At Constitución, South of Santiago.
San Cristobal Hill and Parque Forestal, Santiago.
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.