CHILIAN NITRATES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18753, 5 January 1923, Page 6

CHILIAN NITRATES

The dislocation of world-commerce caused by the war put a stop for the tima being to all activity on the nitrate fields in the north. Tens of thousands of men were thrown out of work, and as the nitrate establishments resemble .ships at sea, being isolated posts in the desert, entirely dependent on the coastwise trade for supplies, it became'necessary bring these men and their families south and distribute them over the country, where it would bo easier to feed, if not to employ, them. This was done, little by little, at the cost of infinite distress. W e then thought that times were as bad as they could well be. ’ Boon after, however, when the war had settled down into an industry, an enormous demand arose for Chilian nitrate as the raw material of nitric acid, and hence of nitro-explosivcs. The nitrate industry revived, and entered on a period of unparalleled prosperity. The northern ports again became centres of feverish activity, the price of nitrate steadily rose, and the tax on the huge exportations poured great sums into the national treasury. ln 1918 the quantity exported reached 64,8W,UW Spanish quintals. ... . With a view to maintaining prices tne nitrate producers formed an association, and in the end succeeded in bringing the few dissidents within the fold. P nc ® s still rose, until, for the agriculturist, the fertiliser became a luxury. At the same time the peculiar conditions, involving the absence of foreign competition, favoured the development of new industries in Chile and placed the coastwise traffic mainl’v in the hands of Chilian shipowners. Everything that would float and coula be towed was pressed into service—hulks that had long served as junk-stores, old whalers, and obsolete arks that were certainly not “Al” at Lloyds. Dunng the whole period of this scarcity of shipping Chilian ports were constructed by some 95 of the finest steamers and sailing ships of the German mercantile marine, rusting at their moorings till the tide of war definitely set against Germany, when their crews deliberately blew the machinery to pieces or otherwise reduced them to hulks. Some of the sailing ships are still in Chilian waters, under flags of the Allied nations to whom they were eventually apportioned. A line of wrecks at Valparaiso recalls the great storm of two years ago that flung several of them on the rocks. It cannot be said that this unexpected wave of pseudo-prosperity greatly benefited the people as a whole. The price of living rose so greatlv as to neutralise the advantages of the boom; and those prices, it may he added, have since gone higher still. "Everybody in a position to do so was shamelessly profiteering. Mnshroom fortunes were made, and, like mushrooms. have since vanished, many of them. The Chilian Government, whatever it did with the money received, certainly laid none bv for the future. It is very difficult to-dav to point to anything of public utility dating from the years symbolised bv Pharaoh’* “fat kine.” B«’t it may safely be said that the seeds of deep discontent and unrest were then planted in the nrepared roil of the proletariat. In commercial and political circles it scorned to bo believed that these ephemeral benefits were to be permanent. It was confidently anticipated that the termination of the war would bring with it a still greater demand for nitrate to supply the depleted fields of Europe with the accustomed fertiliser. The event proved otherwise. With the long-continued depression in trade Chile wa« plunged into an acute financial and industrial crisis, the more hopeless as it was contingent on world-wide conditions. The nitrate industry came to a dead stop; the towns of the centre wore once more burdened with the sheltering and feeding of thousands of nitrate operatives at a time when these provinces were themselves suffering from the paralysis of their trade. Whilst the prosperity of the nitrate industry does not necessarily improve the lot of the general population, catastrophe inevitably spreads ruin throughout the country. An enormous stock of nearly a million tons of nitrate, fixed by international agreement .at a highselling price, found no purchasers, and was faced by the competition of the German artificial product in a market where formerly it held almost undisputed sway. The sword of Damocles, in fact, had fallen at last. Years ago, it may be remembered, the late Sir William Crookes, in an address to the British Association, expressed the alarmist view that therp would be a failure of foodstuffs in the near future, as the result of the exhaustion of the Chilian nitrate deceits—a “nitrogen famine.” He was unduly pessimistic, for there is plenty of nitrate available for extraction, oven by existing processes. He emphasised the need for research in the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen, and it was not long before the problem was solved, though not as an economic possibility. The great impetus to the manufacture of synthetic nitrogen compounds was given when the iron circle shut off Germany from the outer world. Under the stimulus of necessity, work that had long been progressing quietly was pushed through to a successful issue; our great enemy supplied her war needs and emerged -from the conflict with perfected processes that have rendered her, it is asserted, for ever independent of external sources of available nitrogen, and even in

a position to supply her neighbours. A cargo of artificial “Stickstoff” has even reached Chile, the home of the natural salt. Chile is fighting hard against acceptance of this ultimatus of the industrial struggle. But if it has not come already, in the end it is bound to come. The only hope for Chilian nitrate is to fight its competitors on the basis of low prices, when the superiority of the native product to any cyanamides or other forms of artificial nitrogen compounds may carry due weight.—By Oswald G. Eva»s, F.G.S., in Chambers’s Journal.