The New World

Delegates from all the Americas including the U.S. and Canada gathered in the honors salon of the flag-decked National Congress building in Santiago, Chile. Their goal: to codify and extend social-security legislation for the benefit of American industrial and agricultural workers.

Outstanding figures were Chile's President, Juan Antonio Rios; Foreign Minister Barros Jarpa; Chilean Public Health Minister Dr. Miguel Etchebarne (Congress president); Osvald Stein of the International Labor Office in Montreal; and Guest Nelson Rockefeller of the U.S. They convened as the first Inter-American Conference on Social Security.

The choice of Santiago as a common meeting ground recognized Chile's hemisphere prominence in social-security legislation. Since 1925 Chile's Caja de Seguro Obligatorio (Obligatory Social Insurance Board) has provided sickness and maternity benefits, pensions for invalids and the aged.

In the conference large German settlements in southern Chile and wealthy owners of estates and businesses may have seen another step toward hemisphere unity. These groups were less interested in social security than in the continuation of Chilean neutrality.

Motivating force of the congress was the increasing awareness of the value of economically sound and socially expedient insurance plans in bulwarking stable governments and increasing war production and national wealth. Emphasis was placed on "freedom from want" and "freedom from fear." Results: the first social-security code for all the Americas, and recommendations that domestics, farm laborers and professional workers be included in social-security programs.

Said Nelson Rockefeller (showing the paternal influence of Social-minded John D. Jr.): "No war that comes about through the mass problems of social security can be truly won until social security is provided for those who were driven mad by the lack of it. . . . We must arrange cooperatively for the mobilization of these basic resources."

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