supply the needs of Chile’s first steamship
line, forerunner of the present Pacific Steam Navigation Company.
The entire region of Chile from Concepción southwards to the Territory
of Magellanes is dowered with coal deposits, but the richest region is a
series of mines strewn for one hundred miles along the coasts of the
provinces of Concepción and Arauco. Wealth in coal has brought a large
number of factories and mills to the prosperous city of Concepción, was
a factor in the establishment of the chief naval station of Chile in the
fine bay of Talcahuano—the best-sheltered port of Chile—and developed
smelting and metal-refining works at Tomé, to the north of Talcahuano,
and in Coronel and Lota, farther south.
Many coal beds known to exist in the Chilean south are unworked as yet
owing to lack of transport in undeveloped regions, but in addition to
the big mines in operation in the rich regions of Arauco and Concepción,
a deposit is being worked near Valdivia (the Sociedad Carbonifera de
Máfil) while the Loreto beds are also under exploitation in Magellanes
Territory, near Punta Arenas. The product of some of the Chilean mines
is of excellent quality, but the product was, before the war,
insufficient in quantity and not of a grade rendering it suitable for
all railway and steamship uses. It was therefore supplemented by hard
steam coal imported from foreign countries; before the outbreak of war
in 1914 British mines were shipping about 1,000,000 tons per year to
Chile, Australia sent about 450,000 tons, and the United States sent
small quantities that varied between 3000 and 100,000 tons. The supply
from Welsh and Australian mines was, during the war, diminished almost
to vanishing point, and at the same time imports from North America rose
to three or four hundred thousand tons, and the Chilean home production
was immensely stimulated.
Chile’s producing mines are fourteen in number, twelve of these lying in
the Arauco region; in 1909 production amounted to less than 900,000
tons, but had risen to over 1,500,000 in 1918 and 1919. Eleven to twelve
thousand men were then employed, as against 9000 in 1911. The most
important operators are the Compañia de Lota, Coronel y Arauco, a
combination owning four mines and tributary railways, employing 3670
workers, and producing more than half a million tons of coal yearly.
Next comes the Cia. Carbonifera y de Fundición Schwager, also situated
at Coronel, employing 2800 men and producing over 400,000 tons; the only
other company with an output of over 200,000 tons annually is that of
Cia. Carbonifera Los Rios de Curanilahue, employing 1500 men. Both here
and in the Lota mines the plant is operated by hydro-electric power, and
throughout the Chilean fields the standard of machinery and equipment is
high. The general width of coal seams operated in Chile is from fifty to
sixty inches.
The wages paid are about the same as for other mining and industrial
work in Chile, ranging from five to seven pesos (paper) per day. The
Coronel mines, many of which are deep-seated and run under the sea, pay
at a higher rate, averaging eight and a half pesos, but the Loreto mine
in Punta Arenas, where workers are scarce, pays its employés nearly
twelve pesos a day.
Chilean coal miners work only 280 days in the year, but conditions are
not always acceptable and there have been from time to time serious
strikes; the last, occurring at the beginning of 1922, was said to be
mainly fomented by the considerable foreign element.
Among the remaining coal companies of importance are the Cia.
Carbonifera de Lirquen (Penco); the Cia. El Rosal (Concepción); and the
Cia. Carbonifera de Lebu, owning three mines and a railway.
The price of Chilean coal responded to war conditions. In 1914 it stood
at about 13 paper pesos per ton; in 1915 it rose to 25 pesos, and thence
steadily climbed to 57 pesos in 1917, to 70 in the following year, and
to 85 pesos in 1919. With the cessation of hostilities these prices,
which were comparable with those of foreign imported coal, dropped; at
the same time demand fell, fewer vessels requiring bunkering, not only
because older fuel depôts became again available but because the
extended use of the Panama Canal by international vessels is making
itself felt more keenly. South Chile found its ports recording many
fewer foreign vessels in 1919 and 1920 than in former years.
[Illustration: Curanilahue Coal Mine, Arauco Province.]
[Illustration: Dulcinea Copper Mine, Copiapó Province.]
[Illustration: Chuquicamata Copper Mine, Antofagasta Province.]
In the Lonquimay region, along the valley of the upper Bio-Bio, are
deposits of petroliferous shales, upon which a big industry will some
day be founded. The most hopeful reports suggest the presence of a great
oil-bed, but it is undisputed that the superficial layers or _capas_
yield 5 to 6 per cent of petroleum, the lower part of the bed yielding
12 per cent. In Scotland a percentage of 5 per cent is considered good
enough, and the development of the prosperous North British industry
could no doubt be duplicated in Chile—with adequate transport
facilities. Manifestations of petroleum have been also identified
farther south. Don Salustio Valdes, an enthusiastic Chilean mining
engineer, considers that the most promising deposits are in the Province
of Llanquihue, at Carelmapu, where the Cia. Petroléos del Pacifico has
acquired territory; in Magellanes Territory, near Punta Arenas, where
the Sindicato de Petroléo de Agua Fresca is operating; and on Tierra del
Fuego, upon the north shore of Useless Bay. Natural gas escapes in
considerable quantities in all these regions.
Borax is produced by a British company from a wonderful and beautiful
lake-like deposit at Ascotan, on the Antofagasta and Bolivia Railway
almost at the Bolivian frontier. Nearly half the world’s supply comes
from Ascotan, the pre-war export of Borax Consolidated averaging 40,000
tons, a quantity subsequently reduced owing to the imposition of a heavy
export tax and high freight rates. The deposit lies at an altitude of
over 12,400 feet with temperature ranging from 24 degrees below zero
(Centigrade) and 32 degrees above, so that this well-organised company
works under climatic difficulties accentuated by high winds, rain and
snow.
Sulphur is abundant in Chilean mountains from north to south, a few
thousand tons being annually produced, chiefly for the use of the copper
mines; lead, cobalt, nickel, aluminium, graphite and bismuth also exist
in the highly mineralised north; deposits of manganese are worked on a
small scale near Merceditas in the interior of the Province of Atacama.
CHAPTER VIII
AGRICULTURE
_Area under Cultivation.—Oases in the Desert.—Farming in Central
Chile.—Vineyards.—Wheatfields, Orchards and Sheep Farms.—Irrigation
Canals._
“Agriculture in Chile and Buenos Aires has formed their population,
while the mines of Peru have extinguished almost all the Empire of the
Incas.” So wrote David Barry in his preface to the _Noticias Secretas_
in 1826.
I think that no one who knows Chile today will dispute the suggestion
that her fertile soil has chiefly contributed to her social well-being.
It has brought white European settlers, able to rear families in a
magnificent temperate climate; it has offered permanent homes and not a
temporary field for the fortune-hunter. There is a spring of life about
the farming region of Chile, a sense of energy, health and freshness
that is extraordinarily exhilarating. Much of this land is still but
newly opened: one may pass through hundreds of miles of land where the
tree-stumps of the primeval forest still stand among the vigorous corn,
where the farmhouse is but an impermanent thatched hut. But the dark
rich earth, the lusty crops, the blossoming orchards and hedges, the
green pastures with their sleek cattle, create a scene of genuine
content. The holdings may be new, yet they are plainly homes. Chile
possesses mines, but they drain rather than create populations; growing
industries—weaving factories, grain mills, and a score of new
employments which tend to concentrate wealth and culture; but it is in
her farming lands that the truest cradle of the race, the frankest and
strongest people, the most cheerful spirit, is found.
In actual figures the amount of land under cultivation in Chile is not
immense, yet the farmlands produce not only sufficient grain and fruits
to serve the needs of the inhabitants of both fertile and arid regions
but also ship a surplus to the exterior markets of Peru, Ecuador and
Bolivia.
Government statistics add up the total of land assigned to “agricultural
properties” or farms to 18,000,000 hectares, or about 45,000,000 acres.
But not all this land is under cultivation. The area devoted to cereals,
beans and peas, potatoes and vegetables, is reckoned as about 4½ per
cent of all Chilean territory, or 750,000 hectares, equal to two and a
half times as many acres; vines and orchards, 111,000 hectares; planted
woodland, 32,000 hectares. The cultivated pastures (grass, alfalfa,
clover, etc.) attain the figure of about 520,000 hectares; while there
are nearly 7,000,000 hectares of natural pastures. Twenty-two per cent
of all national territory is ascribed to forest and woodland, much of it
either utilisable for industry or at least covering the ground with a
rich vegetable detritus of great future value to the farmer. Twenty-nine
per cent of Chilean land areas is regarded as completely sterile, or at
least negligible under present conditions.
This proportion of uncultivated or barren country appears high at first
sight, but three great areas must be practically excluded from possible
cultivation, although unlikely and long-neglected regions have of late
triumphantly proved their worth as sheep pastures. The great,
diversified and topographically fantastic Territory of Magellanes,
comprising 71,000 square miles, has little to offer to the
agriculturist.
Sheltered country as that in the vicinity of Punta Arenas produces
certain field crops, while the limit of cultivable land both in Eastern
Patagonia and upon the islands of Tierra del Fuego, Navarin, Brunswick,
and other smaller groups, has not been reached with the establishment of
sheep farms; but the barren and rocky lands on the borders of many
channels, where blue glaciers creep to the edge of the water, and that
part of the Strait region where the freezing gusts of the “williwaws”
bend the heads of the drenched forests, is outside consideration until
the climate changes.
Also beyond the vision of the farmer are the widespread, sun-scorched
and waterless districts of the three northerly provinces of Atacama,
Antofagasta and Tarapacá, covering more than 95,000 square miles of
land: as well as most of the 9000 square miles of Tacna, whose final
ownership is still undetermined. The third considerable region which is
apparently destined to remain uncultivable is that of the rugged and
broken foothills and heights of the Andean slopes of eastern Chile,
where nothing lives but wild mountain birds and the hardy guanaco.
Reckoning in hectares, Magellanes counts an area of 3,214,000 hectares,
or about 8,000,000 acres: yet only 133 hectares were under crops in
1919. At the same time the Island of Chiloé, with a surface of about
8600 square miles, had only 75 hectares in cultivation. As between the
too-dry lands of the north and the too-rainy country of the south,
agricultural advantages lie with the former, for wherever irrigation is
possible the natural disabilities are at once overcome, and the rainless
belt becomes magnificently fertile. The agriculturist of the Chilean
lands below Puerto Montt is seldom able to risk planting a cereal crop,
for even should the heavy rains not affect the fields adversely, the
grain must be gathered green lest wind-storms should blow the ripened
seed away. However, the discovery of the last few years that certain
types of sheep (usually cross-bred Romney Marsh varieties similar to
those reared in the Falklands) thrive in Chilean Patagonia, Tierra del
Fuego and other once-despised Magellanic lands, has brought about an
agreeable transformation in the agricultural industries, as in the
revenue and population of the far south.
_Oases in the Desert_
Perhaps it is partly because they stand out in such sharp contrast with
a barren background that such northern valleys as that of the Lluta,
with pretty Arica town at its mouth, appear to be of such enchanting
loveliness. In other regions, burning ochre deserts stretch away in
dazzling sunlight, and suddenly one comes upon the tender lime-green
fields of the Copiapó River; the emerald maize and alfalfa of the Loa;
the Pica Vale, a strip of deepest green studded with millions of the
golden globes of ripe oranges; or the exquisite Elqui and Huasco in the
month when loads upon loads of grapes, peaches and figs are ripe. In
every dip of the land where a stream flows down from the Andes, gardens
and orchards bloom; careful intensive cultivation is the rule in north
Chile, where the farming industry has received an impetus since the
nitrate fields swarmed with industrial camps, ready to pay big prices
for every pound of fresh fruit or vegetables.
This cultivation of orchards in the desert is reviving enthusiastically,
but is no more than the restoration of ancient arts; before the day of
Spanish occupation irrigation was extensively practised, and we know
from the large burial grounds discovered near what are today small
villages that certain parts of the arid country formerly supported
considerable populations—as at Calama, at Chiu-Chiu, or at Arica itself.
The desolation of former cultivated districts is sometimes ascribed to
the war-expeditions of the Incas, sometimes to the destruction of
irrigation works by the Spaniards, sometimes to the action of
earthquakes which have diverted rivers from their original courses, and
is certainly to be attributed in many cases to the character of the
streams, rushing from mountain heights with tremendous force, washing
away fields and defences, and leaving wide, stony and sterile beds to
mark their ruinous course.
Tacna province, with Arica as the port and Tacna City as the capital, is
looked upon hopefully today as a source of supply of sugar and cotton
for Chilean mills; both these commodities are now imported. With
sufficient water, this little province of 40,000 inhabitants can produce
also enough tobacco for Chile’s internal consumption. The Sociedad
Industrial Azucarera de Tacna, formed at the end of 1920, hopes to plant
8000 hectares in sugarcane, to obtain from the harvest of each hectare
ten tons of sugar, and thus to fill the Chilean demand for 80,000 tons
of sugar per year. Apart from this enterprise, whose results are awaited
with interest, a number of small landholders already produce a little
sugar, and find a ready sale for the almonds, olives, walnuts, peaches,
figs, green fodder and vegetables cultivated. The splendid cotton of
Tacna province is eagerly purchased by South Chile’s mills, but the
export is small as yet, amounting only to a few hundred tons annually;
there is every inducement to immense extension of the cultivation of
this fibre, and when present plans to canalise the waters of the Caplina
River and of Lake Chuncara are completed, the little province will
multiply its 230,000 hectares now under cultivation.
Tarapacá Province is curiously situated as regards cultivation; to the
north a few rivers reach the sea, as in Arica, but from Pisagua
southwards the great nitrate beds lie like an immense dry lake parallel
with the coast, and a dozen little rivers flowing down from Andean
foothills disappear in the desert sands long before they reach the
eastern edge of the nitrate pampas. But each one of these rivers is a
green ribbon of fertility, and Tarapacá ships its luscious oranges to
the nitrate camps, and by train all the way to Pueblo Hundido in
Atacama.
Antofagasta’s one considerable river is the Loa, subject to strong
floods, but irrigating small fields all the way. There are but 121
farmers in the whole province of 46,000 square miles, cultivating less
than 3000 hectares. Sites of old pre-Spanish towns along the Loa’s banks
are proof of centuries of utilisation of its waters.
Copiapó possesses two charming oases in the desert. The first and most
important is the ancient town of Copiapó, long famous for its copper
mines, but depressed by the drop in metal prices after the close of the
European war. The second is Vallenar, whose bright setting of little
fields, peach trees and vines, is a joy to the eyes after a journey
through the copper country. Neither region produces enough foodstuffs
for its own maintenance, and there is no agricultural surplus to sell.
The whole province of over 30,000 square miles has less than 20,000
hectares under irrigation.
Coquimbo Province is generally regarded as the northern limit to general
farming; it is a small province, including only 13,500 square miles,
shouldered by the Andes that here push down within eighty kilometres of
the Pacific Ocean, but it is prosperous and enterprising. The population
is about 250,000, of whom 4500 are farmers; of the remainder the great
bulk are interested in mining small veins of copper, an industry which
has been handed down for generations as a kind of technical inheritance
in northern Chile. I know a Coquimbo farm, excellently managed, situated
a few miles outside Coquimbo Port and its older sister, La Serena, which
is a revelation of what can be done under the difficulties attendant
upon almost constant drought—for the rainfall does not usually attain
two inches in the year—and a temperature which remains steadily at about
60° Fahrenheit. The livestock were, in the period of greatest heat,
driven eastwards to the hills, many landowners upon the coast following
the system of buying supplementary land in the cordilleras in the hope
of finding at every season a few patches of pasture. John McAuliffe is
one of those Britons who identify their fortunes with those of Chile,
and forty years’ residence, with experience of shipbuilding, mining and
farming, has made the genial owner of San Martin a resourceful producer
and distributor.
Coquimbo Province possesses 1,500,000 hectares of land devoted to
agriculture, of which 20,000 are irrigated and about 25,000 are
“artificial” pastures. Vineyards on a commercial scale, orchards of figs
and other sub-tropical fruits, as well as fields of wheat, maize and
barley, produce a surplus exported from Coquimbo.
_Farming in Central Chile_
South of this province Central Chile begins. Aconcagua, Valparaiso,
Santiago, O’Higgins, Colchagua and Curicó are among the most delightful
regions in the world, with a perfect climate, fertile land, access to
markets, and employés who are not yet impressed with the views of the I.
W. W. which have troubled the waters of Chilean industry so effectively
during recent years. It has been the writer’s good fortune to see
something of the life upon several estates devoted to general farming
and livestock, upon fruit and alfalfa farms, and upon one of the finest
vine-growing and wine-making properties in Central Chile. I cannot
imagine a more agreeable life than that upon these estates.
In the first example, the lands are situated upon the Aconcagua River,
extending from this barrier in a half circle enclosed by a horse-shoe of
wooded hills. The river is a typical Chilean watercourse, widespread,
turbulent, spreading into five or six branches on a wide and stony bed.
When the snows melt and the stream comes down with great force, it is
almost impassable, although the sturdy Chilean horse, extremely
intelligent and well trained, will always struggle across safely so long
as the reins are left loose. The farm includes about 250 acres of
irrigated land and about 2000 acres of hillside. The jealously-watched
water rights are regulated by a set of special laws, and as there is
just about enough water for the service of the farms along the
Aconcagua’s banks, with none to spare, water-stealing is a black crime.
Quebrada Redonda is a mixed farm, upon which a couple of hundred sheep,
as well as cattle and horses, are fed: the fields are brilliant with
lucerne, wheat, beans, barley and Indian corn. In the kitchen garden are
peaches, walnuts, artichokes, oranges, pears, plums, celery—in fact, all
fruit and vegetables that grow in temperate or sub-tropical zones. The
lawn edges are gay with roses and iris, chrysanthemums and lupins. All
the flat lands are fertile: no fertilisers are needed, but leguminous
crops are grown in rotation with cereals. The milk of the Chilean cows
is first-class in quality and produces cheese—made daily by the simplest
process—that finds a ready sale in local markets.
The hill lands, invaluable upon a Chilean farm, offer plenty of food for
the young cattle in winter. Within a few days after the first heavy
rains the brown slopes turn green, and the cattle are driven up to crop
the new carpet of young grass. The woodland yields sufficient timber to
supply the domestic needs of the _patrón_ and the _inquilinos_ (farm
hands working upon a special system), but there is no growth of big
trees. The graceful, evergreen quillay is the base of quite a
considerable industry, for the bark is highly saponaceous, and, stripped
and dried, is sold in all the public markets in Chile. The maitén,
another thick little tree, is also cut for firewood; the litre offers
useful lumber when of sufficient size. Down by the water stand rows of
familiar willows, their branches draped with the scarlet flowers of the
parasite quintral; and on the slopes are scores of bunches of blue-green
dagger-shaped leaves enclosing a stalk crowned with a violet
flower-head. This is the chagual, whose young stem is eaten in
springtime, a lovely period when pink wild lilies clothe the rocky
slopes and a myriad flowering trees and shrubs scent the clear air. Many
of the aromatic leaves and barks for which Chile is famous are used to
make medicinal decoctions, beloved of the working classes.
Adjoining this property is another fine farm, also operated by an
energetic country-loving Briton; here lemons and other citrus fruits are
grown in well-kept orchards and the fields are given over to alfalfa and
hemp, grown in rotation with root crops. Chile has no warmer advocates
of her attractions than the owners of Quebrada Redonda and its
neighbour, but both farmers lay stress upon the need for personal
attention to every detail and constant residence upon the property, even
with the best _mayor-domo_ performing the duties of a farm bailiff or
estate steward. It is also emphasised that Chilean lands are not for the
worker without capital. In this coveted region, in fact, costs run high,
as the following data, owed to Mr. Geoffrey Bushell, demonstrate.
The average cost of good irrigated land, near the railway, in the
Central Valley (from Aconcagua to the Maule) is about 4000 paper pesos
per _cuadra_ of some four acres: or say £50 per acre with exchange at
twelve pence to the peso. To this should be added £50 per cuadra for the
purchase of horses, cattle and implements, and another £50 per cuadra
should also be allowed for fencing, drains, repairing or putting up
buildings, expenses frequently renewed even when a farm is in good
running order. Land in less accessible regions is less costly, but
transport in Chile depends upon railroads, since the highways are out of
action in the rainy season, and it is worth while to avoid trouble by a
greater initial outlay. No farm is cheap if its products cannot be sent
to market.
When the estate is in good running condition, returns come quickly and
markets are excellent; a profit of 12 to 15 per cent upon invested
capital is usually expected, but may rise to 20 per cent. Alfalfa can be
cut at least three times a year, and always finds a ready sale:
potatoes, wheat and barley, beans, hemp, aji (red pepper), all do well
and are good selling crops. Potatoes, for example, yield 300 bags (of
100 kilos each) to the cuadra, and bring fifteen to twenty pesos per bag
in the Valparaiso markets.
Animals can be kept out of doors all the year round, and the
stock-fattening and dairy businesses are both good. Fruit cultivation,
apart from such good carriers as lemons or oranges, is not recommended,
since quick access to markets is lacking and selling organisations do
not exist.
In order to buy, stock, equip and operate a farm and to wait a year for
returns without inconvenience, a farmer taking up land in Central Chile
should have £15,000 ($75,000 U. S. currency). He needs at least fifty
cuadras, or 200 acres, of irrigated land, as well as some wild bush,
preferably hill country. Workers are never abundant in South America,
but the _inquilino_ system retained in Chile tends to keep generation
after generation upon the soil, and no good farmer lacks help in spite
of the higher wages offered by the mining industry. Attacks have been
levelled against the inquilino system, yet it works well in practice
when estate owners are just and a personal interest taken in the
worker’s welfare. The men live upon the estate with their families, are
given a cottage rent free, a strip of land of generally one or two
acres, and sometimes the use of ploughs and other farm implements; a
horse and a few domestic animals are usually owned. One pound of bread
and one pound of beans are given daily, cooked if so preferred, and one
peso per day in cash. On the farms visited by the writer the houses of
the farm hands were sound and clean, and the families appeared cheerful
and content; I heard warm praises of the Chilean worker from employers.
The life of a farmer in Chile, it was generally agreed, is pleasant;
constant attention is required, but rewards are sufficient and the
delightful climate compensates for many difficulties. The open-air life,
constant horseback riding, and the sense of freedom in a country not too
densely populated, attract many Europeans, lamenting nothing more than
the absence of certain forms of sport. There is fair fishing, for
instance, in the fast streams from the Cordillera, but there are no
sporting fish; no hunting, but good shooting in wooded or open country.
The partridge and tortolita fly well and fast, and give almost as good
sport as grouse; snipe and quail are also to be found in the central
regions.
_Vineyards_
In this same region of the Aconcagua Valley are some of the best
vineyards and wine-making estates in Chile. The great Panquehue
property, one of the Errazuriz estates, is a magnificent sight with its
endless rows of trained vines bearing white and black grapes, stretching
across the rich brown lowlands to the foot of the Andean spurs, where
all cultivation ceases, and where valuable peat has been identified in
vast stretches. Here are 2000 acres devoted to viniculture, and from the
fruit of the low-trimmed branches is produced each year 2,000,000 to
3,000,000 litres of wine, chicha and brandy. Chilean red and white wines
are of sound and pleasant quality, superior to the Mendoza brands, owing
to greater suavity; some of the native-made “Sauternes” are practically
indistinguishable from the French original. It is astonishing to realise
the simplicity of this ancient industry of wine-making, for although
Panquehue has today a machine crusher, and a mechanical press, an
automatic bottler, etc., there is something primitive and ample in the
process. The _bodegas_ (cellar warehouses) of the estate are immense
vistas of cool stillness, the huge vats looming high in the
semi-darkness beneath a succession of great arches. This estate, with
its enormous and luxurious house of the owners, its settled population
of workers, its self-supporting crops and fine livestock, has almost a
feudal atmosphere. Altogether, Chile has 90,000 hectares, or say 225,000
acres, under grape culture, about ten times as much as California in her
pre-prohibition days.
While these vineyards of the central provinces are in very fine
condition—extending west from Santiago to within sight of the sea on the
beautiful slopes towards Valparaiso—the real heart of the grape country
is farther south, where also lie the great food-producing regions of
Chile. The great grape country is spread over Curicó, Talca, Maule,
Linares, Ñuble and Concepción provinces, while the wonderful valley of
Lontué is one great vineyard, with over 10,000 acres under cultivation.
Estates follow in a long succession, some able to boast of model
villages for workers and thoroughly up-to-date methods of wine-making.
The product of Lontué is sold not only throughout Chile, but is shipped
to Argentina, Peru and Colombia. “Dry” laws in Chile, advocated by Dr.
Fernando Peña, do not seem likely to cause the extinction of viniculture
here, if only for the reason that the use of wine is scarcely ever
excessive among the native workmen, or in the educated classes. The
industry is extremely important to Chile, is chiefly in the hands of
Chileans-born, and represents a very large investment; these
considerations would not, however, preserve the vineyards ultimately if
the effect of their existence were pernicious. The facts appear to be
against any idea of this kind.
South Americans in general inherit the temperate habits of the Latin,
and when strong liquors cause trouble amongst such closely crowded
groups of workers as one finds in the northern mines, badly made spirits
and not wine are to be blamed. Against the disembarcation of imported
spirits the workers of the north rose in arms, in 1920, procedure echoed
in Punta Arenas a little later, and an investigator sent to the spot by
the _Mercurio_ of Santiago reported that for every pint of good southern
wine sold in Taltal, there were twenty pints of noxious alcohol—much of
it made on the spot in amateur stills.
_Wheatfields, Orchards, and Sheepfarms_
Cereal culture, whether of maize, wheat, barley or other grains, exists
throughout Chile, but from Coquimbo to Chiloé are the great fields of
_trigo blanco_ and _trigo candeal_—the latter, hard wheat, grown chiefly
upon 20,000 acres in the north of the Central Valley, and the former
upon 1,000,000 acres, chiefly in the provinces of Maule, Linares, Ñuble,
Concepción, Bio-Bio, Malleco, Cautín, Valdivia and Llanquihue. The total
wheat crop is 5,500,000 metric quintales, worth 16,000,000 pesos. It is
in the great fertile region of the south that one finds the largest
number of small farmers, for most of this agricultural country has been
opened during the last fifty or sixty years, and no great ancient
estates exist. Valdivia and Llanquihue were developed mainly by the
efforts of settlers from Central Europe in the middle of last century,
while old Araucania was not finally opened to white settlers, whether
foreigners or Chileans, until the punitive expedition of 1881 broke down
the frontier for ever. Land was parcelled out in comparatively small
estates, and as a result Chile is fortunate in counting about 97,000
land proprietors; of these, 65,000 owners farm less than 50 acres each;
25,000 others farm holdings of less than 500 acres; 5000 estates are
between 500 and 2500 acres in extent; and only 465 proprietors are
possessed of estates totalling over 12,000 acres.
To create these southerly farm lands great forestal areas have been
necessarily denuded, and a good deal of work is required to keep down
the luxurious growth of creepers, wild bamboos, ferns and undergrowth.
But the southern agriculturist is spared the constant preoccupation of
the northerner as regards water supply. Chile has little marsh or swamp
country today, although the presence of large peat beds is eloquent of
ancient bogs, but the south is very well watered. Too well watered, in
fact, in some localities, Valdivia’s 115 inches of annual rainfall being
well outdistanced by Chiloé’s 134 inches; the genial softness of the
climate saves these localities from the unusual unpleasant effects of
such heavy rainfalls, for if it is almost true that in Valdivia it rains
every day, it is also true that the sun shines every day.
Between the Maule River and Lake Llanquihue the whole country of Chile
is like familiar ground to the traveller from well-tended countries of
Western Europe, an impression specially keen in Chile’s autumn, March
and April. Orderly apple and cherry orchards stand bordered by hedges
hung thick with ripening blackberries; long level fields show the tender
green of clover. Beside the rose-clustered farmhouse are neatly built
stacks of wheat straw; in the meadows are fine sleek cattle and
well-groomed horses. The fenced garden is full of flowers, of vegetables
and herbs, and behind the house is a grove of walnuts and chestnuts. The
farmer riding along a muddy road has the ruddy cheeks of the temperate
zone, and the only strange note is struck by his poncho and long
jingling spurs. Rows of tall poplars, burned golden, edge the fields. As
background to this ordered fertility there rise to the east the shining,
silver-white heads of volcanos—Llaima, Villarica, or Antuco, or, farther
south, Osorno and Calbuco—and from the lines of dark forest there run
deep and silent rivers. The south is remarkable in possessing three
navigable rivers, the Toltén, Imperial, and Valdivia; the Bueno is also
traversed by small steamers in part of its course from Lake Ranco and is
a channel for farm produce.
Wheat is harvested in the south at the end of March, but in May apples
and pears are still being gathered and nuts are ripe. The big crops of
strawberries, plums, and cherries are sent to jam and conserving
factories, South Chile supplying the whole of the West Coast with canned
fruit, while the export of fresh fruit to New York and London is a new
industry with bright prospects.
South of Temuco the land is seen in three stages. Belts of primeval
forests close down to the border of railway track or road, a green wall
matted with the wild climbing bamboo, the trails of scarlet and purple
fuchsias, or the slender vines of copihue with its beautiful rosy bells.
Native beech and lingue, their feet deep in ferns, stand as a solid
barrier, feathering at the top into thickly leaved branches; the wild
witch-hazel’s sweetly scented, creamy flowers break from every thicket.
That is the first stage: the next is encountered where a settler has
recently broken ground, and corn springs between the blackened stumps of
burned trees. A log hut, thatched, windowless, stands at the side of the
clearing. In the third stage all signs of violence are gone; the forest
is conquered, the cleared space smoothed and ploughed, the homestead
enclosed with a neat wooden fence. Rows of young fruit trees display
slim twigs beside the farmhouse, and this already has its chicken-run,
dove-cote, stable and pleasant meadow for horses and cattle. A chain of
sawmills is seen in this lately redeemed country with its thick reserve
of forest lands.
Between Valdivia and Puerto Montt lies a great potato-raising country;
the land flattens out from Osorno to the edge of Llanquihue Lake, and
here hundreds of well-managed farms flourish; a large proportion of the
settlers possess German names, and their forebears brought with them,
seventy years ago, the craft of the farmer. Today the population is
Chilean. Farther south, upon the island of Chiloé, another group of
foreign origin operates farms beside the native Chilotes: after the
South African War ending in 1903 a number of Boers came here and, in
spite of the marked difference between climate and conditions of the
Transvaal and South Chile, remained and prosper.
Chile feeds about 5,000,000 sheep, of which number 2,000,000 have been
raised in the far south, in the Territory of Magellanes; 2,250,000 head
of cattle are distributed throughout the country—Tarapacá and
Antofagasta owning about 600 head between them, while Tacna has 2500—but
by far the largest number, 2,000,000, are grouped in the provinces below
Valparaiso. The country supports also about 400,000 horses, 55,000
mules, and 300,000 pigs. The wool clip of Chile averages 170,000 metric
quintals, four-fifths of the total coming from the Territory of
Magellanes.
Among the small farming industries of Chile are beekeeping and
flax-production; a little olive oil is made in the more northerly
provinces, and the dried raisins, peaches and apricots of Huasco have
earned much more than local fame.
The rise of sheep-farming and allied industries in Magellanes Territory
is one of the great surprises of the century. Punta Arenas itself,
founded on paper by President Bulnes in 1843, and tentatively settled in
1851, was for a long time nothing but a penal settlement: but a rising
of the convicts drew attention to the region, the discovery of gold
reefs and coal beds, as well as petroliferous shales, brought a number
of enterprising people, and by 1897 the first flock of sheep, brought by
the governor Dublé Almeida twenty years previously, had multiplied so
fast that the territory counted 800,000 as the total flock. It was
difficult to find a use for the sheep, and by way of solving this
problem the first packing-house was established in 1905 at Rio Seco,
about ten miles from Punta Arenas.
Four _frigorificos_ are now in operation, at San Gregorio Bay, at Puerto
Bories (Ultima Esperanza) and at Tres Puentes, in addition to the first
established. During the war the packing-houses exported meat products
(frozen and conserved meat, fats, etc.) worth £1,000,000 sterling
annually, and large fortunes were also made by the sheep-raising farms
when the price of wool soared from sixpence per pound to twenty-two
pence. The largest of the companies running sheep on a big scale is the
Sociedad Explotadora de la Tierra del Fuego, which started operations in
1893, has a capital of £1,800,000, raised in London, and owns over a
million sheep.
A fifth packing-house built at the close of the war and already in
operation is situated in Puerto Montt, is British-financed and equipped,
and aims at helping the situation of this part of the south, possessing
a surplus for northern markets but lacking sufficient transportation for
live animals.
_Irrigation Canals_
Irrigation canals have been in use in Chile for hundreds of years, those
constructed by private estate owners watering a total of over 3,000,000
acres. Several of these are ambitious constructions, those diverted from
such well-supplied rivers as the Maipo and Aconcagua extending in
certain instances for over one hundred miles.
The great O’Higgins built a canal ensuring Santiago’s water supply 150
years ago: a continuance of this wise policy of Government direction in
a matter of national importance has been advised by many thinkers in
Chile, but it was not until the closure of nitrate enterprises in 1914
forced the Government to find employment for surplus workers that
irrigation laws were added to the Chilean code and bonds issued to
finance the construction of four important canals. In early 1915 the
creation of a new section in the Public Works Department inaugurated a
period of great activity in the work suggested, and by the beginning of
1921 the Manco Canal drawing water from the Aconcagua was already
completed, its forty-five miles of main length bringing water to nearly
8000 acres of land. The cost of construction was 2,000,000 pesos paper.
At the same time work was begun on the Maule Canal, drawing water from
the Maule River; it is 115 miles long, irrigates 113,000 acres, and was
built at a cost of 8,500,000 pesos; its completion represents an
engineering feat upon which Chilean engineers are to be congratulated. A
fall created by one of the branches of this canal offers 20,000 h.p. to
users of hydraulic force in Chile.
The Laja Canal diverts water from the river of this name, has a main
length of 25 miles with distribution canals of 240 miles, and is lined
with concrete for ten miles of its course where sandy soil is traversed.
It is calculated that this canal serves 110,000 acres of land. The
Melado Canal, drawing water from the river of the same name, is fifteen
miles long, and irrigates 75,000 acres.
The Public Works Department also plans construction of canals drawing
water from the Culenar River, to irrigate 12,000 acres; from the
Nilahue, to irrigate 25,000 acres; and from the Colina, to irrigate
10,000 acres, while businesslike schemes for damming and utilising the
water of seven of Chile’s string of snow-fed mountain lakes in the south
are also under way. All this work is due for completion by 1925, while
studies of the strange rivers of the north that flow from the Andes and
bury themselves in the sandy deserts long before the sea is approached
have also been energetically carried on, with a view to salving these
much-needed waters. Don Carlos Hoerning, Chief Engineer of the Chilean
Reclamation service, says that the wonderful northern climate and soil
respond to irrigation by producing crops five times as abundant as the
normal rate in the south, justifying the expense of pumping and piping
water.
Formerly, private enterprise was interested in irrigation canals only in
the central farming regions, while the more generously watered south
ignored the question; but denudation of the southern forests has brought
about a change in this rainy region while the need for foodstuffs and
the excellent rewards awaiting the farmer have valorised every acre of
good soil, and today a large proportion of the canalisation projects of
the Government refer to southerly regions. With little public land to
offer, the Chilean Government’s new laws were drafted to reach the owner
of large areas of uncultivated—and, if without water, uncultivable—land.
When the newly inaugurated system is in full working order Chile should
have at least 100,000,000 acres under the plough.
CHAPTER IX
FOREST AND WOODLAND
_Extent.—Beech, Conifer and Bamboo.—Trees in Northern and Central
Chile.—Plantations._
Chile’s heavily wooded country lies in the rainy south, and stretches
from the stormy islands about Cape Horn through the long archipelagos
and the provinces of Llanquihue and Valdivia, the forests gradually
thinning out as they run northward through the old Araucanian country.
The province of Cautín is the last stronghold of deep forest.
Altogether, the tree-covered area of Chile is estimated at 15,000,000
hectares, or about 37,000,000 acres; but at least two-thirds of this
quantity must be left out of consideration as regards opportunity for
organized commercial effort such as paper-pulp making. Lack of large
“social” woods, and thin or patchy distribution, is of course a bar to
industrial effort on a great scale, but there are immense stretches
existing in certain regions, as in Valdivia, with nearly 2,000,000 acres
of continuous forest; Llanquihue, with 1,500,000 acres; and Chiloé, with
rather more than 1,000,000 acres.
An impressive picture is created by the density and extent of the
southern forests of Chile, among the last of the great primeval
tree-covered areas in the world. They are like immense green seas,
filling mile after mile of basin-like valleys, running up the sides of
the lower Andean spurs, and in the archipelagos often closing down to
the sea’s edge so thickly that waves break between the trunks. Up to the
present the trees which have proved most useful are conifers, as the
alerce, used for centuries by the native Indians for their canoes; the
“Chilean pine” (_Araucaria chilensis_), yielding a big cone-full of
kernels not unlike chestnuts, which must not be confounded with its kin,
_Araucaria imbricata_, the “Monkey-puzzle” tree; the tall lumo of
Chiloé, used for shipbuilding, and exported to Liverpool before the war;
and two varieties of the native “roble,” which are not oaks, as this
colloquial Spanish name suggests, but varieties of beech.
The evergreen beech (_Fagus antarcticus_) flourishes in Magellanic
territory, and with its kin the deciduous _Fagus betuloides_ and the
cypress (_Libocedrus Tetragonus_) stands along the borders of Magellan
Strait and on the glacier country of the deeply scored waterways
extending northwards; its habitat does not extend north beyond the
Chonos Islands, or about 45° of south latitude. All about Punta Arenas
this beech is of great service, is used for house construction and
boatbuilding, and still exists in large stretches of woodland. The
famous Winter’s Bark (_Drimys Winterii_), a beautiful tree whose
aromatic-scented bark was noted by the earliest travellers, is also used
locally. Many of the shouldering green heights that edge the Strait are
clothed almost to the summit with trees that, changing to burning yellow
and orange tints by the month of April, glow from the mists, their lower
trunks thick with ferns.
Two wild bamboos of South Chile are common—the small climbing “quila,”
and the “colihue,” sometimes growing thirty feet tall, and congregated
in great social tracts known as “colihuales.” Characteristic woodland of
the Valdivia region is tangled with these bamboos, with thick ferns, and
with such creepers as the lovely _Lapageria rosea_, with its waxen pink
or white flowers that retain the Indian name of copihue—the national
flower of Chile, and the no less beautiful Philesia.
The handsome conifer called alerce (_Fitzroya Patagonica_ Hook) grows in
extensive woods or “alerzales” in the Llanquihue region, its base deep
in ferns, the thickly-berried berberis (_Empetrum rubrum_) and other
fruit-bearing shrubs, as the _Myrtus nummularia_. From these berries the
native Indians made their fermented drink “chicha” in the time before
Spanish soldiers and missionaries brought European fruit trees to South
Chile; today apples are chiefly used for the same purpose.
The alerce frequently grows to a great size. Dr. M. R. Espinosa,
visiting the regions of its greatest occurrence in 1917, measured
conifers of this variety which reached 115 feet in height, with a trunk
diameter, at three feet from the ground, of four and a half feet.
Another big specimen measured twenty-seven feet in circumference, and he
speaks of yet another giant, whose old trunk was still to be seen
between Puerto Varas and Puerto Montt, with a girth at the base of over
forty-two feet. The alerce grows perfectly erect, providing splendid
planks of such uniform quality that up to comparatively recent times
these “tablas” were the recognised standard of barter in the Llanquihue
and Chiloé regions, and were exchanged like cash for imported
manufactures and foodstuffs. The wood is red in hue, resists exposure to
water and air, and is easily worked, light and resilient.
The coihue, another fine timber tree of the south, growing in
“colonies,” runs the alerce a good second in height, the two bearing the
reputation of being the tallest trees found in Chile; the laurel, the
lumo, and the canelo are not equally social in habit, but grow in mixed
woodland and are therefore not commercially available to a like extent.
The latter tree, the “Chilean cinnamon,” has a scented bark and is
sacred to the Araucanians, whose main festivals and ceremonies were
traditionally held under the shade of the canelo’s branches.
Forty per cent of the whole territory of Magellanes is estimated as
forest: Llanquihue, Valdivia and Cautín possess a smaller proportion,
for much magnificent woodland has already yielded to the axe of the
settler, but there is still in all about 20,000,000 acres of timbered
land south of the Bio-Bio River. Beyond Araucania the thick forest of
the south gives place to light woods, with no large trees and none that
are tall except the imported poplar, commonly known as the “alamo.” All
about Concepción the thickly leaved little boldo is seen, yielding only
small timber but much prized for the medicinal value of its leaves, from
which “boldaina” is extracted; the thickets are full of the slim
avellano, producing a nut closely resembling the hazel.
The wooded areas of the central region, especially in the well-watered
parts of Aconcagua, O’Higgins, Valparaiso and Colchagua, are well
supplied with lingue, maitén, litre and quillay. The bark of the latter
is highly saponaceous and is sold in every Chilean market, but few of
these trees yield planks large enough for construction purposes, and are
chiefly useful as fuel.
The northerly, more arid country above Illapel frequently shows nothing
but a thorny scrub of the mimosa family; one of these, the algarroba, is
prized as a shade tree and for the green pods it produces, an excellent
cattle food. When brown and dry, these pods yield a tannin used in
curing skins, almost identical with the divi-divi of Venezuela. Beyond
Coquimbo even the thorny scrub and cactus disappear, and in the Andean
heights of Tacna the only fuel that offers is that strange growth, like
a mammoth fungus, the llareta, that must be dried for over a year before
it will burn.
It is thus plain that North and Central Chile, where is the bulk of the
population of the country, cannot supply their own needs for lumber; it
is from the great southerly habitat of the alerce, the coihue and the
Chilean pine that vast quantities of wood for industrial and domestic
use must be sought. Sawmills begin to dot the side of the railroad soon
after the Bio-Bio is crossed on a southerly journey, and immense piles
of fine planks and logs stand beside the line all the way to Puerto
Montt. Immense tracts of forest are still untouched for lack of adequate
transport, although the conformation of Chile, and the large number of
southerly rivers and lakes, help to render the problem soluble. Even
without any great organisation, the south supplies lumber to the central
and northern provinces while filling its own requirements and exporting
a varying quantity. It is difficult to estimate the amount of Chilean
timber exported, since statistics of the number of pieces, or even of
“bundles” of planks, are alone available; the value, in 1919, of
unworked timber exported from the country is officially given as
1,496,000 pesos of eighteen pence.
Forestal laws in Chile have been slow in application chiefly because for
centuries a great deal more woodland existed than could be utilised;
land was needed for cultivation, and it was no crime to burn large
tracts in order that farms should be created. I have heard it maintained
in Chile that such forest destruction or at least the clearing of wide
strips through the heart of certain southerly areas has been beneficial
to the climate: that the Valdivia and Llanquihue region have been less
lavishly endowed with rain and rendered more agreeable for settlers in
consequence.
A few enterprising land owners have begun to replant woodland, growing
plantations of spruce and eucalyptus for preference; for Chile is a
hospitable host to all plants and trees brought from temperate zones.
A great deal has been said concerning the suitability of the South
Chilean forests for making paper pulp, but up to the middle of 1921 no
manufacture has been commenced. Expert opinion has proposed new
plantations of eucalyptus, etc., owing to the non-social character of
Chilean timberlands. Were the Chilean conifers more closely grouped the
problem might have been solved long ago. Suggestions for utilising
extensive thickets of bamboo, the colihue, have also been without result
up to the present, but the recent careful investigations of a Swedish
firm will, it is hoped, bear fruit. The south has plenty of water-power
and easy access to sea or rail, two important points to be considered in
connection with manufacturing industries.
CHAPTER X
COMMERCE
_Home Factories.—Chilean Market Needs.—Sales to Foreign
Countries.—Foreign Firms in Chile.—Trade-marks._
The position of commerce in Chile is better understood when it is
realised that the country has no tropical products for sale. Apart from
the extreme north, where rills of precious water redeem the preponderant
desert, and where varying quantities of cotton, sugar and peppers are
grown, farming is on a par with the farming of western or southwestern
Europe, or the temperate regions of Mexico. Chile has a surplus of
wheat, cattle and sheep; a large production of grapes and wine; and, in
the mineral field, offers her unique supplies of nitrate as well as
about 6 per cent of the world’s supply of copper. Timber from her
southerly forests is chiefly used at home for house and ship building;
Chilean coal finds its market in the Chilean factory regions or
bunkering ports. Whatever the country has to spare of her cereals, fruit
(fresh or canned) and other farm produce finds a ready sale in Peru and
Bolivia; the copper is practically all ear-marked for the United States.
Thus Chile’s offering to the world outside the Americas is not large
aside from her immense and greatly needed output of nitrate of soda.
The establishment of four packing-houses (_frigorificos_) in Magellanic
territory, with another recently constructed at Puerto Montt, follows
and encourages the big development of the sheep-raising industry, with a
view not only to supplying the non-pastoral north, but selling a surplus
abroad. The wool produced, and formerly exported, is likely to be
entirely absorbed by home weaving factories, to which an important
addition has been recently made at Valparaiso.
Of great help in Chilean industrial development is the Sociedad de
Fomento Fabril, and the work of three Government industrial schools, at
Santiago, Chillan and Temuco, turning out electricians, chemists,
blacksmiths, carpenters and other technically trained students.
A country with a temperate climate, hardy population, possessing plenty
of fuel and offering securities to foreign capitalists and business
firms, is likely to prove an inviting ground for the creation of
factories; certain parts of Chile, in consequence, are developing home
industries in a manner comparable to that of South Brazil.
A good start had been made before the European War, but as in many other
South American regions the pressure of necessity brought about a
remarkable and speedy industrial growth. Deprived of big quantities of
manufactured goods, Chile increased or built national mills, and can
today produce a remarkably long list of the goods she needs. Home
utilization of raw materials of course tends to limit Chile’s export
lists and, diminishing her income from overseas, narrows her capacity
for purchases in foreign countries, rendering her still more dependent
upon nitrate exports for national revenues.
Chile’s beds of good coal, with the addition of immense forestal areas
offering lumber, and, also in the south, considerable water-power
resources, form a sound basis for manufacturing. Below the river
Aconcagua factories are thickly dotted, and south of the Maule is a
600-mile stretch of country where new industrial towns lie like beads on
a string, following the railroad track. Altogether, the large and small
factories of Chile number twenty-seven hundred, counting every industry
from Tacna to the Straits of Magellan; the group of important
establishments employs 70,000 people, of whom 40,000 are men, over
17,000 are women, and over 5000 are children less than fourteen years
old. Another 8000 people are employed by little industries. The value of
the merchandise produced by these factories increased by nearly 50 per
cent between 1915 and 1919, the latter year registering the manufacture
of goods worth more than 765,000,000 pesos, Chilean paper. At an
exchange value of twelve pence, this is equal to over £38,000,000.
Santiago province topped the list with manufactured produce worth
280,000,000 pesos, Valparaiso following with 163,000,000 and Concepción
coming third with 68,000,000 pesos.
Included in this output are metal goods, furniture, dried and tinned
fruit, wines, beer, mineral waters, butter and cheese, lard, candles,
soap, boots and shoes, wheat flour, Quaker oats, woven woollen and
cotton cloths, pottery, chemicals, brown paper, bottles and other glass
utensils, sugar and tobacco. Factories manipulating the two last-named
commodities do not draw supplies of raw materials from Chilean soil but
depend upon importations, chiefly from Peru. There are two sugar works,
both Chilean-owned and operated; one is situated at Valparaiso and
another at Penco (near Concepción City), where soft brown crystallised
sugar is brought in sacks, and, after undergoing a series of new
processes, including bleaching, is distributed to local firms in the
form of soft white or cube sugar. The Chilean market rejects all sugars
presenting any hue but that of pure white, I was informed when enquiring
at Penco why at least a proportion of the excellent brown sugar imported
could not be distributed in that condition, and at considerably lower
cost to the consumer. When the refinery was erected it was hoped that it
could be exclusively supplied with raw material from local sugar-beet
farms, and the failure as yet to produce these crops in quantity is
emphasised by the retail price of sugar in Chile—fifteen pence per pound
in 1920.
[Illustration: At Constitución, South of Santiago.]
[Illustration: San Cristobal Hill and Parque Forestal, Santiago.]
[Illustration: Malleco Bridge, near Collipulli.]
Also near Concepción, a few miles eastward following the curving banks
of the silver Bio-Bio River, is a British-owned and operated
cotton-cloth factory turning out an average of 1,000,000 yards yearly,
and working 276 looms. The machinery is British and yarns are imported
from Manchester. All through the agricultural south are flour mills, of
which half a score are owned by British firms; some of these
installations are small and antiquated, but sixteen or more are equipped
with the best modern machinery. As a result of this milling activity,
Chile imports but little wheat flour, and this chiefly from Argentina to
serve as a blend, her home mills practically supplying the whole of the
country and leaving a surplus for export amounting to nearly 24,000
metric tons annually. The best customers for Chilean wheat flour are
Bolivia (17,000 tons), Peru and Ecuador.
Concepción with its coal mines is fortunately placed for industrial
development, and this with other similarly endowed regions and
well-wooded and watered parts of the populated south are fast building
up a list of manufacturing enterprises, most of them based upon local
products. They are rapidly meeting home demands. The foreign visitor in
Santiago has frequently received a surprise when permitted to see the
extremely efficient Government munitions and instrument works, realising
that here is a South American state which is able to manufacture almost
all the equipment needed for its army, from cartridges and rifles to
saddles and field-glasses, the lenses of the latter being the only part
imported.
When such a visitor has also seen tobacco and shoe factories, and the
soap, candle and soda works of the Lever firm at Valparaiso (supplying,
with the sister factory at Concepción, one-third of Chile’s needs for
these goods), he will receive another lesson at the model match factory
at Talca, where the well-being of workers is exceptionally well studied
and a crêche for the children of women workers is maintained. He should
make a point of visiting, at the rich agricultural centre of Traiguen, a
factory where beautiful furniture is made, and, following a sight of the
sugar, flour, candle works of Concepción, and fruit-canning
establishments at Chillan, he will see at Valdivia the most ambitious
shipbuilding yards in Chile, turning out vessels of over 3000 tons. Here
is also an interesting factory making tannin from the bark of lingue, a
large boot and shoe factory, a cider works and several breweries and
fruit-preserving factories. Sawmills line the railway between Temuco and
Valdivia, and thence to Puerto Montt, where the new frigorifico has been
established, and an old lumbering commerce connects with the town of
Castro, on Chiloé, where boats are built. Below Chiloé there is no
industry until the extreme south is reached, and here in the vicinity of
the Strait of Magellan are four packing-houses serving the West
Patagonian sheep farms; at Punta Arenas are sawmills, and the
headquarters of a number of gold-mining companies operating the alluvial
deposits of the southerly islands, a brewery, candle factory, foundry
and shipyard. Dawson Island possesses another shipbuilding industry,
constructing wooden vessels up to 500 tons’ burden. A series of
scientific chicken farms also flourishes at Punta Arenas; 30,000 hens at
Leña Dura yield an average of 200 eggs each, annually: the farm collects
5000 eggs per day, exporting them as far as Montevideo.
An immense impulse will be given to Chile’s manufacturing industry when
the hydro-electric developments planned during the last few years, and
organised in 1921 by the Compañia Chilena de Electricidad, are
completed. The creation of this new company is the work of S. Pearson &
Son, Ltd., famous for brilliant water-harnessing and engineering in many
other regions of Latin America. The Pearson firm initiated its interest
in Chile by the purchase of the Santiago tramways which had been in
German hands prior to the war, and were later operated by J. G. White &
Co., on behalf of the British Government.
Pearson’s decided to increase the power at the disposition of the local
service, obtained solely from falls at La Florida, a few miles from
Santiago, and effected a combination with Chileans of enterprise and
engineering ability already holding concessions for big new
hydro-electric development, including the Cia. General de Electricidad
and the Cia. Nacional de Fuerza Electrica. Work upon the latter’s plans
was under way at Maitenes, inaugurated by the enthusiasm and skill of
Don Juan Tonkin. The Pearson company decided to form a new organisation
with capital sufficient to enlarge the scope of the work and to take
over, in addition, other hydro-electric plans upon the Maipo and
Colorado rivers. Proof of faith in Chile’s future was given when
Pearson’s decided to domicile the new company in Santiago and to add to
its assets the properties of the Chilean Electric Tramway and Light
Company, as well as prestige and financial backing. The new company is
the Cia. Chilena de Electricidad, capitalised at £8,250,000, with a
debenture issue authorised up to £5,000,000; Chilean capital is
interested to the extent of nearly three-quarters of a million pounds
sterling.
Under the enlarged project, the Maitenes plant will be increased to
develop 34,000 h.p.; the increase of an existing steam-plant in Santiago
will bring another 27,000 h.p. into the market; and the development of
plans for the harnessing of the Maipo and its tributary the Volcán at
Puente del Cristo means the creation of a large hydro-electric station,
capable of producing 65,000 h.p. When these installations are in working
order, Central Chile will possess a force of 140,000 h.p. at the
disposition of public services, domestic utilities and industry; the
horizon thus opened is equal to that of the biggest manufacturing region
of South America, S. Paulo in Brazil, where in the city alone about
30,000 h.p. is used to turn the wheels of industry.
The electrification of many Chilean railroads follows as a matter of
course: no sooner was the new company formed than the Chilean Government
signed a contract for the supply of electric power for the State line
connecting Santiago and Valparaiso, and obtained a loan in New York for
electric locomotive and other equipment; similar improvement is planned
to Los Andes and for the reorganised Transandine line. Transmission
lines, bringing power to Santiago from the generating plants, will carry
force to Valparaiso by way of Llai-llai and Quillota, with substations
at important points such as Tiltil, whence the big cement works of El
Melon at Calera will obtain electric power, while Valparaiso’s
industries will share in the new impetus.
_Chilean Market Needs_
Chile’s market needs are on a par with those of other South American
countries so far as manufactured metals, especially machinery, mining
and railroad equipment are concerned: in common with her sister states,
she is also a buyer of such luxuries as fine textiles of wool, silk, and
linen, perfumery and other toilet specialties, fine wines and spirits;
also many utilities which she cannot produce, as print and writing
papers, high-grade glass and ceramic ware, inks, paints and varnishes,
cement, and sheet glass.
The best grades of cotton cloth are also imported, for the existing
Chilean factories are limited in class of output; there is a
considerable import of ready-made clothes, and of fine footwear,
although it is but fair to add that Chile produces the best shoes made
in South America and that her daintiest satin and kid footwear for women
compare well with the output of the great makers overseas; Chilean red
and white wines also outclass the vintages of sister states, but while
the wealthy resident has plenty of money in his pocket there will always
be a certain import of European champagnes and liqueurs, spirits and
high-class wines.
Chile’s purchasing power varies a good deal, fluctuating with the
fortunes of nitrate. The value of imports during the last few years has
swung from 153,000,000 pesos in 1915 to the high-water mark of
436,000,000 in 1918, after which a decline was experienced to
401,000,000 in 1919 and 350,000,000 in 1920. Certain commodities, with
coal as the striking example, were almost blotted from the import lists
during the European war, and with the encouraging development of the
national mines in response to necessity, plus a greatly extended use of
petroleum as fuel for industrial purposes, its pre-war place is unlikely
to be recovered.
Looking down the lists of Chilean imports, the tendency towards
importing materials in the crude state or simply prepared, for
working-up in national factories, shows an immense increase since 1914;
dependence upon national supplies also increases markedly. Metals in
bars or pig, worth less than 400,000 pesos in 1914, were imported to the
value of nearly 5,000,000 pesos in 1919; at the same time the value of
imported lumber dropped from nearly 3,000,000 pesos to 1,250,000. The
value of live animals imported—chiefly pedigree horses and cattle from
the United Kingdom and North America, to improve the already excellent
livestock of the Chilean farms—went up with a bound at the end of the
war, totalling 12,000,000 pesos in 1918; the importation both of leaf
and prepared tobacco shows systematic growth; but purchases of foreign
meats, butter and cheese, show consistent falls.