Multi-coloured Nitrate company Bakelite tokens from Chile

In the 9th century, Chinese monks, looking for a life-extending elixar, instead created gunpowder. Saltpeter or potassium nitrate, is a key ingredient of this. Nitrate is also an important component in farming. When you harvest fruit, vegetables or grain, you take nitrate out. Putting it back in the soil, in the form of compost or fertilizer, is essential for better harvests. Since at least the 18th century, Chilean farmers, discovered that their country was rich with potassium nitrate, which made excellent fertilizer.

Chile is a very interesting country – it extends nearly 6,500km down almost the whole South American coastline, however it is less than 100km wide

This token, which is green on one side, and yellow on the other, is from the Compañía de Salitres de Antofagasta (CSA). In the late 1800s, Chile had a virtual worldwide monopoly on Nitrate. This led to disagreements with Bolivia and Peru, the two countries directly north of Chile. Prior to the use of nitrate as a fertilizer, guano was discovered to be a highly effective fertilizer. In the early-mid 1800s, Peru had a large Guano industry, and as this declined in the 1860s, Peru looked to the young nitrate industry.

The token is made of an early rubber-plastic material. Numista calls it Bakelite (Ebonita). Token Catalog calls it Vulcanite. As far as I can tell, there are chemical differences between the materials, although Bakelite, Ebonite and Vulcanite are often referred to interchangeably. Vulcanite is also a copper telluride mineral, so using the term is sometimes discouraged.

The CSA issued these wage tokens in a number of denominations. The yellow / green one is two pesos (Chile use the $ for the currency, Peso).

Here is a red one worth, one Peso. Interestingly this piece has a plain, smooth red edge, although it is believed to be the same material. There is also a 1 Peso token with one red side and one blue side. I am curious if anyone knows the rationale behind the two different colours on some tokens?

These tokens were issued to workers in the mines as payment. This worked very well for the company, as workers could only spend these in the company store. This arrangement was not unusual around the world, and was a system which was open to abuse by the employer. In various places around the world there were moves against it by the early 1900s. In the UK, such practices had been regulated or outlawed since the 15th century. In the USA, the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act outlawed company scip (as it was called there). In 1924 Chile enacted laws outlawing this kind of payment system. So all of these tokens are pre-1924.

This token was used as currency at the same time. Rather than CSA, this token was from “The Colorado Nitrate Company”, in Carmen Bajo. This was a nitrate mine located near Pozo Almonte, a little town in the middle of the desert, 55 kilometres away from Iquique, in Chile.
The name of this kind of tokens is “fichas salitreras” in Spanish, which were used inside the nitrate companies and mines. Miners and workers were paid with fichas salitreras, and they were only accepted in the stores owned by the same company. According to lavozdelapampa.cl, records indicate the Colorado name was in use sometime after 1900, but not after 1923. In documents from 1900, the mine was trading as the “Rímac Saltpeter Company”, and by 1923 it was “The Liverpool Nítrate Co. Ltd.” The lavozdelapampa.cl site has a number of pictures and other details of the mine.

Here is a token from another Chilean saltpeter mine. This one worth 2 Pesos. Many of these pieces have other numbers stamped on them. In the case of this one, “2746”, above the value. (The red $1 above has 29264, and the green and yellow $2 has 74658). These were control numbers. I haven’t found a record detailing exactly how these were used, but it is another way the company kept track of them.

Here is a picture of all four of my Chilean Nitrate mining company wage tokens