CHILE: Progressive Socialism

"Within one month-it can safely be predicted-there will be no unemployment in Chile!"

Such was the biggest, best & boldest promise made last week by small, dapper Don Carlos Guillermo Davila whose recent coup d'ètat set up Chile's new Government (TIME, June 13).

"This is what we will do!" continued Don Carlos with that sparkling vivacity which made socialite Washington flock to his parties when he was Chilean Ambassador. "We will create three State companies. One for agriculture, one industrial and one mining! Each of these companies will employ the unemployed. We will have a job for every man now out of work!"

To back this airy promise with something solid for jobless men to chew on, Don Carlos ordered a half-million free meals served daily by the Government to Chile's unemployed. State pawnshops obeyed an order to return gratis sewing machines and all tools pawned by the "certified unemployed." Joyous crowds soon flocked around every pawnshop, roared "Viva Davila!"

In words partly borrowed from Abraham Lincoln, Chile's new President declared: "We have the absolute, full cooperation of the great mass of the people who want to see in this country a Government of the people, for the people and by the people!"

After only a few days in office the Davila Government began to run short of funds, ordered carabineers to raid all the jewelry shops in Santiago, a work they performed with a will. Lest this seizing of valuables from helpless jewelers be called "confiscation" the carabineers gave each jeweler "compensation" in the form of a receipt which he could cash in paper pesos. Thus swank Weil's received a bit of paper on which a carabineer had scribbled "350,000 pesos." Marching bands of well-fed unemployed hailed "The First Socialist Government of Chile!" Plaintively Don Victor Navarrete, Minister of Public Works, complained, "The Government offices seem to be full of merely curious visitors," shooed out as many as possible.

Socialist Finance. To organize Don Carlos' promised Three Companies and put all Chile's unemployed to work will certainly take time. But a few hours sufficed the Davila Government to take over the Banco Central, organized as the sole Chilean bank of issue after Princeton Professor Edwin Walter Kemmerer, famed "Currency Doctor" was called to Santiago. Last week the Banco Central was rechristened Banco del Estado and Finance Minister Don Alfredo La Garrigue spoke of inflating the Chilean currency by 200,000,000 pesos "which would be gradually withdrawn." Next he got down to the serious business of drafting a decree covering deposits of foreign money in Chile. ''The problem requires," he observed darkly, "much study."