full half of the rich nitrate fields and copper mines, the backbone of the national prosperity, are owned by foreign capitalists to whose coffers flow the profits. He does not tell you-he may never have thought of it-that Chile's per cap ita imports are also half again as large as ours, and that they include a large proportion of necessary foodstuffs, and many other products that should be obtained from her own rich and varied

Chile's vaunted deposits of nitrate have been a great curse as well as a blessing. The good wages and the cheapness of the equipment needed to work the nitrate caused an unnatural and harmful displacement of population, and was the potent cause in reducing Chile from first to sixth place among copper-producing countries. Far more disastrous than this, for copper-mining is again becoming profitable, was the effect of its successful competition for labor upon agriculture. It enriched the foreign mine-owner, and all but destroyed the native farmer. Until 1890 Chilean wheat and barley were factors of some importance in the English market. But now, instead of an annual export of two hundred thousand tons, Chile is obliged to import a large deficiency of breadstuffs from our Northwest and from Australia.

It is true that two-thirds of the national budget is provided by the export tax on nitrate. But this again is a disguised curse, for its swollen bounty has pauperized the government. It has led to such extravagant military and naval expenditures that no surplus revenue has been left to aid in a wise development of the resources of the country, and this has been Chile's most crying need. It has more strongly intrenched in power the oligarchy of wealth and education that rules the land, and, creating a bureaucracy of inefficient and corrupt officials, it has repeated the old story of easycoming money that is prodigally spent.

Congress, nominally composed of two great parties, has habitually been broken up into wrangling groups. In the lack In the lack of a larger patriotism and effective legislative work, administration is often on the point of utter breakdown. The

State-managed railways are chronically demoralized. Hardly an attempt has been made to suppress a brigandage that is almost worse than Sicilian. Work done is often only half done, and when you see a perfectly equipped hospital without trained nurses, you are not surprised to find one-sided progress one of the worst handicaps of the nation. The most flagrant instance of it is the work of the Council of Public Instruction. By the last census seventy-two per cent. of the population is illiterate, yet, instead of attempting to improve national efficiency by designing an adequate system of obligatory primary instruction, money is lavished on secondary and university education for the benefit of the class which can well afford to pay for its own higher schooling.

You paint the present economic condition of Chile when you state the fact that the farm laborer receives thirty cents or less for his day's work, and yet beef, poultry, eggs, beans, potatoes, corn, flour, and fruit cost more in Santiago, surrounded by its farms of rich irrigated land, than in Chicago, St. Louis, or Philadelphia. House rent, gas, electricity, water, clothing, furniture, groceries, all except the hire of servants, cost more than in the United States. Equal democracy is unknown in Chile.

But Chile still holds a high place in the leadership of South America. Her Presidents have usually been men of high character and ability, and not, as is too common in that continent, a combination of the primal savage and the predatory politician. In revolution her people have fought for important political principles, or they have been driven to rebellion by actual distress. She has good laws that, on the whole, are well administered. She has never repudiated a debt or defaulted in interest.

She has voted for a gold standard, and in the recent election of the honest, blunt Don Pedro Montt her conservative business men have definitely routed the league of politicians and speculators who were crying for an unlimited issue of fiat money. Substantial progress is constantly being made, and the whole life of the nation has been invigorated by this new prosperity that has come to her.

HE dusty archives of the various boards of foreign missions would be searched in vain, probably, to find a record of a more charming group of foreign missionaries than that which is pictured on the opposite page. For these Labrador dolls are in the best sense of the word foreign missionaries. We have the authority of one of the greatest of modern missionaries for so defining them-the authority of Dr. Wilfred Grenfell, with whose noble work among the fishermen of Labrador our readers are more or less familiar. In an article in The Outlook Dr. Grenfell once told our readers how he and his associates "preach the Gospel" to the children of the bleak Labrador coast by means of libraries, games, football, and dolls. "The toys which we usually credit Santa Claus with bringing from the North have hitherto been conspicuous by their absence, the supply perhaps being exhausted. Anyhow, the birthdays of the Labrador children, like the birthday of our Lord, have never been characterized by the joyful celebrations which form oases in our own child life. We have turned the current of toys back to the North again. True, the dolls are often legless, the tops are dented, and the Noah's arks resemble hospitals. But these trifles have made the Christmas trees no less a message of the love of God."

In a certain office in the city of New York, in which Dr. Grenfell has many warm personal friends, there is held at every Christmas season a Christmas celebration which is attended by every worker in the establishment, from the oldest director to the youngest office boy. It is a sort of family festivity, and the fact that between fifty and sixty women are employed by the corporation adds to the celebration a domestic quality which it is not always possible to attain in a counting-house gathering. Last Christmas Dr. Grenfell, quite by accident, happened to come in to that office when this annual celebration was in progress. He was at once captured as one of the impromptu speakers of the

occasion that centered about a Christmas tree, from which were distributed souvenirs appropriate to the holidays. He referred again to the part that such friendly gatherings might play in the work that he is trying to do to bring comfort of body and happiness of spirit into the barren and often cheerless regions of Labrador, and he intimated that the children of that distant island sometimes need dolls quite as much as they need tracts. Whereupon the ladies of the office very quietly formed the delightful plan of sending a family of dolls to Dr. Grenfell in Labrador, to act as his assistant missionaries among the children. The dolls were carefully bought, dressed, shod, curled, and bonneted, and when the group was completed the officers of the corporation were surprised with an invitation to an exhibition, the charm of which the picture on the opposite page can only partially reproduce. Each of the little figures represents the faithful, loving, personal labor of a donor who is herself a daily worker in the bustle and turmoil of a great city. And these dolls were dressed, too, at a time of the year when not only every hour that can be had in the fresh air and among the green and flowering things of spring is eagerly desired, but when hundreds of stitches, the present writer fancies, have to be taken in hats, shirt-waists, and other necessary and charming accessories of summer life. These doll missionaries will carry with them baggage, too-toys of various descriptions, and mufflers, and other things that children like, which have come from fellow-workers of that sex in whose hands a needle is a dangerous weapon. It is an old saying, sometimes thought to be worn out, sometimes suspected of being impractical and sentimental, that "It is more blessed to give than to receive," but the makers of these Labrador dolls and their associates know that in one instance at least it is very true. For the more happiness the dolls take to the children in Labrador the more happiness they will leave behind them. in the busy office where they first saw the light.