The “commercial standard” of purity which exported nitrate must attain for sales to agricultural regions is 95 per cent, but 96 per cent and over is reached in shipments destined to explosives factories. The cost of production of necessity fluctuates with the prices paid for wages, fuel and equipment, but was reckoned by Dr. Enrique Cuevas, in 1916, to work out at a minimum of two shillings, or fifty American cents, for each Spanish quintal of 101 pounds weight. During 1921 the cost was reckoned at double this amount. Expenses tend to increase year by year, with higher wages and costs of food and fuel, as well as new charges such as that recently added by the Employers’ Liability Laws of Chile. Antofagasta reckons that the cost of living increased 300 per cent between the middle of 1914 and the middle of 1921: it is certainly no less upon the inland nitrate fields, where all merchandise has an extra rail journey, every gallon of water is piped long distances from the mountains, and it is common to bring cattle for slaughter overland from northwest Argentina, the animals being shod for the three or four weeks’ march over rough trails. The only method of reducing costs is by improved scientific production, and to this aim the work of the best companies is constantly and successfully directed.
Iodine is extracted from the “mother liquor” that has already deposited its burden of nitrate of soda and of common salt, and which is, after the extraction of iodine, returned to the first lixiviation tanks to serve again in dissolution of new loads of the raw caliche. The purple-black iodine crystals, of so pungent a quality that a whiff from the store-room is almost blinding, are packed into strong little wooden casks for export. A couple of big oficinas could, between them, manufacture enough iodine in a year to supply the world’s needs, but to prevent glutting of the market there is an agreement with the Producers’ Association by which the amount of this chemical made by each nitrate plant is strictly regulated.
A Desert Industry
Before the realization of the properties of nitrate and its commercial exploitation upon a great scale, the burning pampas of Tarapacá and Antofagasta were solitudes, shunned by all animal life. This region, whose products were destined to give new life to a million cultivated fields, to bring orchards and groves all over the world into magnificent flower and fruit, lacked the ability to produce so much as a blade of grass. Forming a continuous stretch of arid country with the long deserts north of Copiapó, the major part of this strip shelters no life that has not been artificially introduced.
Yet today this region presents the liveliest scenes of the West Coast. Where a solitary waste lay under the sun, railways cross the desert with loads of heavy bags of chemicals; tall chimneys rise into the quivering air, the grey tin roofs of the nitrate works dot the pampas thickly. Each nitrate plant is the centre of an artificial town, to which every drop of water must be piped, every article of clothing, food, every scrap of wood and metal needed for dwellings and oficina must be carried. The ground is pitted with the marks of the tiros, the test blastings made in all directions to discover the quality and position of the nitrate stratum; and one may stand upon any small rise in the richest nitrate pampas and count a dozen or more of the long flat “dumps” of waste material that denote the active working of an oficina.
The scene appears to have no elements of beauty, for there is no hue but that of the sandy desert, the grey and black of the oficinas and the gleam of railway tracks; the outlines of the scored and pitted ground, the railway cars, the smoking chimneys, are harsh. Yet there is a sense of energy and prosperity, of intelligent activity, and in the pure dry air of the pampa almost everyone experiences a feeling of splendid health and well-being.
Above the flat desert is an enormous bowl of clear, transparent sky and one looks far away to distances that seem endless. At sunrise and sunset the effects of light upon the sky and pampa are of a beauty never seen but in expanses such as these. I have watched the sky in an Antofagasta nitrate pampa when, as the sun fell swiftly, all the arch flushed with rose, and quickly flooded with sheets of purest violet while the orange and umber pampa took on deep amethyst shadows; before pastel or paint could record the sight, all the sky was transformed in a clear luminous lemon-yellow, upon whose bright surface streams of translucent green presently ran. The high peaks of far-distant Andes appeared as if floating, the snow-crowned heads of San Pedro and San Pablo alone visible against the changing sky, fading at last into the mantle of sapphire that gradually shrouded pampa and heights, with nothing moving but a host of brilliant stars, sparkling like diamonds on a live hand.
In a few moments after sundown the scorching heat has given place to sharp cold, and he who rides by night across these deserts must carry a heavy woollen poncho; one sleeps indoors under blankets. Dawn is a miracle of pink and pearl, and in at the window comes the scent of the cherished flowers in the little garden, glistening with dew. The new day is of an indescribable freshness and serenity. Long before noon the sun is pouring vertical floods of sunshine upon the desert, the very sand seems to quiver with heat, and a relentless scorching breath seems to fill the world. But to this all-the-year-round heat the foreigner soon becomes accustomed—everyone, as a matter of fact, workers and officials alike, is a “foreigner” to this pampa; human life is imported like every other commodity here. But the children born of white parents in the nitrate fields are strong and sturdy, and it is not surprising that they who have lived for a year or two on the pampas find themselves restless in other places, suffer a feeling of constraint, a longing for these wide skies and far horizons.
The great development of the nitrate industry has created during the last forty years a series of ports along the Pacific, and brought to this once desolate coast, where there existed only a few fishing villages or outlets for desultorily-worked mines, a population which today exceeds 350,000. The workers directly engaged in the extraction, preparation and shipment of nitrate number about 70,000, about 50,000 of these being employed upon 173 oficinas, when all are in operation.