Sunday is the day for society, for drives to Cousiño Park, and to the Quinta Normal or Agricultural Experiment Station, which is also a zoölogical garden. The grounds are extensive and well wooded with sycamores and cypresses, but they impressed me as being badly neglected. Cousiño Park also had the appearance of unkemptness. Chile long ago abolished the bull-fight, and she does not permit a national lottery, though there is no interference with the sale of tickets for the Buenos Ayres drawing. Football and other athletic sports are in high favor. Santiago in this respect is an English town. The great attraction is the racing, and on a Sunday afternoon in the season the Carrera, or Club Hipico, gathers all that is fashionable and all that is animated.
Though Santiago has a delightful Summer climate,—the thermometer never gets above 85° Fahrenheit,—every one who is anybody has a fundo, or country estate, to which the family flits at the first approach of the heated season. Later in November all move to the seashore resort of Viña del Mar, near Valparaiso, and play golf.
The English group in Santiago is the largest of the foreign colonies, but it is not so extensive as the many English and Scotch names would lead one to suppose. These names are borne by Chileans whose great-grandfathers were from the British Isles, or a very few of whom were from the United States.
Newspapers in Chile are as much an institution as in the United States. This is true both of Santiago and of Valparaiso. El Mercurio, “The Mercury,” which is published in both cities, has fine buildings, superior in their conveniences to newspaper offices in the United States, and with provisions for editors, reporters, printers, and other employees that the Land of Journalism (I mean the United States) is a century behind in. Dining-rooms, private parlors, working-offices with baths, bedrooms, chess, for the working-staff of a daily newspaper! The Santiago office of El Mercurio is notable not only for its own facilities, which are very complete, but for its salons and other rooms which are maintained for the benefit of the public. In a newspaper office in the United States the patron is lucky if he can get standing-room against any kind of counter or railing in order to write his advertisement. In Santiago he may have a table and chair and take his time. In consulting the files he has all the luxury of a modern library reading-room. The salons in the “Mercury” building are thrown open to the public for receptions and similar functions. One afternoon I attended by invitation a concert given by the members of the visiting Italian Opera Company in the music-room. Members of the Diplomatic Corps, public functionaries, and all that was distinguished in professional and social life in the capital were present by invitation of the newspaper management.
The owner of El Mercurio, Mr. Augustin Edwards, is a young man. He is of the banking family of that name, is a member of the Congress, and has been Minister of Foreign Affairs. His journals publish more foreign and cable intelligence than any two newspapers in any city of a quarter of a million inhabitants in the United States.
While a large amount of telegraphic and local news is printed, the leader, or editorial on the foremost topic of the day, is a prominent feature of the daily issue, and one that carries great weight with the reading public. One evening at dinner, at the house of Mr. Alejandro Bertrand, the distinguished Chilean civil engineer, who was his country’s expert commissioner in the boundary dispute with Argentina, the talk turned on the negro question. There are no blacks in Chile, and one of the guests, a man of prominence in finance and politics, who had lived much in Europe, confessed his perplexity over the negro issue, and wanted to know something about the African race. The clearest exposition that I ever heard of the life-work of Booker Washington, and the most discriminating explanation of the race problem in the United States, were given by Mr. Silva, the leader writer on El Mercurio. Though he had spent some years in England, he never had visited the United States, yet he was thoroughly conversant with our national perplexity. It therefore may be understood that the leading problems of the United States are discussed with intelligence in Chile, though Chilean subjects may not always receive the same treatment in the journals of the United States.
Besides El Mercurio, Santiago has other vigorous papers. One of them is La Lei, “The Law.” The name is misleading, for it is merely a daily journal devoted to current topics. It represents radical political tendencies. Its editor, Mr. Phillips, was declared to me to be either feared or loved by every public man in Chile, and the alternations of fear and love were said to be as regular as the seasons. Here, then, was the ideal editor. In a call on Editor Phillips I was impressed with this feeling. His aggressive personality would be bound to make friends and enemies, and his independence in discussing public questions would be certain to insure ideal journalism.
CHAPTER XIV
NITRATE OF SODA AN ALADDIN’S LAMP
Extensive Use of Nitrates as Fertilizers—Enormous Contributions to Chilean Revenues—Résumé of Exportations—Description of the Industry—How the Deposits Lie—Iodine a By-product—Stock of Saltpetre in Reserve—The Trust and Production—Estimates of Ultimate Exhaustion—A Third of a Century More of Prosperous Existence—Shipments not Affected by Panama Canal—Copper a Source of Wealth—Output in Northern Districts—Further Development—Coal—Silver Mines Productive in the Past—Prospect of Future Exploitation.