Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 134, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 June 1917 — A “Shoestring Republic.” [ARTICLE]

A “Shoestring Republic.”

Dan Ward says in World Outlook : Chile Is as long as from New York to San Francisco and as narrow as Lake Erie! Truly a “shoestring republic.” She is squeezed tightly between the mountain range and the coast. Her cities look up to the hills and down to the sea, with, as Arthur Ruhl puts it, “the Andes hanging like a beautiful drop-curtain at the eastern end of every street.” Chile contains 24 provinces, and the largest province 18 big enough to hold all Pennsylvania, Vermont, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. The Chileans are the Yankees of South America, aggressive, keen, making fortunes from nitrate, erecting a chain fit wireless stations from the near-tropical north tip of the Chilean shoestring to the Antarctic south tip, and preparing for Panama trade by expending $12,000,000 on port and dock improvements. Chile is elbowing her way in among the most forward-pushing nations of the twentieth century.