Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/229

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10 pesos is a fair average for the majority. Houses are provided by the company, but heat, light and water must be paid for by all except salaried employesemployees [sic]. This latter class, including the manager, or administrador, and his subordinates, the engineer, bookkeeper, chemist, electrical expert, etc., are given their quarters, heat, light and water, in addition to salaries that range from 1,000 pesos up to 4,000 pesos a month.

Though wages and salaries appear high in units of currency, the prices of food stuffs also are necessarily high, since next to nothing can be raised anywhere in the nitrate region. Some prices charged in company stores are as follows: flour, 20 pesos per quintal; beans, 30 pesos per sack of about one bushel; eggs, 6 pesos a dozen; coal, G pesos for about 100 pounds. Only canned milk can be had, for there is no way of keeping cattle in this barren land. All cuts of meat are 50 cents per pound, and the rule of "first come, first choice" results in the formation of a "meat line" early every morning. A good many of the cattle used here come overland from Argentina. Kerosene from the United States costs about 1 peso a gallon, but the tin in which it comes also must be considered, since it serves a multitude of uses from waterpail to roofing material and baking oven. Potatoes are commonly sold by the half robo, which equals about a half bushel, but the natives are fond of explaining, with a significant gesture, that robo also means robbery.

The laborers generally are paid not in money, but in features, discs resembling poker chips and bearing the company name, together with the equivalent value in actual currency. These features are used almost solely at the company stores, but if any workman desires his wages in money he may draw at any time all that is due him. For the salaried