Chapter 3: The Perfect Fertilizer

    Chapter 2 we talked about how a new fertilizer was made, but even though it increased the amount of food the population was also increasing so a new source of food had to be found. Another struggle was that this was during the industrial revolution so many people gave up on farming to go work in factories. But then a new source of fertilizer was found in the desert above Tarapaca. This fertilizer would change the world forever by creating a war, changing countries foreign policy, make economies skyrocket, and become one of the most unusual industry in the world. This was during the 1840s and 1860s. It all started when some sailors were out to sea for months. They finally saw a island to land on. The sailors decided to anchor near the islands. It smelled like urine, dead fish, and a outhouse, but it was a nice smell to the sailors who have been on the water for so long. But as the days went by the smell became unbearable as they came closer and closer to the islands. When they got close enough a boat came out to guide them to a line of boats waiting to get a spot to anchor their own ships. The sailors needed to get off the ship so they decided to bribe the governor to make the line go quicker for them so it wouldn't take weeks. So some of them jumped to the land from the boat so the others could wait to be docked while they bribed the governor. They gave the governor many things like wine and ham. From the house the sailors saw out one window a beautiful island while the other window they described it as Dante’s Inferno. They saw many slaves covered in dirt and having rags tied around their head and mouths working. It was so dusty it was hard to see. While the guards beat them with whips. The island was called the Chinchas islands. It was known to have the best fertilizer in the world. The owners of the plantations made people sign working contracts that would make them slaves technically. Everyone who visited here was disgusted. The workers were under fed and almost naked. They worked 20 hours 6 days a week. A fourth of the workers were to sick to work and some of them were just buried alive from collapsing caves. If a worker didn’t do something right or didn’t follow an order they would be hauled off to jail. The workers did 2 things they either worked off their contracts and left or they killed themselves which many did. It was also dangerous for the sailors. Many got sick, couldn’t work in the conditions for the smell or dust, nosebleeds/temporarily blinded, and the people running the operation were drunk, liked to fight, and were just trouble. One time the US Pacific Fleet was called to patrol the area. The sailor couldn't stand it there. The Incan tribes owned the islands first they new they had valuable land. The birds which made the fertilizer were very carefully kept. No one could visit when they were breeding and if you killed a bird they would punish you with death. Europe later found out about this treasure by a Incan princess and a Spanish conquistador. But the letter the conquistador wrote was abandoned because they were more interested in gold and silver kinds of riches. Two centuries later explorers came back with stories about the guano and its fertility powers for the land. No one actually used the dung for manure until a editor for “American Farmers Magazine” brought back a sample from a trip he took. He put it on his own farm to fertilize the soil so he could grown corn. He said it worked miracles. The editor soon began telling people about it. The farmers started to use it and some said they made thirty percent more crops and other said that it revitalized their farm land.     The Peruvian government who owned the Chincha Islands at the time was very unstable because of so many leaders in just seventeen years (about 24 changes in power). They soon realized they could make fortunes off this guano.

Guano on a island

They brought in more coolies and sold the farming land. Everyone was talking about this magical guano. At the time Millard Fillmore was president guano was at its peak in the United States. In his state of the union address he had to talk about bringing the guano in to America at reasonable prices. Even in Delaware they were trying to get congress to buy one of the Chinchas Islands. They said these islands were worth more than gold. The sale of guano was doing wonders for the Peruvian government because at this time it was 3/4s of the government's budget money. Peru was at its peak because many of them were wealthy they built mansions, hired servants, had the latest fashions. But then disaster struck there was no guano left to dig up. Many people began to look for more islands even the smallest rock could make someone rich. The United States was so needy at one time the passed the Guano Islands Act that gave American citizens the right to claim any deserted island with guano on it for the United States. About ninety-four islands, rocks, and keys were taking by the end of the act. There was no guano or not very good guano on these islands that they took. Even though these islands didn’t have what they were looking for they did serve a purpose later. Some became CIA bases and other became landing areas for planes and ships in World War Two. The Peruvians became poor again. They didn’t want to go back to the way it was so many decided to fake guano. They would mix different ingredients and put a label that said pure Peruvian on it and sold it to farmers. Many ports like the Port of Baltimore hired guano inspectors to inspect if it was the real stuff. The Secretary of State at the time Daniel Webster made a false claim that guano islands were found to spark the American farmers, but really it just created a bunch of riots. A Spanish Naval Squadron even once declared war on peru and Chilies. Which the two countries combined their navies and took them down by taking one of their ships. This was called the Guano War and it was mostly caused by an angry admiral and he was so humiliated by the end of it he killed himself. Pirates also raided the islands to steal people to dig guano for them. Many of the islands nobles , princes, and priest were taken. All together the amount of people taken was about a third of their population. About 900 of them died. A coolie reported that when he saw the islands again stripped of the guano it looked like someone chopped off the head of the island. From then on everything went bad. Peru became bankrupt and struggled to keep their nation together. While Farmers all around the world had to deal with bad crop turnouts because of bad fertilizer again.