A few days earlier in a private meeting, the 64‐year‐old President berated a delegation of copper miners for low productivity and high wage demands.

Government economic mismanagement is not new to Chile. The agricultural sector that made the country the breadbasket of the Pacific in the last century has been depressed for at least 30 years because politicians of both right and left, who wanted to win votes in the cities by keeping food prices low, imposed price controls.

The incomplete industrial sector grew behind tariff barriers and artificial exchange rates” with a large measure of officially tolerated market control. But 1972 was disastrous, and the domestic outlook for 1973 is worse.

“We will work out a wartime policy,” President Allende declared after visiting Mexico, the United Nations, the Soviet Union, Cuba and Venezuela 14 days last December. “We must make sacrifices. We will have to cinch in our belts.”

After the middle income rebellion of 1972, it seemed unreasonable to expect the two thirds of the adult Chilean population who did not vote for President Allende to endure economic sacrifices to achieve his aim: a socialist Chile run by Dr. Allende's coalition.

There is still much sympathy for socialist‐style economics in Chile. Public opinion polls published late in 1972 indicated that Dr. Allende still commands the loyalty of about one third of the electorate. He was elected with 36.3 per cent of the vote when the non‐Marxist parties split the vote between two other candidates.

During his first year in power, President Allende tried to deliver on a long list of promises to make Chile a worker's paradise. Freezing prices and increasing wages on an inclined scale that favored blue‐collar employes, the Popular Unity Government effectively redistributed Chilean income.