derfully attractive features. If on the other hand, sufficiently broad bases do not exist for the building up of such an edifice as we have just contemplated, a crash is bound to follow, and a crash that will cause suffering both here and abroad in direct proportion to the superlative or unwarranted enthusiasm which has been aroused by the psychology of the opening of the canal.

In other words, if our examination shows this foundation to be broad, solid and stationary, the sooner the average American business man makes up his mind to join in the movement the greater will be his gain. If, on the other hand, we come to the conviction that the foundations are narrow and uncertain, the more cautious the American manufacturer and capitalist are, the less they will lose in time and money, and the less the west coast will lose in reputation and good prospects.

The probable effects of the opening of the Canal on our relations to the west coast depend, therefore, not only on the amount of enthusiasm that is aroused in the United States, and on the west coast; but also, in the long run, on the actual economic and geographical conditions on that coast. Having considered the psychological side, let us now turn to the geographical and ethnological.

In the first place let me ask you to look at a physiographic map of South America. The first thing that will strike your attention is that the great highlands of South America run continuously up and down the west coast within a few miles of the seaboard. On the east coast are a number of high mountains, but on the west coast there is a long section which you will see is over 16,000 feet above sea level, and a still longer section which continues for thousands of miles without a break at an elevation of over 10,000 feet.

It looks as though nature had built a bulwark, an enormous Chinese wall, to protect South America from approach on the west. This enormous mountain barrier makes the little Gateway at Panama seem very futile so far as the great bulk of the South American continent is concerned. Here is a barrier several thousand miles long, and varying in height from 8000 to 20,000 feet. Scarcely ever is it less than 10,000

feet above sea level. It is not fair to say that the opening of the Canal will not affect the height of this mountain wall, for anything which cheapens transportation makes it easier to bring in the steel rails and locomotives which can climb the Andes and reach the central and eastern parts of South America. At the same time, it must not be forgotten that, owing to the lack of any such barrier on the east coast, and owing to the existence there of navigable rivers like the Amazon, the Madeira, and the Rio de la Plata, the valuable central and eastern plains of South America are much more accessible from the Atlantic than they will ever be from the Pacific coast.

Speaking of rivers you will observe that there are no navigable rivers on the west coast. Speaking of plains, it is perfectly evident that the great plains where agriculture and animal industries can be carried on to any great extent, are not on the west coast, but on the east, and are tapped by navigable rivers in a country where railroads can be built easily and cheaply, instead of with the maximum both of difficulty and expense as on the west coast.

If the day ever comes when aeroplanes are relatively as safe and as cheap as bicycles, then life in the Andes will see a great revolution. But the opening of the Panama Canal has relatively little to do with the maintenance cost of Andean transportation. Even those railroads which are already in existence and are in the best locations for securing trade and building up local industries, find it excessively difficult to pay expenses. Eliminate all the differences in cost of building these railroads between what they actually cost and what it would cost to construct them after the opening of the Panama Canal, and even on that basis of capitalization, they could only with the greatest difficulty pay a very moderate interest on the investment.

When one looks at the physical character of South America, it is easy to understand why this is so. Before a railroad can get more than 100 miles into the interior, it must climb up into the sky, two or three miles. Take for instance the Oroya Railroad which runs from Lima, the capital of Peru, into its richest mining district. In the first 75 miles it has to

climb up over 15,000 feet. This means enormous expense of maintenance. Even if the railroad ran through a rich and rapidly developing country, it would have serious financial problems to face. As it is, its difficulties are almost insuperable. And when one gets up on top of the plateau, what then? Life at great altitudes is anything but pleasant. The possibilities are extremely limited. There are mines and there are great mineral deposits. Some parts of them have been exploited by wealthy and enthusiastic capitalists; very few have paid dividends. It is a grave question whether the opening of the Panama Canal will aid much to alter the conditions of transportation, the difficulties of securing labor, and the unpleasantness of conducting mines at an elevation of over 13,000 feet above sea level.

There is no place in the world where transportation problems are more difficult than on the west coast of South America. The rails in southern Peru have to cross a pass at an elevation of 14,666 feet above sea level. The new railroad in northern Chile has a pass nearly 14,000 feet high, and the next railroad that crosses the Andes to the great silver mines and tin deposits of southern Bolivia crosses at an elevation of 14,500 feet. The transcontinental line goes through a tunnel at an elevation of over 10,000 feet. This great mountain chain of the Andes, translated into terms of economic efficiency, means enormous costs of transportation, terrific difficulties in building railroads, canyons from 4000 to 10,000 feet deep separating sparsely populated mountain uplands, where it is not easy to believe that there is enough economic basis for the construction of the extremely costly railroads which would have to be built to connect them.

We have heard from some of our friends in Washington that the opening of the Panama Canal is going to open a tremendous opportunity to commerce and trade in this country on the west coast of South America. I am quite willing to admit that if the geographical conditions were turned about, the opening of the Panama Canal would indeed be the means of a vast opportunity in South America for the commerce and trade of this country.

Just imagine for a moment what the opening of the Pan

ama Canal would mean if the east coast of South America were fringed by a mountain barrier 10,000 feet high and the west coast had navigible rivers and enormous plains. It almost paralyzes the imagination to attempt to estimate the enormous development which would speedily follow the shortening of distances. Instead of this being the case, the reverse is true, and the great bulk of South America will not be one day nearer than it ever has been, and the worst of it is that this bulk is not only larger in area, but far more important economically. The possibilities for the future development of Brazil and Argentina are so great that it is impossible to estimate them, but such remarks, unfortunately, cannot apply to the west coast where the hand of Nature has not been any too kind.

Not only did nature build a stone wall to shut off the west coast from participating in the normal development of the South American continent, but she proceeded to build a desert wall as well. There are more than 2000 miles of the west coast that do not get more than 10 inches of rain a year. Here, again, it would seem as though nature had given an extraordinarily heavy handicap to the Pacific side of South America.

Not content with raising a huge mountain barrier, she has put in a barrier of desert for nearly 2000 miles, and as though adding insult to injury, at the two extremities of the west coast, where the desert does not exist, Nature goes to the other extreme and gives too much rain. As a result, the western edge of the Republic of Colombia is a dense tropical jungle, fever stricken and extremely unhealthy. The southern coast of Chile, where there is abundant rain, is in a cold region, very much like Norway. The temperate latitudes are largely desert. Incidentally, one observes by looking at a rainfall map of South America that those regions which are properly watered, having between 40 and 80 inches a year, are almost entirely in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, and Venezuela. In other words, the east coast, besides having the advantage in navigable streams and plains, has a great advantage in rainfall. There seems to be very little comfort for those who are looking for a geographically solid

basis for the economic development of the west coast, even after the Panama Canal is opened. In the North we have tropical jungles and in the south cold araucaria. The central portion is desert and a great deal of it is Alpine.

It may be interesting to note in passing that the causes of this curious distribution of rainfall are threefold: the height of the Andes, the direction of the Humboldt current, and the direction of the prevailing winds across the continent of South America. These winds coming from the Atlantic, laden with moisture, cause great rainfall in the Amazon Valley and on the eastern side of the mountains, and leave no moisture to be precipitated on the west coast. The Humboldt current, cooling the entire coast as far north as Ecuador, causes some mist and rain to be deposited at sea and along the fringing foothills during some part of the year, but prevents the sunburned coastal strip from securing even that little rain that it might expect in occasional westerlies. One of the surprising things some people find when they go down the west coast is that the water is too cold to permit them the luxury of tropical sea baths, as in Hawaii.

In view of all this, conditions are most undesirable for anything like ranching or agriculture on the west coast, whereas on the east coast, Nature, in addition to giving them extremely fertile plains and a fine agricultural country, has given them the best rainfall that one could wish for, for the purposes of agriculture and animal industries.

Now, keeping clearly in mind the actual geographical handicaps of the west coast, the long desert on the seaboard, the high dry plateau back of it, and the lofty chain of mountains rendering transportation extremely difficult and excessively expensive, let us attempt to estimate just what economic basis the future development of the west coast has to depend upon.

First and foremost comes mineral wealth. If there is enough mineral wealth it can overcome untold difficulties of transportation. It does not need rainfall or vegetation; it merely requires a market. Mineral wealth is the strong point of the west coast. The very aridity of the northern Chilian desert is the cause of Chile's great wealth of nitrates. The