Thin Man

Chile's presidential campaign, made necessary by the death in June of President Rios, was under way in the sleet and snow of Andean winter. Torn by feuds and prides that cut as deep as cleavages among the leftists, conservatives could unite on no single man. Chileans had been about ready to swing to the right, but many now hoped for a middle way. With four candidates in the field, it was a wide-open race after all.

The winner would face problems that could hardly be handled from an easy chair. Chile had become the international Thin Man. The cost of living had doubled since 1939. A dozen eggs cost 60-c-, an ordinary shirt $6 and the average worker earning about $1 a day was out of luck. Even Chile's famed social laws, which insured him against practically everything, were powerless to buy him shirt or eggs. From his predicament spiraled massive social problems: poor public health (devastating tuberculosis and infant mortality rates), declining industrial output, alcoholism.

Roads of Escape. Inflation-battered Fulano de Tal, the common man, was so weary of cramming into broken-down trolleys, standing in line for tea, and going without a new shirt that he was apt to buy a cheap bottle of vino and say to hell with it all. Or, working at 75-c- a day in Lota's undersea coal mines where cave-ins occur almost daily, and living in a hillside of hovels where each year more babies die than are born, he turned to Communism.

As in so many Latin countries, cheap food would save the day. But half the land lies idle, much of it in the grip of the feudal hacienda-owners. And though nearly half the population lives and works on the land, the country imports huge quantities of food.

Chile's brightest hopes lie in the half-Socialist, half-RFC Development Corporation, whose projects--a major steel mill, the Spring Hill oilfield, a copper processing plant, a new fishing industry--could in the long run raise the level of production. But the Chilean man in the street looked for action now. He would look to the new President.

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