Chile today and tomorrow

by L. E. Elliott Joyce

The salitre beds vary in thickness and are of capricious distribution: great areas within the rainless region show no trace of these deposits, while in others the layers run twenty feet thick. The surveyed fields cover at least 225,000 acres, contained chiefly in five major districts. The most northerly, the Pampa of Tarapacá, ships its products from the ports of Iquique, Caleta Buena, Patillos, Junin and Pisagua, and is served by three railways—the Nitrate Railways Company, the Agua Santa Nitrate and Railway Company, and the Junin Railway Company. Next comes the Pampa of Toco, exporting through the coast town of Tocopilla, to which it is joined by the Anglo-Chilean Nitrate and Railway Company. Farther south lies the enormous Pampa of Antofagasta, with outlets at the fine port town of Antofagasta and its older rival, Mejillones; the region is served by the main line and branches of the Antofagasta and Bolivia Railway Company. The fourth field in order is the Aguas Blancas Pampa, with a shipping point at Caleta Coloso, reached by an arm of the Antofagasta and Bolivia Railway; and the most southerly deposit of considerable size is the Pampa of Taltal, shipping its product by the Taltal Railway to Taltal Port. A few isolated beds lie outside the areas of these five great deposits, as the Providencia and Boquete beds of Antofagasta, but so far as present surveys have proved their existence, the great masses of nitrate are definitely localised.

Tarapacá, with 76 oficinas equipped, normally produces about 40 per cent of the total nitrate exported from Chile; Antofagasta, with 30 oficinas, chiefly of a more modern type, produces about 35 per cent; Taltal, with 9 oficinas, ships usually some 10 per cent of the total; Tocopilla, with 7 oficinas, about 9 per cent; and Aguas Blancas, with another 7 oficinas, is responsible for 6 per cent.

Nitrate Companies

The total capital invested in nitrate lands and plants is calculated at 400,000,000 Chilean gold pesos of eighteen pence, or about £38,000,000 sterling. It is not easy to state exactly what proportion of this total should be assigned to each of the different groups of nationals owning these properties, since many firms employing foreign capital are registered as Chilean companies, and both during and since the war a considerable number of oficinas have changed hands; but the official statistics published by the Chilean Government give the percentage of production ascribed to the various groups of owners, thus offering a useful guide.

The figures ascribe to Chilean owners, out of a total 129 plants in operation in 1918, 60 oficinas, producing 50 per cent of the nitrate total; to English companies, 43 oficinas and 34 per cent of the production; to the Jugo-Slavs, with 7 oficinas, about 6 per cent of the production; Peruvians, 7 oficinas, 3 per cent of production; Spaniards, with 3 oficinas, less than 2 per cent of the total output; Americans, 2 oficinas, nearly 3 per cent; Germans, with 2 oficinas, less than 1 per cent of production—this reduction from a larger pre-war production being due to closure of several properties from 1914 onwards.

The Chilean companies include the largest and most heavily capitalised in the country, one of these, the Compañia de Salitres de Antofagasta, producing 10 per cent of Chile’s total output. The firm owns seven oficinas, employs 15,000 men, does a large general import and export business, owns its own fleet of barges and tugs, and possesses a belt of nitrate lands on the Antofagasta Pampa twenty miles long. In 1918 the company, capitalised at 16,000,000 pesos (Chilean paper), earned profits of over 22,000,000 pesos or over £1,000,000 sterling at the prevailing exchange, and was thus able to set aside a substantial sum for rainy days. It is on account of earnings such as these, supplemented by the fantastically huge sums earned in the summer of 1920 when the price of nitrate rose to seventeen shillings per quintal, that the nitrate companies were able to observe with a semblance of equanimity the subsequent and sustained fall in prices. The international merchants were badly hit when the slump of 1921 came, but companies in Chile had made so much money that it was preferable in many cases to shut down operations rather than to continue the production of unwanted goods.

Other big Chilean firms are the Cia. Salitrera “El Loa,” operating seven works, all in Antofagasta Province; the Cia. Salitrera Lastenia, with three fine properties upon the same pampa; and the Cia. de Salitres y Ferrocarril de Agua Santa, operating six oficinas on the Tarapacá Pampa.

Of the English companies, the largest was the Alianza, operating three oficinas in Tarapacá, and exporting normally about 150,000 tons annually, but this company has changed its domicile to Valparaiso and now counts with the Chilean group. The Anglo-Chilean Company has three oficinas in the Tocopilla district; the Lautaro, three, on the Taltal Pampa; the Liverpool Nitrate Company, three, in Tarapacá; the Amelia, three, in Tarapacá and Antofagasta; the Fortuna, three, in Antofagasta; the Rosario, three in Tarapacá; the New Tamarugal, two, in Tarapacá, where the two nitrate works of the London Nitrate Company and the properties of the Lagunas companies are also situated.

The German oficinas are twelve in number, operated by four companies. Of these the most important is the Cia. Salitrera de Tocopilla, formerly the Compañia H. B. Sloman, with four properties on the Pampa of Toco. The Cia. Salitrera Alemana owns five oficinas, all situated on the Taltal Pampa; Salpeterwerke Gildemeister A. G., has three works in Tarapacá, and the Salpeterwerke Augusta Victoria A. G., one oficina, in Antofagasta. The well-known Italian firm of Pedro Perfetti owns five oficinas in Taltal.

The nationals who most notably increased their interest in nitrate properties during and immediately after the war were the enterprising Jugo-Slavs who have of late years taken a considerable part in Chilean development work. The largest of the Jugo-Slav firms is that of Baburizza Lukinovic, with five well-equipped oficinas in the Antofagasta district. Several other European-owned oficinas passed into Slavic hands before the stagnation of the market set in.