Evening star., 1898-10-01

are the laboring class OF the country and
correspond to the poems of Peru. They are,
however, of a different make from the
Peruvian laborers, although fully as drunk
en- and shiftless as to money-making and
money saving. They are brave to excess
and will not tolerate abuse nor insult You
can kick Peruvian peon and he will smile,
the Bolivian servant is afraid that his mas
ter Is angry with him If he does not thrash
him once or twice month, but the Chilean
would be likely to resent such treatment
with stab or blow. These men all carry
knives and they do not hesitate to use
told many of them would kill man for a
dollar. On the other hand, they are fond of
the men they work for. and 1t is hard to
get them away from the estates where they
were born. Most of them are in debt to
their masters. They 1--we on the estate get
ting hut and a couple of acres of ground
for themselves and being paid from 40 to GO
cents day for their work. This is in Chill
can silver, so that their wages are really
from IA to 20 cents a day. They receive
food In addition to their wages but this
is only for themselves Their first meal is
usually a double handful of toasted wheat
ncur, which they mix with water to form
mush or bake in cake. At noon they
have bowl Of hot beans and for supper,
or dinner, as they call it here, they get a
second bowl of beans, with, perhaps some
more toasted meal added. The last two
meals they eat in the fields with what ex-
tras their wives bring from home They
Sit down on the ground to eat, and their
only eating utensl is an iron spoon or what
is more common, mussel shell. Still, on
such food they will work from sunrise to
sunset and will carry enormous burdens
and do the heaviest work
The huts which form their homes are lit
tie better than our pig pens. They are
usually just high enough to get into md
not over fifteen feet square Their walls
are of Wattled twigs, sun-dried bricks or
in the south of boards and the roofs are
usually of thatch. The dirt forms the floor
and in many cases the bed of the farni,,,
box or two and table Is about all the
furniture. There seldom partitions in
this one room. The people herd together
IKE pigs and several families often occunv
the same room.
They All Get Drunk.
The chief end of the Chilean rotos' life Is
to get drunk He works only for this and
nine-tenths of his kind are In a state of
beastly intoxication at least once a week
He stays drunk and will not work as long
as his money lasts. For this reason Mon
day is called the ''rotos' holy day," for he
Is so drunk on Sunday that he has to take
Monday to taper off. The men women and
children of this class all drink together.
None of them seem to have any desire to
better their condition and all seem to con-
tinue IN this state TIL they die. The liquor
they use is the vlest of alcohol made of
potatoes and rotten vegetables 1t would
as one OF their employers says, kill the or.
binary man at thousand yards They
gulp this down in great quantities and
drink, not for the pleasure of drinking. hut
to get drunk
The result of their excesses of their Door
food and the insantary condition of thei,
houses is that the mortality among them
is very great. They breed like Australian
rabbits and their babies die like flies The
children who live are only the strongest
The peon child who has constitution enough
to grow up in Chile has constitution
enough for anything. 1t is perhaps for this
reason that the poems as a class are as
strong as any people of the world l have
seen them all day carrying bags of nitrate
each weighing 300 pounds and tossing them
about like bags of feathers. Four Of them
VIII lift up piano and trot off with It,
ere weighing 100 pounds up a notched
stick that serves as a ladder all day long
| Comparatively few of them. I am told
have gone through the marriage ceremony
but nearly all have wives and they are
as rule, true to them. They are kind tc
| their old people and always ready to heir
| one another when in trouble. They have
| the humor of the Irish and the supersti.
| ton of the Chinese. They are as great ia.
| talists as the Turks. They are as treach.
! erous in their enmity as the Spanta.ds
| from whom they are descended and will
| stab you in the back if they are offered the
| chance 1t was thought that the system
/ OF common schools inaugurated by tn,
Chllean government might attract the
| peon. 1t has not done so to any extent
| and today of the 5000 900 people in Chile
| less than one in four can read aul write.
A ~