but a few centers, a limited number of persons, a very thin layer of the people if 1 may so put it. For the rest, the life of the communities of Hispanic America goes on unaltered by revolutionary changes. The seasons, the crops, trade, social gatherings, the community organization—these are the things of outstanding importance. Newspapers and letters do not speedily convey information either from the outside world or from distant places in their own country; and over most of South America the press services are most inadequate, what- ever may rightly be said of the extraordinarily good services of the largest towns like Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro. The fronticr communities are immeasurably isolated and provin- cial, ingrowing, self-governing, substantial, rooted to the soil, permancntly related tonatural conditions—in short, established.
All this is reflected in the census statistics. Take the figures from 1865 to 1920 as given by the Central Statistics Bureau of Chile. We find that there had developed in that period but two towns of over 100,000—Valparaiso with 182,422 and San- tiago with 507,296—comparable, that is, with the population of Worcester, Mass. (179,754) and of San Francisco (506,676). Of towns from 20,000 to 100,000 inhabitants there was but one in 1865. By 1907 six of them had developed, with a total popu- lation of 221,000. Of towns with 5000 to 20,000 inhabitants, 41 had developed by 1907; those with 1000 to 5000 inhabitants numbered 170. The total population of these chief places was 1,408,000 in 1907; but of rural towns there were 4884, with a total population of 1,247,000, There are substantially 5000 towns, if we count the smallest as well as the largest in all of Chile; and of these only about fifty have a population greater than 5000, with an aggregate population of 1,000,000 in round numbers, or about 25 per cent of the total population of the country. When we consider the artificial character of many of the towns, for example the nitrate port of Antofagasta with 32,500 people in 1907 (51,500 in 1920) and of Iquique with over 40,000 in 1907 (37,400 in 1920) and the importance of mining carried on chiefly by foreign capital and enterprise, we can then realize the close dependence of most other Chilean towns upon the soil and the cattle production of the country.
