The Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1877-1885, 1882-05-20
THE PRICE OF pERU's FoLL1Es.

Peru is paying terrible penalty for he1
follies. 1t would seem that nation was
never more thoroughly disorganized
politically. There is absolutely no head Oh
recognized authority. Business is dead
The resources of the country have been
drained by the war and in half dozen in
terror sections local chieftains are support
ing bodies of troops by forced contribu
tons levied ON a population who would
probably be better pleased to see the Chill
ian army of occupation extend its opera
tions and garrison every important point in
the country. The Gillian garrisons, how
ever, are having no less terrible expe-
rience. The plague. the inseparable com
panlon of idle armies in low ATTITUDES, has
siezed upon the unhappy country and along
the whole peruvian coast the spectre of
death stalks, welding relentless and undis
puted sway One Chilian garrison of
a thousand men has lost three hundred
by yellow fever Not single
military post has escaped, and if anything
could have persuaded the invader to leave
the country they would have gone long
since, for the pitiless seourge has been more
fatal to them than the war. Nothing
could have better illustrated the tenacity
of their grip upon the PROSTATE lind than
this Drawing defamation rather than risk a
temporary withdrawal AS they are just
entering upon the winter the plague has
probably by this time done its worst, and
the garrisons can find refuge from it by
moving inland to the mountain foot hills,
but the country lies SO near the equator
that the fever will linger long on the
coast. The army of occupation has been
after fashion, turned into a sanitary po-
lice, and the most stringent regulations re-
gartiing cleanliness are enforced, though
with little effect, TO stop the spread of in
lection. Still, it is probable that the SAM
tary condition is far better to-day under
military compulsion than it would
be if the army of occupants were gone.
Peru is about as utterly ruined as a
nation can be. The last elements of solidi-
ty have been destroyed by successive sys-
TENS OF slave labor. Under the Spanish
rule there was a prosperous and wealthy
elass-the proprietors who held the en-
shaved Indians to labor in the mines and
mountain valleys and fertile plains along
the coast. Later, when Peru became indie
pendent, African slaves were brought in,
and again there was o wealthy class. Still
later the coast plantations, which were the
agricultural strength of the country. have
been worked under the Chinese Coolie sys-
tenn. This is already as good as abolished.
The country has therefore. no sturdy in
dustrial class and no stable homogeneous
population. 1t has class who for genera
lions have been thriving by slave labor.
They neither know how to work
Themselves nor TO direct successfully the
lazy, shiftless elements around them.
There are the degraded Indians constituting
another class, and the negro freedmen still
another. Out of these sorry elements and
q sprinkling of wide-awake foreigners Peru
must work her rehabilitation. The outlook
is not promising. Though the war hasex-
hansted The little energy Peru had, the real
work of Decentralization was far advanced
before hostiIities began. There seems to
be no thought entertained that Chill viii