COMPETITIVE CONDITIONS IN SOUTH AMERICAN TRABE. 197
try contributes more than half the revenues of the Government; furnishes
 the chief means of paying for the imports; governs the rates of
oxchange, which affect all the commercial life of Chile; and employs
a large part of the population, either directly in the extraction and
export of nitrate, or indirectly in providing a consuming market for
native products used in the nitrate region, which is a barren and absolutely
 rainless country. In the nitrate industry times of prosperity
have alternated with times of great depression. It is popularly believed
 that often the only thing that has kept the nitrate producers
from ruin has been the steady and extremely profitable return derived
from the iodine branch of their business.
Every informant considered that the operations of the Iodine Combination
 had worked a great benefit, not only to the nitrate producers
in it but also indirectly to all the commercial interests of Chile and
the laboring men. The pressure that would be brought to bear
against any producer who undertook to manufacture iodine outside
of the combination was considered to be irresistible. Such a producer
 would have difficulty in marketing his iodine, due to the control
by the combination of the regular channels of distribution for that
chemical throughout the world and its ability to undermine his trade
by excessive price cutting wherever he could find customers. His
greatest difficulty, however, would occur in the nitrate branch of his
business. He would have to meet at every step a systematic boycott.
In the first place, he would have difficulty with his workmen in his
“oficina” through inability to secure competent employees and
through strikes fomented from outside. At his shipping port the
longshoremen who load the bags of nitrate in lighters and deliver
them on board the vessels would probably refuse to handle his shipments,
 or if they did take them would mishandle them in such a
manner that there would be an excessive amount of every shipment
received on board in damaged condition. It was further asserted that
the would-be independent producer would have difficulty in getting
ships under charter to carry his nitrate and that he would not be able
to sell through brokers on the Valparaiso market, which is the principal
 nitrate market. If, for some reason, he was unable to make
deliveries of his own nitrate, sold under contracts, he would find no
broker willing to sell him nitrate to fulfill such contracts. If, as is
often the case, the producer were also interested in an importing house,
he would find that the boycott against him would be extended to
include that house's activities. Retail merchants in all lines would
agree not to trade with his house. Furthermore, the producer weuld
have difficulty in securing credit accommodations at the banks.
A number of informants, in support of their views, cited an event
which occurred several years aco when one of the most powerful im-