Looking Back

by Sir Seymour John Fortescue

We (our hostess and host, Morris and myself) started off one afternoon about four, so as to escape the great heat of mid-day, and arrived at our first halting-place in time for dinner after a most delightful ride. The next day, of course, was spent in inspecting the establishment, and, as far as I was concerned, in getting a more finished knowledge of the business. The caliche, as the stuff is called that is extracted by a species of surface mining, is put into crushers and subsequently boiled, the residue turning into a white powdery substance that is the nitrate of sodium required. There is nothing very mysterious about the business, the only real peculiarity of the nitrate fields is that, fortunately for the industry, rain is absolutely unknown there, for a couple of days’ heavy rain would wash all the sodium out of the ground, and the Pampas would then be a desert without the saving presence of an important industry. During the few days I was up in these parts I visited several establishments that were in the hands of English Companies; without exception they were completely run by young Englishmen. These youths,—for they were very little more,—were typical specimens of Public School boys, who, after being knocked into shape at a Public School, and only being possessed of limited private means, had started as clerks in the various business houses on the coast, and then, as soon as they were considered qualified, had been sent up country to assist in running an officina. At some of these factories there were probably upwards of 600 workmen, mostly Chilénos, men who are of a really fine fighting race, and apt to be extremely turbulent. It made one feel proud of one’s countrymen, to see the admirable way that these young fellows handled their workmen. I fancy what tended more to preserve law and order than anything else, was the introduction of football, to which game the Chileans took very kindly; and when they realised what hard plucky men they were working under,—and nowhere, probably, are these qualities quicker detected than they are at football,—turbulent as they were by nature, and terribly inclined to be too ready with a revolver, it was extraordinary how little trouble they generally gave. One of the questions invariably asked by the visiting Directors was, whether the men had any complaint to make about their treatment by the employers, and whether they made any claim for an increase in wages. In every case that came under my notice the invariable answer was that there were no complaints, and this fact is fully corroborated by a Foreign Office dispatch that I read many months after I had returned to England.

In view of what happened a day or two afterwards, this absence of any apparent motive for trouble becomes a curious and interesting fact. That there had been considerable labour difficulties recently, we knew as soon as we had arrived at Iquique. There had been a strike on the Nitrate Railway Works just before our arrival, but that had been settled, and there was a strike of stevedores at Iquique still in progress, when we left the coast for the Pampas, but as far as the labourers of the various officinas that we hoped to visit, were concerned, we had no reason to suspect any mischief, and our first two or three visits of inspection were made in a time (apparently) of profound peace. It was somewhat of a surprise when, on the 14th of December, only three days after our arrival, it became extremely evident that a serious strike had begun in the Nitrate District, and that the sooner we got into our train and returned to the coast the better it would be,—the alternative being to be marooned in an officina, where no work was going on, for an indefinite period. Luckily our little special was lying in a siding close by, and off we went just in time, for already the strikers had commenced their march on Iquique. Indeed within a very few hours after the time that our train had returned to that town, many hundreds of them (having very wisely come to the conclusion that marching through the Pampas in midsummer was exceedingly thirsty work), had seized what railway stock they could lay their hands on, and, as many as there was room for, made the journey to the coast by train.

Of course, as is the case in all strikes, in all countries, the usual ineffective promise of protection by soldiers and police was given to the many men who wished to go on with their extremely well-paid work, but the threats and blows of the strikers proved far more effective than Government promises; the line of least resistance was duly taken, and the would-be workers joined the strike. As long as the strikers were on the Pampas they did not behave particularly badly; they did not in the least dislike the managers and staff at the officinas, under whom they worked, and in no case, as far as I know, was any violence or ill-treatment extended to them during the time of their forced inactivity and species of imprisonment, while the railway was in the hands of the strikers; and when our train crawled slowly through them, stopping constantly to avoid accidents, they neither derailed it, nor attempted to take possession of it, either of which they could have easily done, and contented themselves with a certain amount of booing and hissing, which broke no bones. Naturally, any establishment that contained food or drink was at once looted, but beyond that next to nothing in the way of damage to property was attempted.

However, as may be readily imagined, the members of our little party were not sorry to be back on the coast again, to settle down at the Casa Clarke until events had arranged themselves. We had no sooner returned to Iquique on the evening of the 14th, before the news reached us that the strike had become general so far as the Nitrate Fields were concerned, and on the next day some 4000 men, apparently well organised, could be seen marching down from the hills towards the town. It was fairly evident by this time that there was going to be serious trouble, and it is not to be denied that the strike leaders, one of whom was said to be a well-known Spanish anarchist, had chosen their moment well. To begin with, the Intendente of the Province, Señor Carlos Eastman, was at Santiago, where he had gone to present his resignation to the President; the General commanding the district, General Silva Renard, and his second in command, were both away in Santiago, leaving the troops in temporary charge of a comparatively inexperienced officer, and he, like all temporary commanders, was extremely averse to taking the responsibility for decided measures; and, by way of making the list of absentees complete, the Prefect of Police was also in the Capital. In addition, as I have mentioned before, the stevedores were also out on strike, so one way and another the position was extremely unpleasant.

At first, the Acting Commandante of the Troops seemed as if he were disposed to enforce order, and when the first lot of strikers from the Pampas arrived in the vicinity of the town, they were headed off by troops to a camp that had been prepared for them on the race-course, and there seemed some prospect of the men returning to the Pampas in trains which the Nitrate Railway Company were very ready to place at their disposal.

Apparently this attitude was only a bluff, for what eventually happened was, (in spite of the assurances given by the Acting Commandante of the Troops and the Acting Intendente of the Province, that the strikers would be prevented from entering the town by the military), that on the next day, the 16th of December, the Pampas strikers, and the transport-workers strikers of the town, joined together, took complete charge of the town, and stopped not only all traffic, but all work of every description, all the shops having been forced to close, and, meanwhile, reinforcements of strikers were hourly arriving from the Pampas, some on foot and others in trains that they had commandeered.

It is hardly necessary to say that, during these days, Reggie Morris and myself, living, as we were, at the English Consulate, knew from hour to hour what was going on, from our host, for we occasionally saw him when he came to his house to snatch a morsel of food. He displayed the greatest energy, and, had his advice been taken by the Authorities, in all probability a great deal of inconvenience, to say nothing of bloodshed, would have been saved. But whenever he requested the Acting Commandante to take certain measures with regard to the railway, which belonged to a British company, his proposals were invariably first accepted, and then never carried out, and when he attempted to confer with the Acting Intendente he was always informed that this great official was either too busy or else asleep, and referred to some one else, who was generally a lawyer interested in local politics.

For the inside of a week the town of Iquique was in a state of subdued chaos. Nothing happened; there were no tramways running, no cabs, no shops open, and, oddly enough, next to no disorder. The market was open for a short time in the morning, whither our intrepid hostess used daily to drive her pony cart, returning with the day’s provisions. There was absolutely nothing to do all day, and, judging from our own feelings, the inhabitants of Iquique must have been slowly dying of intense boredom. As for ourselves, except for an hour or two in the evening when we mounted our host’s ponies and went for a gallop down the coast and round the race-course, occupation we had none.

But meanwhile things were beginning to move at Santiago. Noel Clarke had been in constant telegraphic communication with Mr. Rennie, then the British Chargé des Affaires, and received at last the welcome intelligence that the real Intendente, Señor Carlos Eastman, accompanied by General Renard, were leaving Valparaiso in the Chilian warship Zenteno, with reinforcements of troops. Very shortly afterwards, another Chilian cruiser, the Esmeralda, arrived, but without the troops, that she was expected to bring.

Though there was but little actual disorder in the town, a number of the more respectable families began to get alarmed, principally owing to the panic-stricken attitude of their servants, a number of the women having taken refuge on board the merchant ships in the harbour. There was some cause for anxiety, the real danger being that of fire. A town like Iquique, largely built of wood, where rain is unknown, and where the water supply depends upon a pipe-line from the hills, is particularly open to danger of conflagration when in the hands of some thousands of strikers, many of whose pockets are known to be stuffed full of dynamite.