ABSTRACT
In 1873, Sir Antony Rumbold quoted “a clever writer on economical questions,” who estimated that the capital “applied to speculation and pure money-making” amounted to $158.5 million. Chile’s export industries created their own demands for industrial products and processes that would not brook the long delay imposed by the sea voyage from Europe or the United States. As early as 1850, the former US consul at Valparaiso reported that “at Concepcion and vicinity, there are ten first rate merchant flour mills, the machinery for which was obtained in the United States, and, with the exception of two, are owned and managed by Americans and Englishmen.” The Carrizal Railway owed its origin to a suggestion in 1853–1854 from a US engineer to one Juan Gundian, who owned a smelting works at Vallenar, for a wooden tramroad from the mines and smelter to the coast.
