CHILEAN POLITICS AND ECONOMY 255
growing unrest and frustration in the middle class
included a series of student strikes in the universi-
ties, caused by efforts of creole governing boards to
restrict enrollment of students of immigrant descent.
ELECTORAL REFORM AND THE GROWTH
OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT
Meanwhile, a section of the oligarchy had begun
to advocate electoral reform. These aristocratic
reformers argued that the existing situation cre-
ated a permanent state of tension and instability;
they feared that sooner or later the Radical efforts
at revolution would succeed. It would be much
better, they believed, to make the concessions de-
manded by the Radicals, open up the political sys-
tem, and thereby gain for the ruling party—now
generally called Conservative—the popular sup-
port and legitimacy it needed to remain in power.
Moreover, the conservative reformers, aware of
a new threat from the labor movement and espe-
cially its vanguard—the socialists, anarchists, and
syndicalists—hoped to make an alliance with the
bourgeoisie against the revolutionary working
class. They therefore supported a series of measures
known collectively as the Sáenz Peña Law (1912).
The new law established universal and secret male
suffrage for citizens when they reached the age of
eighteen. This law, which historian David Rock
calls “an act of calculated retreat by the ruling
class,” opened the way for a dependent bourgeoisie
to share power and the spoils of offi ce with the
landed aristocracy.
The principal political vehicle for working-
class aspirations was the Socialist Party, founded
in 1894 as a split-off from the Unión Cívica Radi-
cal by the Buenos Aires physician and intellectual
Juan B. Justo, who led the party until his death in
- Despite its professed Marxism, the party’s
socialism was of the parliamentary reformist kind,
appealing chiefl y to highly skilled, native-born
workers and the lower-middle class. The major-
ity of workers, foreign-born noncitizens who still
dreamed of returning someday to their homelands,
remained aloof from electoral politics but readily
joined trade unions that valiantly resisted deterio-
rating wages and working conditions; a series of
great strikes was broken by the government with
brutal repression and the deportation of so-called
foreign agitators. Despite these defeats, the labor
movement continued to grow and struggle, win-
ning such initial victories as the ten-hour workday
and the establishment of Sunday as a compulsory
day of rest.Chilean Politics and Economy
NITRATES AND WAR
In 1876 the Liberal president Aníbal Pinto inher-
ited a severe economic crisis (1874–1879). Wheat
and copper prices dropped, exports declined, and
unemployment grew. The principal offset to these
unfavorable developments was the continued
growth of nitrate exports from the Atacama Des-
ert as a result of a doubling of nitrate production
between 1865 and 1875. But nitrates, the founda-
tion of Chilean material progress, also became the
cause of a major war with dramatic consequences
for Chile and its two foes, Bolivia and Peru.
The nitrate deposits exploited by the Anglo-
Chilean companies lay in territories belonging to
Bolivia (the province of Antofagasta) and Peru
(the province of Tarapacá). In 1866 a treaty be-
tween Chile and Bolivia defi ned their boundary in
the Atacama Desert as the twenty-fourth parallel,
gave Chilean and Bolivian interests equal rights
to exploit the territory between the twenty-third
and twenty-fi fth parallels, and guaranteed each
government half of the tax revenues obtained from
the export of minerals from the whole area. Anglo-
Chilean capital soon poured into the region, devel-
oping a highly effi cient mining-industrial complex.
By a second treaty of 1874, Chile’s northern border
with Bolivia was left at the twenty-fourth parallel.
Chile relinquished its rights to a share of the taxes
from exports north of that boundary but received
in return a twenty-fi ve-year guarantee against in-
crease of taxes on Chilean enterprises operating in
the Bolivian province of Antofagasta.
Chile had no boundary dispute with Peru,
but aggressive Chilean mining interests, aided
by British capital, soon extended their operations
from Antofagasta into the Peruvian province of