This article analyses the strategy applied by Finance Minister Gustavo Ross to alleviate the effects of the 1930 crisis on the Chilean economy. Emphasis is laid on the nitrate industry, the foreign debt and the instruments of government used by the minister to tackle the problems of the different productive sectors in a pragmatic way, to provide stimuli, adopt temporary measures and. eventually, reestablish economic equilibrium. These mechanisms were used later by the Chilean State to intervene in the economic system in order to bring about a radical change in the same. They made it possible to overcome the dependence on a single export product -nitrate- and to make a successful change from a development rnodel based on free trade to another based on the interna! market and the industrialization of the country.