The Project Gutenberg EBook of Industrial Cuba, by Robert P. Porter

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license


Title: Industrial Cuba

Author: Robert P. Porter

Release Date: November 23, 2012 [EBook #41463]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INDUSTRIAL CUBA ***




Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
produced from scanned images of public domain material
from the Google Print project.)

ENTRANCE TO HAVANA HARBOUR.

INDUSTRIAL CUBA

BY
ROBERT P. PORTER
SPECIAL COMMISSIONER FOR THE UNITED STATES TO CUBA
AND PORTO RICO


——
WITH MAPS AND 62 ILLUSTRATIONS
——


G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1899



Copyright, 1899
by
ROBERT P. PORTER
Entered at Stationers’ Hall, London
The Knickerbocker Press, New York

TO

WILLIAM McKINLEY

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BY
THE AUTHOR

INTRODUCTION

THIS volume deals with the living questions of Cuba—the questions which confront the United States in the reconstruction of the Island. It aims to give a description of Cuba as it appeared to the author when, as Special Commissioner of the United States, he was sent by President McKinley to report on its industrial, commercial, and financial condition, soon after the signing of the protocol of peace, August 12, 1898. It is the result of nearly seven months’ inquiry and hard work, in which the Island has been visited three times, over five hundred witnesses have been examined, and innumerable statements have been studied and analysed. In the course of this inquiry the author has visited all the provinces and nearly all the principal cities and towns. The merit of the book lies in the freshness and originality of the material brought together, and the demerit in the fact that it has been written by one who was obliged to snatch a few hours at a time to map out or write a chapter. The author realises the defects and asks the indulgence of the reader on the ground that it is the first attempt to discuss the economic and political future of Cuba under its new form of government.

Whatever the future may have in store for this wonderful and unfortunate Island, the author can truly say that the task allotted him by the President has, so far as Cuba and the Cuban people are concerned, been conscientiously and faithfully performed. The measures inaugurated for the government of the Island, which were based upon the author’s reports, have been scrupulously framed in the interest of Cuba and not with a view of benefiting by discrimination the United States. The machinery of the new government has been set running in Cuba, and though some time may elapse before it is working as smoothly as we would wish, it has been inaugurated with the sole desire of doing the best possible by Cuba. Of the rest, the reader must judge for himself. The subject at least is interesting, even though its treatment here may be a little statistical. The account of the visit to General Gomez was deemed sufficiently interesting and important to give it in full, exactly as the report was made through the Honourable Secretary of the Treasury, Lyman J. Gage, to the President.

Recognition is due to Mr. W. J. Lampton for his assistance to the writer.

R. P. P.

36 East Sixty-fifth Street,
New York.

February 9, 1899.

CONTENTS

Frontispiece. ENTRANCE TO HAVANA HARBOUR.

Illustrations

INDUSTRIAL CUBA

CHAPTER I

CUBA—POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

A NATION, like an individual, must be gauged by its endowments, its environment, its opportunities, and the various causes which from time to time accelerate or retard its progress.

Cuba is richly endowed with natural resources, it is within a short distance of the best and most profitable market in the world, and its opportunities, under favourable conditions of trade, should have made its population contented and prosperous. Had it not been for the numerous causes which have retarded all progress in this Island, what would have been its industrial, commercial, and social conditions at the close of the present century?

Numbering over a million population fifty years ago, the Island of Cuba, at the rate of growth common to the more prosperous countries of the western hemisphere, ought to number at the present time between four and a half and five millions of inhabitants. With this population, and a government giving everyone the right to the fruits of his own labour, Cuba’s sugar crop alone would have been more than double the high-water mark of the last prosperous year, exceeding two millions of tons, with a value of one hundred millions of dollars.

Tobacco, coffee, tropical fruits, iron ore, other minerals of various kinds, lumber, cattle, and innumerable other products which form the commercial wealth of this marvellous Island, would have increased the annual value of its products to figures ranging between two hundred and two hundred and fifty millions of dollars, and thus more than doubled, perhaps trebled, its commercial importance. Laws favourable to trade, and a government interested in development of home industry would have retained for Cuba a large proportion of this wealth, and there would have sprung up an industrial system giving actual employment to as many people in the gainful occupations as will be found in all Cuba when the last Spanish soldier departs from the desolate and prostrate Island.

Cuba should have developed some diversified industries, if only those branches of manufacture which are necessary to supply the requirements of its own population. In its mineral resources it has the basis for the manufacture of iron and steel and for the establishment of machine-shops to supply home demands. In its untouched forests of excellent hardwood, Cuba possesses the chief raw material for the manufacture of furniture and other articles for which the Spanish race are justly famous. With steel and wood for the first quality in abundance, and a water tonnage of considerable magnitude, there should have sprung up, in many of the unequalled harbours of the coast of Cuba, shipyards of no mean dimensions. Without becoming a manufacturing country, except in sugar and tobacco and a few other products in which Cuba excels, it might, under favourable conditions, at this period of its industrial history have been producing many articles of home consumption which, by reason of the unhappy management of its affairs, it has been compelled to purchase abroad. Not abroad in the open markets of the world, for that is another story; but of Spain, because the most infamous discriminating duties have shut Cuba out of the cheaper markets; and while thus gagged and bound, the Island has been plundered and despoiled by the mother country. In this manner have resources and revenue alike been drained away and nothing left, either for home enterprise or improvement, nor for reserve capital with which to do business.

Cuba should have established a central railway system running the length of the Island from east to west, with branches extending on all sides, like its rivers, to the many good towns and harbours on both north and south coasts. Instead of this it has a little less than a thousand miles of line, operated by seven timid companies, extending in various directions, but leaving the two ends of the Island farther apart in actual days of travel than are New York and San Francisco. The capital city of Cuba, Havana, has within it the possibilities of a great and beautiful city; the commercial and industrial city of a prosperous country of five millions of people, and the winter health-resort for the rich and fashionable families of all North America. Its public buildings should have been of the best, its tropical parks and gardens the most fascinating in the world, its streets and pavements the most substantial, its healthfulness unquestioned, and its harbours and docks thronged with shipping and resonant with commercial activity. The merchants of Havana should rank among the richest and most prosperous in the world, and the business, manufacturing, and social interests of the place be equal to those of Boston or Baltimore or San Francisco. What applies to Havana applies only in a lesser degree to the other cities of Cuba, many of which are excellently located and should be important industrial and commercial centres, with numerous fields for the modern municipal enterprise which has done so much to improve the condition of the urban population of Europe and of the United States. Last, though not least, the Island should have been dotted over with the trinity of civilisation—the home, the schoolhouse, and the church. It is the lack of these three great elements of national strength and progress, underlying Cuba’s ills, that is the cause of much of its misfortune.

The building of the home, the establishment of the school, and the tolerance of religious worship in half a century changed Texas from a wilderness to a great and prosperous State, with the possibilities of an empire. These same forces, had full play been given them in Cuba during the same period, would have transformed that Island into all that has herein been depicted. Its resources are abundant to maintain five and even ten millions of persons, for only a small proportion of its area is populated. The climate is healthful and the dangers to those unacclimated which lurk in its seaport towns may all be controlled by sanitary and engineering science. That these possibilities have not been realised does not lie with Cuba itself, but is due to the numerous causes which have retarded and stopped its development, and which have finally, after years of strife and war, left the Island with population depleted, agriculture prostrate, industry destroyed, and commerce devastated.

It may be necessary for a clear view of the subject in hand to review briefly the causes which have led to this unhappy end; but, happily, a work dealing with the rehabilitation or industrial reconstruction of Cuba does not require the author either to dwell long upon nor to emphasise the gloomy side of the picture. The results of Spanish robbery and misrule speak too plainly. The reader has seen what Cuba might have been under an honest, stable government, or under the protecting ægis of the United States. The picture presented is not exaggerated, but is coloured by a moderate brush. What Cuba is, alas! is too well known to American and English readers to call for more than a brief summary of conditions as they existed when the author was requested by the President of the United States to visit the Island, report upon its industrial condition, and suggest plans for the relief of the population and for the commercial and industrial reconstruction of the country.

Visiting the Island immediately after the signing of the protocol of the cessation of hostilities between the United States and Spain, August 12, 1898, and again returning to Santiago in December after that province had been in charge of the United States military authorities for nearly six months, he had ample and satisfactory opportunity for the study of conditions and future needs of the people. Surely the horrors and the desolating hand of war were never laid more heavily upon a once prosperous country. Nearly a third of the population wiped out by battle, wholesale slaughter, starvation, exposure, or disease, and a large proportion of those left enfeebled by deprivation and too weak to take up their occupations; the cane-fields and tobacco plantations, which formed the basis of prosperity, burned, and whole sections of country swept of every vestige of civilisation; sugar-centrals, houses, and structures of all kinds destroyed, and inhabitants either dead or huddled half starved in miserable huts near the towns and cities; not a living creature to be seen where once browsed innumerable cattle, and death, destruction, and desolation spread throughout this land that should, and under ordinary circumstances would, be as full of life and prosperity as the richest agricultural section of our own country.

Nor were the cities and towns exempted. Trade and commerce at a standstill; the few sickly manufacturing industries which at the best struggled under the most adverse conditions closed, the ruined buildings emphasising the scene of desolation. In Havana, the wharves and numerous large warehouses were empty, or converted into rendezvous and hospitals for Spanish troops. Hungry and discouraged, the native population stood listlessly on the streets and in the public places. At each station the railroad trains were boarded by half-starving women or children begging for bread or coppers. The principal signs of life were exhibited by the Spanish soldiers, who, with their blue cotton uniforms and Mauser rifles, seemed to form the greater part of the population of the cities and towns, while at the small country railroad stations the squads of woe-begone soldiers alongside the blockhouses comprised the only living relief to miles of waste. The Cuban railways, like all other implements of industry in the unfortunate Island, show evidences of the conflict. Stations burned, bridges destroyed, tracks torn up, freight-cars made into portable blockhouses, locomotives blown to pieces, and passenger-cars dilapidated and dingy. In short, a country more systematically pillaged, more infamously deprived of its resources, more wantonly plundered of its revenues, and a population more completely deprived of its rights by those who had every reason to foster and protect a valuable possession cannot be found recorded in ancient or modern history. Cuba, as it was left at the close of this year by the Spanish, who to the last moment seemed loth to leave the emaciated body which their inordinate greed had thus reduced, presents a picture so sad and sorrowful that, for the sake of our common humanity, it is better to draw a curtain over the past and direct attention to the happier omens which point to the possibilities of the future.

The work of industrial, commercial, and social reconstruction of Cuba must date from the eventful day when the Stars and Stripes were unfurled above Morro Castle. It is with this work that the present volume deals. Whatever form the government of Cuba may take, the responsibility of the commercial and industrial rehabilitation of the Island must rest with the United States. The power that forced the Spanish to evacuate the Island is the power which the world will hold responsible for the future welfare of its people. The timid, the weak, and the craven-hearted who contend that the United States has no responsibility, after it has assumed all responsibility, are entitled to no voice in the disposition of Cuba. The cost to the United States cannot be put in the balance against the duty of the United States. The moral obligation, therefore, toward Cuba and humanity must come first. The war was a war of humanity and not of conquest. The same principle must guide those upon whose shoulders will fall the more difficult task of restoring peace, forming a stable government, and reviving commerce and industry. For the United States to desert Cuba in its hour of greatest need would be more inhuman than it would have been to have left it to Weyler and his policy of extermination. The plain duty of the hour, so far as the United States is concerned, and the best means of solving all political questions which may arise in connection with the Island, is to begin at once the work of economic or industrial reconstruction, postponing for future discussion all political questions. To this end the mission already referred to was projected. To this end a firm military government, capable of keeping law and order, will be established. To this end the attention of the people of Cuba should be at once directed toward the economic questions upon which depend the progress and prosperity of the population.

The destruction and disorganisation brought about by the war will make the work of placing the Island in a favourable economic condition costly and protracted, and many years must elapse before Cuba will take its rightful place in the economies of the world. By this is meant the position to which its resources and location entitle it. If it is true, and I doubt it not, that the causes which have led to war, both in 1868 and in 1895, were more economic than political (and the greater importance of economic over political questions in such a colony of small and mixed population as Cuba is easy to understand), then Cuba to-day is free. The Spanish Government would have more willingly granted political freedom to Cuba had it not been for the well-grounded fear that economic concessions would have necessarily followed. Those United States officials who have been in Cuba since the signing of the protocol of peace understand this fully. The United States Military Commissioners, in their daily intercourse with Spanish officials, have found no sentiment of resentment toward the United States. The regrets have all been of a sordid character and may be summed up in loss of revenue and commerce for Spain.

The war which has just been brought to an end really began in 1868. Although between 1878 and 1895 there was some appearance of peace, the real situation in Cuba during these seventeen years was one of silent economic struggle with Spain. The meaning of the peace of Zanjon (1878) was that Spaniards and Cubans were to be treated alike. The fact has been, however, that the Cuban native population has been kept in a condition similar to slavery. The means employed have been skilful and full of cunning. Leaving to the Cubans complete liberty of discussion by means of the press, the Government has felt itself powerful enough to despise them, and when warned of the danger of a new revolution, always considered impossible this last extremity. This feeling of absolute confidence and reliance on the military power of Spain has constantly been expressed in Madrid, both officially and privately, and also by the Spanish party in Cuba. During the years 1878-1895, a political organisation (the Autonomist party) was formed in opposition to the obstinate Spanish party. It would be too tedious to go now into the details of contemporary Cuban politics; it is enough to say that the Spanish Government has been to the last moment strenuously opposed to any plan of real autonomy, that is, to an autonomy that would grant industrial freedom to Cuba. Even the laws of autonomy actually conceded in 1897-1898, as a last and desperate resource against the revolution, were not granted in good faith, as is well known to those who have carefully watched the course of Cuban-Spanish politics. Therefore, although the Cubans knew very well how superior to their own strength was the Spanish power, and understood equally well how great and numerous were the dangers of a new insurrection, nevertheless the sufferings of the entire native population were such that the popular sentiment became irresistible, and after a few fruitless outbreaks the war was renewed in 1895.

SKETCH MAP OF THE PROVINCE OF PINAR DEL RIO.

The long contest between Spain and Cuba has been finally decided by American intervention, without which the war must have been protracted until the Island was completely devastated and ruined; and even then Spain would never have given it up. Not from patriotic motives, but simply and solely because it yielded revenue to Spain’s depleted treasury, and gave her sons an opportunity for pillage and plunder. The tenacity with which these officials have clung to the offices, and the difficulty which the United States Commissioners encountered in obtaining a relinquishment of the custom-houses, all point to the cupidity of the Spanish, and show that they were in Cuba for revenue exclusively.

Considering now the political aspect of Cuban affairs after the protocol of August 12, 1898, it will be found that no well-defined scheme of political organisation exists in Cuba, and that the only really popular and, it may be said, unanimous feeling is that liberty, in all the legitimate meanings of this word, is necessary. The actual situation may be compared to an anarchy, for there is really no supreme authority. How to discuss and establish any political laws in the midst of this existing legal anarchy and complete lack of political experience, is the question confronting the United States Government. This situation and many other conditions that are the natural consequences of the last events point out the necessity of forming provisionally a strong government in Cuba, under the guidance and protection of the United States. Under such protection the work of rebuilding the industries destroyed, and of once more making productive the fields burned and the plantations dismantled and devastated, can be carried on, and in no other way.

With these general conditions in mind, it may be well to ascertain if there exist any facts of a promising nature, which will contribute to make easier the work the United States has undertaken. It is undoubtedly true that the people of Cuba can be brought together on economic questions, if not on those of a political character. The United States has specifically disclaimed “any disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control over said Island,” except for “the pacification thereof.” If, therefore, the pacification can be more easily and surely accomplished by giving Cuba industrial freedom,—the right to buy in the most advantageous markets in the world, and sell where the natural demands for its products exist,—the United States has the right before all the world to carry out that programme. Spain never granted this right to Cuba, not even in the alleged Autonomist Government wrung from Madrid when war with the United States seemed imminent and Spanish diplomacy was in the last ditch.

The signs and omens for crystallising public sentiment in the Island of Cuba on all industrial questions are far more hopeful at the present moment than are those which indicate the possibility of establishing a stable government, and thus leaving the management and control of the Island to its people. There is now no opposition nor rivalry of different interests among the Cubans, as the strong and important industries in Cuba, most of them agricultural, are of such a nature that they may all thrive at the same time. Until now the condition has been different, because the prosperity of all Cuban industries has been thwarted and impeded by the protection and privileges which the Spanish Government had to grant to the Peninsular industries, whose interests (always in opposition to the legitimate wants of Cuba) have ever been systematically preferred to those most vital in the Island. Another fact is that the productive energy of Cuba and the fertility of its soil are so great, and the real needs of the population so very small, that the process of accumulating capital will become very rapid, after the worst results of the late war are over and a settled and stable government has been established. How far the natural resources of the country will contribute to this result will soon be understood and appreciated. Heretofore, the yearly increase of public wealth has been a very doubtful quantity, and it has never been possible to build any hope on that ground, because all industrial profits have been absorbed by Spain, without leaving any surplus to provide for the accumulation of capital and the material progress of the Island. The consequences of the Spanish colonial system have been such that even before the present war Cuba was already ruined. The 1895-1898 war has completed and aggravated to the utmost degree the material ruin of the Island. The ultimate result of this industrial thraldom has been the never-ending removal of Cuban wealth to Spain, without any return. The means employed for securing that object were numberless.

The irresponsible methods of governing Cuba converted the Island into a powerful means of political influence in the hands of the Ministers. The most difficult political questions, either personal or otherwise, were usually decided at the expense of Cuba. Very often the single signature of a Minister of the Colonies was sufficient to make the fortune of a man for his whole life; and it is easy to understand that every political party in Spain would be opposed to any reform that should deprive it of such efficient means of influence and power. With very few exceptions, all the Spanish officials in Cuba, from the lowest to the highest, came from Spain. Their number was extraordinarily large, and their work, as a general rule, pitifully bad; their constant aim being to do as little work as possible, and to enrich themselves, at the cost of Cuba, as quickly as they could. The fleet of the Spanish transatlantic steamers was constantly employed in transferring impecunious officials from Spain to Cuba, and taking them back again with more or less wealth acquired during their residence in the Island, and sometimes with pensions during their lives and the lives of their widows and daughters. Even a share of the passage money of these officials “both ways” was paid by Cuba.

Besides this salaried staff of officials, backed by the army and navy (which were wholly paid by Cuba), Spain depended for the support of its rule in Cuba on the so-called Spanish political party, known since 1878 as the “Union Constitutional.” This party comprises the whole of the Spanish population in Cuba, which is very numerous; and the blind and unconditional support it gave to every measure of government, or of misgovernment, whether the ruling party in Spain was liberal or conservative, was paid for by the Government in many different ways, and in such a degree that whatever might be the economic situation of Cuba, the men belonging to the Spanish party had always the means of enriching themselves. To these causes of impoverishment must be added the results of the commercial policy of Spain; a subject which will receive attention later in this volume. In vain the productive classes of Cuba protested, during many years, against this deadly regime. It is no wonder, therefore, that the insatiable ambition of Spain should have led to such an antagonism of interests as to render a Cuban insurrection necessary, there being no peaceful means of convincing Spain of its folly. In the same measure as Cuba was reduced to utter bankruptcy and poverty, the importation of Cuban wealth into Spain, without any return, increased year after year. More particularly after the price of sugar fell permanently (in 1884) to about one-half of its former value, and after the complete abolition of slavery took place (in 1885), was the contrast strikingly manifested between the gradual exhaustion of Cuba and the ever-increasing exactions of the mother country. It may with accuracy be said that after the slavery of the negroes came to an end, Spain possessed the power of reducing to real slavery the whole native Cuban population, both white and black.

For this systematic process of thorough draining, Prime Minister Canovas invented the name or appellation of realidad nacional (national reality), meaning thereby that the necessity of maintaining the old colonial system could not be avoided, as it had become interwoven with the Spanish economics in such a degree as to make it impossible for any Government, either conservative or liberal, to interfere with it. The Cubans could not accept, without repeatedly protesting against it, the oppressive system of the “national reality,” for which name they substituted, very properly and accurately, the denomination of “economical slavery.” It is now useless to explain in how many forms, and how often, the Cubans have appealed to the Madrid Government, especially since 1890. But all their efforts failed, and the necessary outcome of those failures was war. Cuba, no more a European colony, will henceforth be an entirely American country. It is now completely ruined and devastated, and many years of peaceful industry will be necessary in order to convert its unhappy people into a prosperous nation. How that can best be accomplished is of far more importance to the people of Cuba at this time than the question of who shall administer the government. For the present, at least, if its people are wise, the Island will be content with the industrial freedom which has been accorded to it, and rejoice in the fact that it is an American country, and not a Spanish dependency.

CHAPTER II

CONDITIONS WHICH CONFRONT US

TO treat of Cuba as an American country is the purpose of this volume. If the people of the Island, regardless of nationality, will only postpone the question of the particular form of government for the present, and give all their attention to the new economic questions which confront them, the future will be full of promise. Cuba is no longer a European colony, but an American country, under the protection of the United States. So long as the Island is occupied and governed by the military forces of the United States, law and order will be maintained and equal rights will be granted to all the people. From an industrial point of view Cuba will have practically obtained what she has been fighting for for nearly a generation: namely, industrial and commercial freedom. The United States will administer the laws for the Cubans in the interest of Cuba. The United States asks nothing in return but the same opportunity for trade and commerce as is accorded to the other countries of the world. The Republic will levy no tribute, nor will it exact a dollar of taxation over and above the revenue necessary for protecting life and property, and the cost of inaugurating such works for the improvement of sanitation, or the carrying on of industries, as may become necessary.

Many Cubans, and a very large number of Spaniards, who appeared before the author when in Cuba, for the purpose of giving testimony on industrial and commercial matters, took it for granted that the United States would, in making up the new fiscal laws for the Island, exact discriminating duties in favour of the United States and against European countries. When told nothing of the sort was contemplated, the Cubans were surprised and the Spaniards incredulous. Indeed, the latter were astounded, and seemed to wonder what the United States was in Cuba for. Even American citizens interested in pushing their Cuban trade have expressed surprise at the absolute freedom which has been allowed all fiscal legislation, and the scrupulous care exercised by our Government not to exact any right itself which is not accorded to other nations. In such matters we are of course bound by our international treaties, and so long as Cuba remains under the protection of the Republic, and not part of it, she must be treated, so far as customs regulations and navigation laws are concerned, as a free country. In the preliminary work of economic reconstruction these sound principles have been kept in mind and adhered to. In fact, the fullest and broadest plan was chosen by the Administration to secure information in Cuba; and the refrain of the instructions, both from President McKinley and his able and broad-minded Secretary of the Treasury, was, to spare neither time nor money to secure the views of all the people of Cuba; for whatever the United States Government finds necessary to do in the Island must be done, as far as possible, by the people of Cuba, for Cubans, and in the interests of Cuba. By this it must not be inferred that those of Spanish birth were to be excluded, but, on the contrary, that the views of all who proposed to remain in Cuba and help by their labour and thrift to build up the industry and commerce of the Island should be sought and considered.

In following out the spirit of these statesmanlike instructions, the author invited, through the newspapers, all persons interested in the industry, trade, foreign commerce, and currency and banking system of Cuba to express their views on these and kindred topics. Many responded, and as may be imagined the information gathered took a wide range, and will, it is hoped, be of practical value in adjusting the questions with which the Government of the United States will have to deal during the military occupation of the Island. In the prosecution of this work, public hearings were given in Havana, Cienfuegos, and Santiago; and to committees of persons representing interests at Trinidad, Caibarien, Sagua la Grande, and other parts of the Island an opportunity was given to express their views as to the industrial necessities of their respective communities. In New York and Washington opportunity was given to those interested in Cuban commerce and such American citizens as represent large sugar estates, iron mines, and tobacco and fruit interests in the Island of Cuba, to present a full and free expression of their views on all topics included in the scope of the investigation. A large amount of information was thus obtained, and no inconsiderable assistance rendered by these gentlemen. With hardly an exception, such assistance has been rendered freely and disinterestedly, and the author takes this occasion to thank a large number of business men who have been found ready and willing to drop their business at any moment and devote much valuable time in an endeavour to elucidate the somewhat complicated conditions which surround the commerce and industry of Cuba.

SKETCH-MAP OF THE PROVINCES OF HAVANA AND MATANZAS

In Cuba every possible consideration was shown to the writer and no pains nor trouble were spared on the part of the Spanish officials and business men to give all required information and to aid in the inquiry undertaken. In this work neither political prejudice nor nationality took any part. The Spanish bankers and merchants, whose influence a few weeks previously had been arrayed against the United States, came forward and placed such information as they had at the disposal of the United States Government. The Cubans engaged in business, and the military commanders in the field, from Generals Gomez and Rodriguez down, have alike assured me of their sympathy in the work thus instituted by the United States, and proffered their services in its prosecution. The following expression from the veteran warrior, General Gomez, dated Boffill Plantation, October 3, 1898, will be read in this connection with interest:

The business men and merchants of Havana and other large cities, regardless of nationality, have rendered services of incalculable value to this inquiry, on the ground that the one thing that Cuba wants more than all else is, as General Gomez truly says, that its people should lay down their arms and take up the implements of peace. The Presidents of the Chambers of Commerce of Havana, Cienfuegos, and Santiago have all taken an interest in this work and elaborate reports were prepared by committees appointed especially to aid in gauging the industrial necessities of the Island. A similar report has been prepared for Matanzas.

Whatever may be the shortcomings of this volume on Industrial Cuba, they must not be attributed either to lack of interest on the part of the people of Cuba, or to any failure on their part to give information, especially on all matters relating to foreign commerce. There is, of course, a dearth of statistical information, in consequence of which it has been difficult to work out certain fiscal statements and estimates with the degree of exactitude easily attainable on the same lines at home. The information which has been obtained, however, would seem to leave no room for doubt as to the wisest course for the United States Government to pursue in adjusting Cuban customs duties, in establishing a sound currency, in protecting the savings of the people, in preventing usury, in abolishing onerous and iniquitous taxation, in establishing free schools, in starting new and reviving the old industries of Cuba, in increasing commerce, in improving the sanitary condition of the cities, in distributing labour, and in the general industrial and moral upbuilding of the people.

The present volume touches on all these topics, and endeavours to give the reader a clear and practical idea of the present industrial condition of Cuba. The present chapter aims to present in a concise form a few of the more important problems which the United States Government was called upon to face January 1, 1899, and with which it may have to grapple during the first years of the new century. No attempt is made to forecast the manner of their settlement. It is not, as a rule, wise to worry about how we are to cross a bridge until we get to it. Many Cuban economic problems which at a distance seem to be complicated, will simplify as we come within close range. Once the United States military authorities are in possession, ways and means will suggest themselves to overcome obstacles which now seem almost insurmountable. The most urgent needs of the Island, when it was turned over to our Government, were those briefly discussed in this review of the economic conditions of Cuba.

First among these needs of the Island was a tariff that should bear lightest in directions where the people could least afford the burden of taxation, and heaviest on commodities which the well-to-do and those engaged in large enterprises required. The Spanish tariff was made by Spaniards, for Spain, in the interests of the Spanish. That seems to be the actuating principle of it. On any other theory it was inexplicable. In adopting, July, 1898, for an exigency measure, the rates of duty which Spain levied for her own commodities, the United States acted wisely. These rates, however, were full of inequalities, and were not levied on any sound principle, but on the “heads, Spain wins; tails, Cuba loses” idea which prevailed in the whole fiscal fabric. It was found that the only way to remedy these inequalities, equalise the rates of duties, improve the administration, and reduce the rates of duties on all articles of general consumption, was to frame a practically new tariff. This was done, and the new tariff now in force will undoubtedly do its share in the industrial reconstruction of Cuba. In this tariff it was not thought advisable to make radical changes in the administrative branches, nor to change weights and measures into United States equivalents, because the people of Cuba are accustomed to the metric system. As a rule, all duties in Cuba are levied by the kilo and hundred kilos. United States currency, however, was substituted for the Spanish pesos. This will simplify collection of taxes, as customs duties were collected by Spain in three different classes of currency: gold, silver, and bank notes, all (for the gold coins used in Cuba have fictitious values) fluctuating in value.

The tariff adopted by the United States, when the military forces took charge of the custom-houses, reduced all duties about sixty per cent. on the old Spanish rate, and averages fully two-thirds less than the rates exacted by Spain in Cuban ports during the last five months of its occupancy of the Island. The reasons for these reductions, together with the reasons which led up to the decision of the President to admit cattle and agricultural implements free into Cuban ports in possession of the United States, are fully given in another chapter. Still another chapter will be devoted to an analysis and discussion of the Cuban Budget, in which the effect of the new tariff on the revenue of the country, together with the other sources of revenue, are explained and discussed. It will naturally be asked: With such a large reduction of duties, how does the United States expect to secure revenue for the purpose of administering the government of the Island? There are several answers to this question, and the facts bearing on the subject are given in full in the chapter on the Cuban Budget. The general answer is that by reason of fraudulent classification and smuggling, much of the revenue collected from the people of Cuba never found its way into the treasury of that Island, nor of Spain. The cupidity and rapacity of the Spanish officials in Cuba are beyond conception, and, if one may judge by the reports of the United States customs officials at Santiago, as much revenue will be received from a tariff whose duties are from a half to two thirds less than the Spanish tariff as was received under the iniquitous and exasperating law which has been abolished by the advent of the American forces. As the officials recommending the measure believed, the reduction to a reasonable rate of duty in certain schedules—such, for example, as those relating to machinery and railway supplies—would increase importation, and certainly the revenue would be greater than during the period of prohibitory duties. A railway company naturally hesitated to import a locomotive when the duty was equivalent to the value of the engine. With a revised tariff of twenty-five per cent. ad valorem, it may import two, or four, or even six. In adjusting such schedules, the revenue features alone need be considered, because Cuba has no locomotive works, or any iron or steel industry. The same is true of a variety of other articles.

In all cases where there are home industries in Cuba capable of supplying a manufactured product made by home labour, care was exercised by those who framed this tariff (either by making free the raw material, or by not making a too radical reduction of duty) not to injure their prospects. In so doing, the Administration is only carrying out the policy which has been fruitful in developing the industries of the United States and in securing diversified employment for its labour. If honestly enforced, the new tariff established in Cuba by the United States will yield sufficient revenue, enable Cuba to buy in the cheapest markets of the world, and not compel her to purchase from Spain inferior commodities at a high price. In every section it is a Cuban measure, and in no single case can there be found a section that discriminates in favour of the United States as against any other market. The United States purposes to take its chances for the Cuban trade with the rest of the world. If Cuba can purchase cheaper and better articles on more favourable terms of the United States than of Europe, we shall secure the trade. If not, the Cuban consumer is free to purchase in the markets of the world. In this one act alone, conservative, thoughtful Cubans must realise that they have attained to the commercial freedom which some, not without reason, contend was the real object of the two insurrections. However that may be, Cuba has secured a right which England would never concede to Ireland, namely, a separate revenue system. In granting this economic freedom to her other colonies, England has strengthened their ties to the mother country. With industrial freedom assured, a colonial country may be indifferent to the form of its political government.

Next in importance to the fiscal laws for the revenue of the Island comes the currency question. No country can be permanently prosperous unless its currency is sound and its credit good. Bad financial management of state affairs begets bad credit, and impaired credit is the forerunner of depreciated currency. Although Cuba is afflicted with many kinds of depreciated currency, the established basis is strictly gold, and in any commercial engagement the value is understood to be in Spanish gold, unless there is a specification to the contrary. Indeed, there is something almost pathetic in the manner in which Cuba, though plundered and depleted of her resources and wealth, has never wavered from the gold standard. The business interests of the Island are, as the author found, unanimously in favour of a continued gold basis; for the Cubans have suffered so much from Spain’s various attempts to force upon the people a depreciated currency, both in the form of silver and bank bills, that they want no further experiments with the currency. The Spanish silver money current in the Island is taken at the daily value only, which is fixed, partly by the larger or smaller demand for wages and necessities of the Government to pay troops, but principally by the continually fluctuating value of the Spanish money in the European markets. As this Spanish silver is legal tender in Spain for its face value, it is able to maintain a fictitious value for purposes of shipment to that country. This silver dollar, therefore, fluctuates in value with the fitful changes in Spain’s credit, and it is probable, should the United States establish American currency as sole legal tender for the Island of Cuba, that all the Spanish silver dollars will be shipped to Spain. There was in Cuba during the last months of Spanish control a margin of thirty per cent. on the silver dollars. It is not probable that these dollars will go down to a point where it will not pay to ship the Spanish silver to Spain and utilise the American dollar in Cuba. In this event the United States Government will, of course, ship its own silver dollars to Cuba; which, with the subsidiary coins, will be required for small payments. At Santiago the immediate disappearance of Spanish dollars and minor coins has made small transactions extremely difficult. Some think that the present stock of Spanish silver in the Island exceeds the necessities; but however this may be in the western part of the Island, it was evidently not the case in Santiago.

BATEY OF SANTA CATALINA.

Besides the silver, there is a bank-note circulation, but that has no actual bearing on the question of currency, as the trade and business of the Island has refused to accept it, and the present quoted value is less than ten cents on the dollar. The greater part of this emission, which was a war issue made by the Spanish Government at Madrid through the Banco Espanol de la Isla de Cuba (not by that bank), is largely in the hands of speculators and government contractors. The only public application is for the payment in the custom-house of the so-called ten per cent. ad valorem duty assessed on the official value of imported merchandise in addition to the regular specific rate of duty exacted. The abolition of this duty, under the new tariff, ends the life of these bank bills. There still remains a question as to whether the Spanish Bank of Cuba was in any way responsible for these bills, and the question will come up for future adjustment. The Bank will probably deny responsibility and refer those who hold this depreciated currency to the Spanish Government at Madrid. It is an interesting fact in this connection that the credit of the Spanish Bank of Cuba is of a higher standard than the credit of the Spanish Government, for the Bank has never failed to redeem its own paper during nearly half a century of its existence, first as the Bank of Spain of Havana and subsequently under its present name. It has at times suffered embarrassment, but ultimately the bills of the Spanish Bank of the Island of Cuba have always been redeemed.

The gold coins current in Cuba are the Spanish and French coins, the bulk of which consists of Spanish twenty-five-peseta pieces, so-called Alfonsinos, which for many years have been inflated by royal decree to $5.30, and the French twenty-franc piece, so-called Napoleons, which have also been given a legal value of $4.24 and decreed since the end of 1893 as legal money.[1] When the necessity for adopting and inflating another gold coin besides the Spanish Alfonsino was under discussion, the suggestion was made that the United States gold eagle would make an excellent coin for this purpose, as it would figure out almost exactly eleven dollars Spanish gold.[2] The idea was not entertained, because of the general distrust of Americans, and the fear lest the relations between the United States and Cuba should become too intimately interwoven.

While the principal banking concerns are unanimous as to the gold standard, there is a difference of opinion in relation to the advisability of squeezing the inflation out of these gold coins. Some of the Cuban bankers and financiers contend that the United States Government should add another gold coin to the currency, namely, the American eagle; and, by maintaining the fictitious value given to the other two gold coins, leave it equivalent to eleven dollars in Cuba. This, it is claimed, will be a very easy way of leaving matters in statu quo, as it were, until such time as permanent government and laws shall be provided for the Island. They fear that to make the United States currency legal tender would work an injury to the creditor class, whose contracts would then be payable in gold worth six per cent. less than the gold specified in such contracts. There are others, whose opinions are equally worthy of consideration, who recommend as the only logical remedy for this situation the substitution of the American currency as sole legal tender. Such action on the part of the United States Government it is believed would not seriously interfere with present contracts, which are invariably expressed as payable in Spanish gold, and which might be arranged for accordingly.

The premium on Spanish gold was never agreed to by the business people. Having thus arbitrarily put a premium on Spanish gold, the same authorities later put a premium on French gold, and to make the matter more complicated, the United States Government is now requested, by some of the Cuban financiers, to introduce another gold coin, which, practically, will be worth ten per cent. more in Cuba than in the United States; that is, a man owing $1,100 gold in Cuba may pay that debt with $1,000 gold in United States currency. As a temporary measure, and in view of the fact that this inflation so far as Spanish coin goes has been in force for over half a century, this may be justifiable. The process, however, is entirely artificial, and to continue it would certainly result in many complications. Some Cuban financiers think it inadvisable to introduce American money at this time, while certain planters are fearful lest their labourers should refuse to take one American silver dollar instead of two Spanish silver dollars. The latter looks larger in amount, it must be granted; but if the purchasing power of the American dollar, by reason of the sound credit of the United States, is double that of the depreciated dollar, with only Spain’s guaranty between it and its intrinsic value of fifty cents, there will be no difficulty in the end. A country which is just now going through an operation involving its very existence will hardly be seriously affected by taking this fictitious value out of the gold coin and establishing once and for all a sound currency that will be good for a hundred cents on the dollar—no more, no less—the world over.

Cuba has no banks in the national sense. There are some excellent private banks, and since its establishment, nearly half a century ago, the Spanish Bank of Cuba has cut an important figure in the finance of the Island.

In another chapter, a brief history of banking in the Island from the earliest period to the present time will be given. For the present, the banking facilities are adequate to the business, because it would be extremely hazardous to loan money in Cuba on any kind of collateral or property. Upon the revival of business, however, the agricultural interests will require facilities for obtaining money in advance of the crops at reasonable rates of interest, and protection from the abominable usury which heretofore has blighted the strongest industries of the Island and added materially to the burdens of the Cuban planters.

There are so many forms of obnoxious taxes in Cuba that even a brief description of them would occupy considerable space and convert this volume into a treatise on the evils of Spanish taxation. Foremost among the taxes which the United States will abolish is the “consumption tax,” on the killing of cattle, which is an exaction that greatly increases the price of food to the people. This tax, like many others, was simply farmed out to private firms or corporations, whose emissaries in its collection became a constant menace to thrift and industry in their respective districts. Another tax, which will fall of its own weight, now that the United States forces control the Island, is the “cedula,” or head tax, which varied in amount from a few cents to one hundred dollars, according to the rank and importance of the individual. Curiously enough, this tax, when not collected, became under Spanish rule a greater source of injustice and annoyance than when collected. It was generally allowed to run until some occasion came for the unhappy victim of Spanish rapacity to require a public document, a permit to bury a child or relative, a licence to marry, a transfer of real estate, or a notarial acknowledgment. Then it was that the petty rascals in charge of public business came down heavily, and unless the fines and back “cedula” and a handsome “gratification” to the official was forthcoming, the body must await interment, the marriage must be postponed, or the transaction be delayed.

The United States Government will not continue taxes that yield nothing in revenue and were simply the means by which unprincipled officials whose cupidity seemed to know no bounds were enabled to plunder and distress the weak and the unfortunate. The “consumption tax,” the “cedula,” and the revenue from “lotteries,” must necessarily disappear with the advent of United States administration of affairs.

Until the tax laws of Cuba can be thoroughly revised, the revenue from customs, from the various forms of internal revenue (and there are many), and from the receipts from taxes upon municipal real estate will, if the strictest economy prevail, suffice for immediate wants, without resorting to measures of taxation which are alike debasing and tyrannical. It is impossible to make specific suggestions at this time in relation to a subject so hopelessly complicated. After the administration of affairs of the Island has been longer in the hands of United States officials, these matters may be carefully studied and adjusted on a basis of equality and justice to all concerned. The true inwardness of Spanish taxation, as developed in the Island of Cuba, can be studied and remedied only after time has elapsed and all the facts are in possession of those who have assumed the responsibility of control.

The question of education is one that will receive early attention, and in which the President of the United States has personally evinced considerable interest. Free public schools exist, but the teachers have the right to take pay scholars, and naturally those who do not pay get little or no attention. In the cities from which data are available it was found that only a small portion of the school population attend school. There were 888 schools for boys and girls in 1893 and the amount paid for their support was $775,646. It is impossible even to approximate the situation at the present moment. In a general way, it may be described as simply deplorable. A free public-school system must be immediately established, for much of the misfortune and suffering Cuba has undergone may be traceable to the neglect of education. The number of people who are illiterate is very great. Some statistics show only one in forty of the labouring classes able to read and write. There can be no stable government in Cuba until this has been remedied.

The reader familiar with Cuban history will remember that the first movement toward the emancipation of the slaves was the practical freeing of all children born subsequent to 1868, the year the revolution started which ended in the abolition of slavery. In the same way, the first act looking toward political emancipation should be the establishment of a free public-school system, which shall have for its aim the preparation of the young Cubans for self-government, whether exercised as part of a Cuban republic or part of the greater republic the basis of which is industrial freedom and the common school.

SKETCH MAP OF THE PROVINCE OF SANTA CLARA.

Manufacturing in Cuba is limited to a few industries in Havana, to the manufacture of sugar and tobacco, and to machine-shops and small foundries scattered over the Island for the convenience of the railway companies, sugar-centrals, and harbours. The author visited all the manufacturing plants in Havana, some of which were located in quarters of the city reeking of filth and teeming with disease germs. There is little hope for industrial enterprise in the broader sense until the sanitary conditions have been improved in all the industrial centres of the Island. The fear of that deadly enemy to all enterprise and thrift, yellow fever, which lurks in the vicinity of the most flourishing industries of Havana, makes it dangerous for those unacclimatised to enter these occupations. The initiatory success of manufacturing in Cuba must depend upon the importation of skilled labour from the United States or Europe. With this invisible and deadly foe in the background, ready to strike when least expected, and against which, as a Confederate officer now in the United States Army at Havana said, “You cannot even raise an old-fashioned rebel yell,” the outlook is far from attractive.

Not only the commercial prosperity of Cuba, but to a considerable extent that of the southern portion of the United States depends upon the possibility of destroying the foci of yellow fever which exist in the larger cities and towns—especially in Havana and Matanzas—and which have been the cause of the epidemics of this disease which have occurred in the United States during the present century. It is believed that to destroy these germs is possible, and from a mere industrial and commercial point of view it would be a paying investment to spend several millions of dollars, if necessary, to effect it. Until this has been accomplished, and the centres of industrial activity of Cuba made safe for the influx of skilled artisans, whose advent alone will make it possible for Cuba to diversify its industries and elevate the condition of its labour, it will be vain to hope for the establishment of new manufactures. The importance of sanitation is so great and the subject of so much general interest to all those looking towards Cuba with the idea of residence or investment there, that considerable space in this volume will hereafter be devoted to a consideration of the subject.

The railway system of Cuba, consisting of seven companies, the aggregate length of whose lines is only 1,467 kilometres, or 917 miles, is entirely inadequate in bringing the extreme ends of the Island together; Santiago and Havana in point of time being as far apart as San Francisco and New York, though only separated by a distance of a few hundred miles. The facts gathered on this subject and the maps presented elsewhere point to the advisability of immediately constructing a trunk railway from end to end of the Island, with branches extending north and south to the important cities and ports. From whatever standpoint it may be viewed, no one enterprise could do so much to improve the situation on the Island. No revolution could have existed in Cuba if such a railroad had been completed by the former Government, and nothing will so rapidly tend to the revival of commercial and general business as the facility for quick passage from one end of the Island to the other, and from the trunk line over branches to the seaboard cities. All political turbulence will be quieted thereby and prevented in the future. The entire country will be open to commerce; lands now of practically no value, and unproductive, will be worked; the seaport towns will become active and commerce between the Island and the United States will soon be restored to the former figures of approximately one hundred millions of dollars per annum. Business enterprise, ever alert to conditions such as herein described, has already surveyed the route, and there are several projects on foot looking toward prompt action in this direction. After a careful study of the situation, it would seem extremely doubtful if such an enterprise could be made a commercial success for many years to come, without material assistance from those responsible for the industrial future of Cuba.

The questions arising in relation to navigation between Cuba and the United States are delicate, and involve, as does the question of discriminating duties in favour of the United States, in a greater or less degree our international relations with other countries. Those interested in American shipping suggest discrimination in favour of American vessels between Cuba and the United States, and some go so far as to indicate that a joint arrangement of the American and Cuban flags would be a solution of the problem. Much of this is mere speculation. We cannot discriminate in favour of American vessels in the trade between Cuba and foreign countries, just as we cannot do so in the case of American vessels in trade between New York and foreign countries, on account of our commercial treaties. The chapter on this subject has been submitted to Mr. Eugene T. Chamberlain, Chief of the Bureau of Navigation of the Treasury Department, and this experienced and efficient official has thrown considerable light on the subject which, it is believed, will be of value to the commercial interests of both Cuba and the United States.

These are some of the most important economic questions with which the United States will be called upon to deal during its military occupancy of Cuba. That we are capable of dealing with them intelligently and satisfactorily can hardly be doubted. Questions of far greater magnitude are continually presenting themselves at home, and as a rule the people of the United States have been found equal to the task of adjustment. To doubt our capacity as a nation to bring about complete pacification of the Island, industrially and politically, is to throw a doubt on our most cherished institutions and to cast a shadow on the Republic itself.

CHAPTER III

POLITICAL FUTURE OF CUBA

THE political future of Cuba is a matter of much speculation and interest. Considerable will hereafter be said in this volume on the economic and industrial future of this wonderfully productive Island, and little doubt can be entertained that with an honest effort and stable government the commercial future of Cuba will be full of promise. What of the political future? The industrial independence of the Island attained, what, if any, steps are likely to be taken for the political independence? At the present moment, it is difficult to discern any nucleus around which is likely to crystallise sentiment strong enough to form, with any degree of unanimity, a cohesive, independent government. The strongest and uppermost sentiment in the Island, as I have found it since the close of the war, is for peace and reconstruction under the guidance of the United States. Those who have made the greatest sacrifice for independence are apparently willing to rest for a while and enjoy the glorious results of industrial and commercial independence and a release for ever from Spanish misrule. Let the future shape its own political policy, is the desire of all intelligent Cubans. In commercial and business circles (and it must be remembered that the author has, in the course of his inquiries, been very largely thrown in contact with business people), the desire for ultimate absorption or annexation by the United States is almost unanimous. Those who have property, those engaged in industrial pursuits, those carrying on commerce, those interested in affairs, regardless of nationality, see the greatest future for Cuba in ultimate annexation to the United States, and openly advocate that policy. There are others who advocate annexation on grounds of sentiment, and who take the stand that the degree of real freedom enjoyed by a State of the Republic is greater, and the advantages far in excess of those likely to accrue to the mixed population of Cuba by the establishment of any sort of independent government. This is not a matter for surprise when it is recalled that a large proportion of the most enlightened Cubans have been educated in the United States, while no inconsiderable number of the most active participants in the war for Cuban freedom carried individually, alike into battle and into conference, the grandest badge of freedom so far vouchsafed to mankind—United States citizenship.

These ideas are admirably set forth in a pamphlet just written by Fran Figueras, who makes an eloquent plea for the annexation of Cuba to the United States. The title of the little book—for it is more than a pamphlet—suggests the line of argument: Cuba Libre—Independence or Annexation. Exactly! Cuba is free to-day! Liberty came when Spanish sovereignty ended. Adapting the lines of Kipling, the Cubans may truthfully say:

Liberty, therefore, has been won and paid for. By the very nature of things there can be no forcible annexation to the nation representing the absolute liberties of the people. If Cuba becomes part of the United States, it will be because the Cubans, having won their liberty, shall so decree. Intelligent Cubans understand this perfectly well and none better than the author referred to above.

After reviewing the state of public opinion in Spain late in 1896 and the sentiments predominating in Cuba among the native population in regard to the mutual relations with the mother country, Mr. Figueras analyses the present situation, and considers that public opinion in Cuba is divided into three classes. Those wanting:

He allows independence to be the ideal of all peoples, but considers Cuban independence to be still in embryo, and compares the sudden liberation of the island from Spanish dominion to a premature birth, brought on by American intervention and subject to the dangers attending its early advent at an unexpected time. The author contends that to form a nation it is important that the inhabitants shall have some common interests, usually apparent in countries where one element predominates. He finds that in Cuba there are three races equally strong: the autochthonic or white Cuban (pure white), the Cuban with unmistakable and acknowledged signs of black descent, and the white Spaniard; the first of which by its number, the second by its greater acclimation, and the third by its wealth preserve the balance. The fact that these people do not live in different provinces but in the same places makes this adjustment all the more noticeable. Sometimes in one house you will see a patriarchal Spanish father with conservative ideas in the same room with his son of high-flown, Robespierre-like ideas, convinced that a country progresses more in a year of revolution than in a century of peaceful campaigning; while in a dark corner the negro servant, a slave only yesterday, to-day free and taking an interest by no means meagre in the revolutionary legend, curses his colour but does not fail to realise how better fitted he is for rough work than his white neighbours.

The author establishes comparisons with the other southern republics, contends that Cuba will be in a chronic state of revolution if left to herself, calls attention to the handicap to Cuban sugar, tobacco, and coffee industries by the annexation of Puerto Rico and the Philippines, and asks if it is to be expected that the United States understands that her interest in Cuba’s welfare is to justify damaging that of the new colonies for Cuba’s exclusive benefit.

Arguing against a protectorate, the author calls attention to the fact that Cuba has nothing to fear from foreign nations. Her dangers are at home; it is pronunciamentos and the like that threaten, and a protectorate will not avoid this; it is only absolute annexation that will.

“If before 1895,” continues the author of Cuba Libre, “all Cubans were satisfied with a Canadian autonomy system given by Spain, why should the United States be refused a trust given to a nation like Spain, which has treated Cuba with injustice, bad government, and extortion, against the tested ‘cash’ good faith of the other?”

Refuting arguments upon the offensiveness of annexation to Cuban dignity, the author calls attention to the fact that dignity does not always accompany independence, as, for example, it is often seen how an English, German, or Italian schoolship silences the dignity of some independent states by firing a few shots.

In conclusion he says:

There is sentiment, force, and good hard business sense in this attitude. A flag, after all, is nothing in itself, but all in what it represents. The Stars and Stripes have for a century or more represented human liberty and have taken into their folds millions of the people of the old world. The historic flags of all nations have been fully and freely and joyously repudiated by them, in search of broader liberties, for that fascinating emblem of the people’s rights; and under it scarred and impoverished Cuba may in truth rest with dignity and content.

Adolfo Muñoz, one of the ablest and most thoughtful Cubans it has been my pleasure to meet, gave utterance to similar views in relation to the future of Cuba, though he approached the subject more from a commercial than a sentimental point of view.

Continuing, Mr. Muñoz said:

Here is annexation clearly marked out though not actually advocated. A country without credit cannot start up the machinery of government. To make the trade coastwise for Cuba, as we have already done in the case of Puerto Rico, means ultimate annexation. If, therefore, as Mr. Muñoz says, Cuba “expects to be placed on the same footing as Puerto Rico,” she expects annexation—nothing more, nothing less.

Attention is next directed to another, though not less interesting view of the future of Cuba. When in Cienfuegos the author had the honour and pleasure of meeting the Marquis de Apezteguia, President of the Conservative party, and, although a Cuban born, a strong sympathiser with Spain. There are few abler men in Cuba than the Marquis de Apezteguia. Educated in London, Paris, and Madrid, and at home in the best circles of New York, the Marquis is, in a sense, a cosmopolitan. His interests, however, are all bound up in Cuba. If Cuba once more flourishes the Marquis will become rich again; if it does not his large fortune will have gone, and he himself have been reduced to penury. Asked to give his opinion of the present and future condition of the Island of Cuba, the Marquis de Apezteguia did so without hesitation, clothing his thoughts in English so pointed and vigorous that it would be an injustice to the reader to abridge or change it, and it is therefore made part of this chapter.

The above is a vigorous statement of the situation from the standpoint of one who has lost his all, not in fighting for independence, but in a contest for what he believed was a strong government. The Marquis wastes no sentiment. He tells some hard truths which all who know Cuba will recognise as such. Few foreigners know the United States better than the Marquis de Apezteguia and few have his ability of touching the weak spots in our armour. He tells us we cannot absorb Cuba, and as an American he would oppose annexation. These observations, as well as some others, will delight Mr. Andrew Carnegie, Mr. Edward Atkinson, Mr. Charles Francis Adams, and other opponents of annexation. The talk of strategic necessity, the exertion of power, and the material force necessary to make Cuba American territory will give these gentlemen who have raised the anti-Imperialist cry sentences which will greatly increase their stock of phrases, but in no way solve the question of what shall be done with our new possessions. Indeed, the Marquis, consoling the so-called anti-Imperialists with his well turned sentences, offers them medicine more stringent and a remedy more drastic than annexation. The word “Empire” has no terror for this Cuban-born Spaniard. You must create an Imperialistic policy, or right, not granted in the Federal Constitution, you must maintain American ascendency at any cost, and do your duty toward the people of Cuba and the people of the world. Cuba must, for all time to come, be American territory. It is only by a policy of this sort the Marquis thinks we shall succeed. In carrying out this plan, we are warned not to allow the Cuban question to become a burning question of American policy, but we are enjoined to hold up President McKinley’s hands in establishing a stable government in Cuba. It must not be made into a business, but a necessity. Carpet-bag legislation, he thinks, would bring on an insurrection. In this the Marquis is undoubtedly right. Lastly, he offers the good advice that something must be done and done quickly for the insurgents in arms, whose deplorable condition he vividly portrays. That these soldiers should be speedily paid off there can be no doubt, for until that is done, the rural districts of Cuba can never become productive.

Presumptuous as it may be to pass judgment on the utterances of a man of such wide range of experience in Cuba as the Marquis de Apezteguia, I believe the President of the late Conservative party of Cuba underestimates the Cuban capacity, both for self-government and for annexation to the United States. The work of final absorption may take a generation, but it will surely come. Once annexed, Cuba would become an English-speaking country, and the alert Cuban mind would grasp those great principles of fundamental liberty with far greater alacrity than the Spanish. Let the word go forth to teach English in every schoolhouse in Cuba, and the work of amalgamation would be half done. The more the Cubans know of the United States and of our institutions, the better they will like us. As confidence takes the place of distrust in the minds of the population of Cuba,—native or foreign-born, black or white,—the sooner all will reach the conclusion that the most promising future for Cuba can only be attained by complete union with the greater Republic.

SKETCH-MAP OF THE PROVINCE OF SANTIAGO DE CUBA

In support of this opinion as to the political future of Cuba it is only necessary to quote the utterance of one whose opportunity for making such a forecast has been exceptional. Major-General Matthew C. Butler, of South Carolina, combines in his make-up and experience both soldier and statesman. The Confederate cause can point to no more brave and capable officer than General Butler. For sixteen years he represented his State in the United States Senate, and during that period grappled with all the important questions of the day. No man on the Cuban Evacuation Commission was so well equipped to study the political and economic side of the Cuban question as General Butler; and no man took so much pains to ascertain the facts in relation to the condition and sentiment of the people of Cuba. For a month last autumn the author was daily and closely associated with General Butler at the Vedado, near Havana, where the Military Commission had its headquarters. Between acquaintances of many years, in Washington, it is not strange that conversation during those long evenings at the Hotel Trotcha turned on the future of Cuba and that the exchange of thought was both free and frank. Summed up, the opinion of General Butler on the future of Cuba is as follows:

The above statement, which, with General Butler’s consent, is made part of this chapter, was prepared with great precision and care and only after long deliberation. Moreover, it was submitted to some of his colleagues, and the subject-matter fully discussed with the author, who is in full and hearty accord with the views expressed. Officially the author has no opinion to express as to the status of such a commonwealth, for the work committed to him was purely of an economic and fiscal and not of a political character. Personally, however, the author, with General Butler, looks forward to the day when Cuba will be a State of the Union, in the enjoyment of that full degree of liberty and self-government which is accorded the other commonwealths of the United States.

CHAPTER IV

THE ENGLISH IN JAMAICA

HAVING sought light and information in relation to the future political government of Cuba from both Cuban and Spanish sources, for the Marquis de Apezteguia is more Spanish than Cuban, it may be well to ascertain if any useful lesson may be found in British colonial administration. With this thought in view, the author, after completing the work in Cuba, made a brief visit to the island of Jamaica. Through the courtesy of the American Mail Steamship Company, the S.S. Admiral Sampson stopped at Santiago and thus enabled me to reach Port Antonio, Jamaica, in seven hours. At this point I met Captain L. D. Baker, the head of the vast American fruit interests of Jamaica, and with him visited Kingston and had an interview with the Governor-General of Jamaica, and with the heads of nearly all the Departments of Government. In this connection it affords me pleasure to mention the name of Dr. James Johnston, member of the Jamaica Council for St. Ann’s Parish and member of the Commission now revising the revenue law of Jamaica. Dr. Johnston was a fellow-passenger on the S.S. Sampson, on its return voyage to the United States, and furnished much valuable explanatory information in relation to the government of Jamaica, for which this opportunity is taken to express thanks.

The information thus obtained and the data gathered from the various blue books and the reports of the Royal Commission on the British West India Islands, all have a special bearing on the problem the United States is now confronting in Cuba, and hence on the political future of the Island. Better to appreciate the present aims of British administration in Jamaica, one should read the following extract from an article in the December number of Scribner’s Magazine, by the Right Honourable Joseph Chamberlain, British Colonial Secretary:

The Spanish idea in its government of Cuba was purely and absolutely the idea of possession, and the facts pointing to this will be abundantly set forth in the several chapters in this volume relating to the fiscal, commercial, and industrial condition of the Island of Cuba. The work of reconstruction already so auspiciously begun by the United States Government in Santiago, and described in a subsequent chapter, is absolutely in line with what Mr. Chamberlain aptly terms the root idea of British administration in the tropics. The primary obligation of the United States in Cuba is to maintain peace, the safety of life and property, and equal justice for all, irrespective of race or class. The final instructions given by the President of the United States, last August, to the author, leaving for Cuba, were to the effect that the United States desired to secure no tribute from Cuba, that the work of reconstruction must be performed in the interests of the people of Cuba, only, and that the profit to the United States must come in the increased prosperity of the people of Cuba, and in the benefits accruing from a peaceful, instead of a constantly warring neighbour. According to Mr. Chamberlain, this is the fundamental principle underlying England’s operation in her tropical colonies.

ON THE ROAD TO CASTLETON, JAMAICA.

In comparing British administration in Jamaica with any possible operations of the United States Government in Cuba, the fact of the great difference in the population must be considered. In Jamaica not over 15,000 of the 700,000 population are white. When England began to treat this island as a trust, and not as a possession,—say about 1834,—the population was made up of 311,070 slaves, 15,000 whites, 40,000 coloured, or brown people, as they are called in Jamaica, and 5000 free blacks. In Cuba a majority of the population are white—the census of 1887 showing 1,102,889 white and 528,798 coloured—in all provinces; Matanzas, with forty-five per cent. coloured, and Santiago, with forty-two per cent. coloured, representing the strongest coloured sections of the Island. That half a century of British rule in Jamaica has improved the population of Jamaica, nearly all of whom were slaves when the work was begun, is self-evident, though it is equally true that similar government in Cuba would have resulted, by reason of the preponderance of white population, in more far-reaching results. That is, Cuba, under such a government as England has given Jamaica, would, in all reasonable probability, have numbered at this time a population of from four to five millions, with a greatly increased commerce, diversified industries, magnificent main and parochial roads, an adequate railway system, many prosperous and well-built cities, and a degree of prosperity and civilisation far in excess of that which the United States officials found when they took possession of the Island. With the disadvantages of race, with the scars of slavery, and, until recently, with the single industry of sugar and its allied product, rum, the policy set forth so clearly by Mr. Chamberlain has been successful in making habitable and law-abiding and measurably prosperous a tropical island which might have been in a condition little better than that of savagery.

To be sure, England has not made Anglo-Saxons of these people, but it has made of them peaceful, law-abiding, and, in the main, self-respecting citizens. There is little doubt that the bulk of the inhabitants of Jamaica are in a position which compares not unfavourably with that of the peasants of most countries in the world. The facts given farther along show that the condition of the labouring classes of Jamaica is infinitely better than that of the labouring classes—especially the coloured population—of Cuba, who are in a deplorable state, even on plantations where work is abundant. The number of holdings in Jamaica is 92,979, of which 81,924 are under ten acres each. In 1882 there were only 52,608 holdings, of which 43,707 were under ten acres each. Even allowing for the fact that some persons may hold two or more plots of land, it is clear that the island already contains a very large and increasing number of peasant proprietors. The Crown Land Regulations offer facilities for the settlement of the labouring population on the land, and as sugar estates are abandoned some of them will probably fall into the hands of small cultivators. In the last ten years the number of savings-bank accounts of the amount of twenty-five dollars and under has nearly doubled. The census returns of 1891 show that in the ten years, 1881 to 1891, there had been an increase of thirty per cent. in the number of persons able to read and write. The acreage of provision grounds has increased more than thirty per cent. in ten years. There are 70,000 holdings of less than five acres. The area in coffee, usually in small lots, increased in ten years from 17,000 to 23,000 acres. More than 6,000 small sugar-mills are owned by the peasantry. The number of enrolled scholars was 100,400 in 1896, as against 49,000 in 1881; while the actual average daily attendance at schools had increased from 26,600 to 59,600. These facts indicate considerable advance, though no doubt in certain districts the people are poor. The Royal Commission appointed to investigate and report on the agricultural, commercial, and industrial condition of the West Indies came to the conclusion that the depression in Jamaica was the result of the almost entire dependence of the island on a single industry. Here is what they say:

The special remedies recommended were as follows:

The fact is, Captain L. D. Baker, of the Boston Fruit Company, and the other companies engaged in the banana and orange business of Jamaica, have pointed a way out of the present difficulties, and that industry, in the course of a short time, bids fair to be as important as the sugar industry was in former times. Last year this single company shipped five million bunches of bananas to New York. There are now over one hundred thousand orange trees planted in Jamaica, which in a few years will be bearing finely and give additional prosperity to the country. With the American fruit market inadequately supplied, and the English market practically untouched, there is hope both in Jamaica and Cuba—especially Santiago province—for diversified industries created by rapid transportation. The recent establishment of a fleet of fast steamships between New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Baltimore, and the various ports of Jamaica, and the probability that these or similar lines will be established between the United States and Cuban ports, are all factors of promise for the industrial future of both the British and the American West Indies.

While Jamaica is a well-governed country, and its revenue is all honestly expended for the public good of the people, it is far from an economically administered government. Order is thoroughly established, laws are obeyed, justice for the humblest is easily obtainable, education is general, sanitary matters admirably administered, roads maintained, the rights of all conserved, and the revenue honestly collected and expended. In these particulars the government of Jamaica differs widely from that which the author found in Cuba. In that unhappy Island all is absolutely the reverse of this. The cost of governing Jamaica, however, is nearly twenty-five per cent. of the value of its commerce, whereas the cost of governing Cuba—if gauged by the actual revenue raised—under Spanish rule ranged from 12½ to 15 per cent. of the value of its commerce. The comparison, however, is of little value, because Cuba got nothing for the money exacted by taxation, while Jamaica not only gets all, but also the taxpayers are informed in advance of the purposes for which much of the money is wanted, and the sums thus raised are rigidly applied to the purposes for which they are appropriated. The most useful lessons for those responsible for administering the affairs of Cuba can be learned by a study of the Jamaica Budgets. The methods of raising the needed revenue are intelligent and simple, and the method of expenditure not only enables the authorities to get as much as possible for the money, but also makes possible the strictest accountability. The Legislative Council of Jamaica discusses every item of the budget as closely as the Town Council of Glasgow or the County Council of London, both model public bodies, so far as honesty of purpose goes, even if some of their legislative experiments fail. The humblest Jamaica negro, if he can read and write, may at least know the purposes for which the revenue he pays in taxes is expended. He may even have the pleasure of deciding which of these items of expenditure he regards the least important. At the present moment the annual cost of education, $350,000, is regarded as too high, and a proposition to reduce it to $250,000 is pending. The total expenditures of Jamaica have reached nearly $4,000,000 and additional revenue is necessary to meet these expenses. The customs tariff is in course of revision, with a view of increasing the revenue, and many articles formerly on the free list will have to be put upon the dutiable list, while the general ad valorem rates of duty must be raised from 12½ to 16-2/3 per cent. Before going into the future sources of revenue, it may be well to look at the present sources, and for that purpose the subjoined table has been compiled from official sources:

Customs, excise, and appropriated revenue, as will be seen above, are the principal sources of income, while the expenditures for the same period are divided under the following heads:

A glance at the above tables and then a glance at the budget of Cuba, which will be found in a subsequent chapter, is all that is necessary to show the vast difference between the British and the Spanish methods of dealing with the fiscal interests of their colonies. The business-like methods of the one, and the blind, slip-shod methods of the other, are in sharp contrast. In dealing with Cuba, it may be difficult to follow entirely these English methods of accounting at once. The sooner, however, the United States inaugurates its own clear methods of national bookkeeping and official accountability, the quicker the people of Cuba will appreciate sound business principles in the conduct of their own affairs. It makes no difference whether Cuba is annexed to the United States or established as an independent government; these lessons must be learned in either event, or the Island will come to grief. It is hardly necessary to do more than call attention to the principal items of expenditure.

First of all come roads. England has discovered that good roads are not only an important factor in mountainous countries in keeping order, but also the basis of industrial development and prosperity. In the budget given above the following items must be added together in order to ascertain the amount expended in 1897 for roads:

Here may be found a good illustration of England’s policy which is a great contrast to the policy of Spain in Cuba. No money has been spent on the roads of Cuba, all of which are in a deplorable condition. Attention should at once be given to this important question and a liberal sum out of both local and general revenues of the Island set apart for this purpose. The debt of Jamaica is not excessive; it is in the neighbourhood of $10,000,000, with an annual charge of about $400,000. Police and medical charges are about the same, averaging about $300,000 each, or in all $600,000.

In this connection attention is called to the annual expenditure on roads in Jamaica for fourteen years:

The necessity of liberal expenditure for maintaining the health of the community is of first importance. A study of this budget may be found a preparation for the subsequent study of the Cuban budget, to which the reader’s attention will be invited presently.

The present Jamaica tariff was evidently framed with the two ideas of revenue for the island and a market for British goods. Food products, for example, such as bacon, beef, beans, bread, butter, cheese, corn, meats, oats, oil, pork, rice, salt, sausages, wheat, sugar, tea, coffee, and many other staple articles are all on the dutiable list, some paying a fairly stiff rate of duty. On the other hand, many articles of merchandise, bricks, bridges, carts and waggons, clocks, diamonds, machinery, locomotives, and a host of other things, which England supplies the island, are all exempted from duty. Under a general ad valorem clause, 12½ per cent. is collected on all articles not enumerated. The enumerated list of the Jamaica tariff is not large, so a large amount of merchandise has been actually imported under this clause. The proposed new tariff, which will probably go into effect next year, takes many articles off the free list and puts them on the dutiable list. It also increases the ad valorem rate to 16-2/3 per cent. This has been found necessary because there has been a deficit in the revenue. The new tariff is expected to yield £400,000, or about $2,000,000, and from internal revenue or excise £150,000, or $750,000, and £250,000, or $1,250,000, from appropriated revenue which will really come from the land and householders. Here it is summarised:

If this amount can be secured, the revenue of Jamaica will be a trifle more than expenditure, and the result will be happiness. If not, expenses must be reduced. Some members of the Legislative Council favour this latter plan. The Commission has the whole fiscal question now in hand, and within a short time will probably reach conclusions.

There is much more of interest that might be said about the present economic condition of Jamaica, but the points herein brought out appear to be the only ones that bear especially on the problem continually facing the reader in a volume dealing with the industrial and commercial reconstruction of Cuba. It will also be interesting to compare the British method of colonial administration with the idea set forth in the previous chapter by the Marquis de Apezteguia, whose point of view in such matters is wholly Spanish. That is, the idea of possession is paramount. The Marquis evidently has no faith in the ability of the United States to administer the affairs of Cuba as a trust.

CHAPTER V

THE AMERICANS IN SANTIAGO

A VISIT to Santiago should give relief to those suffering from “the craven fear of being great,” for there may be found much that is encouraging. In this province of Cuba may be seen in full operation the work which the Government of the United States has been impelled to undertake, and here may be studied the character of the forces upon which the people of the United States must rely in the work of reconstruction now in progress. The machinery of government is running with a fair degree of smoothness, and the men responsible for it, from the humblest official to the capable commander of the province, understand their business and are masters of the situation. It is a striking illustration of the marvellous adaptability of the American character. Every department of the public service is carrying on its work; the only difference apparent to one so recently in parts of Cuba still in possession of Spain being the absence of Spanish soldiers and the more businesslike methods of the officials. The disagreeable smells of the typical Cuban city are less pronounced in Santiago, and whitewash, limewash, fresh paint, and all sorts of disinfectants have deodorised the surrounding atmosphere and made the old town really habitable. The streets are no longer used as sewers, and the unhappy person who violates the law and escapes the lash of the Sanitary Commissioner’s whip is compelled to work on the streets for thirty days. This official, Major George M. Barbour, with one hundred and twenty-five men, dressed in spotless white, and thirty-two good United States mule-teams and carts, having dug out from the streets of Santiago the filth of ages, is now able to keep them absolutely clean. Every day by the aid of that great disinfectant, petroleum, the garbage of the city is burned. The work of sanitation is not confined to the streets, but extends to the dwelling-houses, shops, and buildings of all kinds. Indeed, the campaign against dirt and disease has been as sharp and hot as the charge of San Juan Hill, and as productive of beneficial results. The resistance on the part of the native population was even more stubborn than that of the Spanish soldiers to our forces around Santiago. The doors of houses had to be smashed in; people making sewers of the thoroughfares were publicly horsewhipped in the streets of Santiago; eminently respectable citizens were forcibly brought before the commanding general and sentenced to aid in cleaning the streets they were in the habit of defiling. The campaign has ended in the complete surrender to the sanitary authorities, and the inhabitants of Santiago, regardless of class, have had their first object-lesson in the new order of things inaugurated by the war. Looking backward five months and picturing Santiago in July, and comparing it with the more hopeful condition existing on all sides at the present moment, it is easy to discern the omens which point to the coming prosperity of the whole Island under intelligent and honest government.

Besides the improved sanitary conditions, there are many other indications of the good work of Major-General Leonard Wood and his capable corps of assistants. Several important thoroughfares have been repaved. All the public buildings have been thoroughly cleaned and put in good order, the work even extending to the large opera house, which is now ready for the opening performance under American auspices; for General Wood believes in furnishing decent amusements for the soldiers of his command. The law courts abolished when General Shafter took the city have been re-organised, and it was the privilege of the author to take part in the brief, simple ceremonies on December 1st, when in a modest speech the American commander turned over the legal business of the province to the judiciary and inaugurated the Supreme Court. This Court was composed of carefully selected Cuban judges, the appointees nominated wholly on account of legal attainments; the Bar Association of the province having been consulted as to the character and qualifications of the new judges. As the occasion of turning over the judiciary of the province to the people was one of considerable moment, a brief description may not be out of place. A committee selected by the Court called at the palace on the morning of December 1st, and after being presented to General Wood, escorted him to the Supreme Court Building. The room in which the Supreme Court of Santiago holds its sessions is one story up a rather rickety-looking stairway. It looks more like a long, narrow store than a court-room. At the far end is the bench where the Court sits. It was draped with scarlet cloth and the chairs are of dark oak. The courtroom was filled by interested spectators. General Wood appeared in a fatigue uniform, taking a position in the centre of the group of jurists, under the canopy over the seat of the Chief-Justice, and in a businesslike manner proceeded to state the object of the gathering. He told those assembled they had met for the purpose of starting up the judicial machinery of the province. While the military authorities still retained the power to revise all cases involving life and death, there was no disposition to interfere with civil matters. Innumerable cases had been piling up during the five months of military occupation, and it was time they were adjusted. He hoped the gentlemen appointed to this, the highest Court in the province, would prove equal to the trust.

Then the Chief-Justice, a man of fifty-five or sixty, attired in a rich black silk gown, with handsome white lace cuffs, arose, and in a few graceful words accepted the responsibility in the spirit in which it was tendered, and assuring General Wood of his fealty to the United States Government during the military occupancy, made a profound bow, and the ceremony was over. Two members of the Court then escorted General Wood and the author, who was invited to represent the civil authorities of the United States, to the top of the staircase, and with a cordial adieu the Military went out and the Judiciary came in and was reinstated. In a few moments the Court was in session.

“Let me walk back,” said General Wood, and the waiting carriage was dismissed.

Passing the city jail, General Wood exclaimed to the author, “Take a look at the jail, and see the good work we are doing there.” There were no prisoners, and it was evident the building was being renovated for some new and more inspiring purpose. There is no more practical man in the military service of the United States to-day than Major-General Leonard Wood. He is just the man to build up the city and the province of Santiago.

Not only has the judiciary been reinstated, but also, in the same manner, local government has been restored, and native mayors and officials have been appointed; the only requirement being that persons accepting such offices shall take the oath recognising the military occupancy of the Island by the United States. They are in no way committed to any future form of government. The wisdom of this action cannot be doubted, and the moral effect upon the people of Cuba will be far-reaching.[7]

In constant meetings between General Wood and the author, during the former’s recent brief visit to the United States, he informed me that all arrangements have been completed for the spring elections of Santiago. Thus the next movement is towards a system of local self-government which the Cubans heretofore have never enjoyed.

The Spanish, when in possession of Cuba, assumed absolute control not only of the judiciary, but also of the municipal government, the larger portion of the taxes raised for municipal purposes being diverted, with the other revenues, into channels which either led to Spain or into Spanish pockets. It will be even a greater stroke of wisdom if these taxes are hereafter used exclusively for local purposes, and, as far as may be deemed practicable, collected and disbursed by properly constituted local authorities.

CATHEDRAL STREET, SANTIAGO DE CUBA.
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY J. F. COONLEY, NASSAU, N. P.

There could be no wiser expenditure of local revenue for several years than upon the streets and sewers of the cities and towns of Cuba. For years the money which should have been used for these purposes has been drained away to Spain, and all local improvements shamefully neglected. The rural districts of Santiago de Cuba have been so depleted that it will be impossible to collect taxes over and above those needed for the bare necessities of schools, for the poor, and possibly, in small sums, for the improvement of sanitary conditions. The dawn of prosperity should, however, be the signal for inaugurating systematic work on the country roads. The province of Santiago de Cuba is similar in geographical and geological structure to the island of Jamaica, where, as is shown elsewhere in this volume, the good main and parochial roads have been the principal stay of the population. In another chapter will be found a brief history of the nearly two thousand miles of good roads in Jamaica, together with an account of the expenditure thereon and cost of keeping them in repair. The British Administration spends on an average annually for roads in Jamaica about $500,000. Without underestimating the strategical importance of a central railway from east to west in Cuba the immediate returns to the population from good roads would be far in excess of the more pretentious enterprise. The money thus expended, whether from the general funds of the Island, or from the local budgets, would come back a hundredfold, and make Santiago one of the richest sugar-, coffee-, and fruit-growing districts of the West Indies.

Santiago Province should be a profitable producing country for bananas. It is good for the poorer classes to undertake the cultivation of this fruit. The banana takes only fourteen months to grow and therefore, unlike coffee and oranges, the cultivator does not have to wait several years for the crop. All the capital in this business can be turned quickly, and the banana can be planted near the hut of the small planter and attended easily. Banes, Sigua, and Baracoa are good ports to export them from. The Dumois family invested considerably in the business and used to ship to the United States. This business is soon to be revived on a much larger scale. The extension of good roads would largely increase the possibilities of this industry in many parts of Santiago Province. With quick transportation the market for bananas is rapidly extending to Europe, while the United States market is only partially supplied with this fruit and with oranges.

The internal, industrial, professional, licensing, and other miscellaneous taxes have so far been remitted in this part of Cuba, but the military authorities are now preparing to enforce them. In this connection the author suggests that, now the customs tariff has been disposed of,[8] an immediate scheme be prepared for levying and collecting internal revenue taxes for the entire Island. The question of separating these taxes from purely municipal taxes should also be considered at the earliest possible moment, in order that no revenue shall be lost.

Methods of local administration differ so greatly in different provinces in Cuba that the wisdom of appointing a governor or commander for each province is unquestioned. As much latitude as possible should be given to these officials. The provincial governors should have power to decide all questions appertaining to local matters, for the fewer the references to Havana the sooner the people of Cuba will realise the difference between Spanish possession and United States occupancy. For military purposes, the government of the Island may be easily vested in one central authority at Havana. For civil purposes, each province should be made as absolutely independent as is possible, with general supervision by the commander of the United States forces. The secret of General Wood’s success in Santiago is entirely due to the fact that he has good judgment, the courage to use it, and full power in Santiago Province to exercise both. The supervising power over the civil department-commander should be made, as far as possible, advisory on such matters as relate to the general welfare of all the people of the Island, but all department questions should be scrupulously relegated to the provincial governors. There will of course have to be some general scheme inaugurated as to the collection and the expenditure of the general revenue, but before this can be intelligently arranged it will be necessary to designate what revenue shall be considered local, what, if any, for the exclusive use of the department, and what may fairly be regarded as revenue applicable for the general purpose of the whole Island. In thus distributing the revenue, the greatest care should be exercised not to hamper the provincial governor by an arbitrary division of the purposes for which the money must be expended, until he has been given ample opportunity to ascertain the needs of his department. A country undergoing such changes as Cuba is, cannot be judged by ordinary circumstances, and the most successful results will certainly be obtained by giving the generals in command of the several provinces the rein, and with the excellent example of the commander of Santiago before them tell them to go and do likewise. Apportionments and divisions of revenue will come later. The present emergency demands large sums for sanitary purposes, for cleaning up cities, for fighting disease, for renovating public buildings, for maintaining order, and for establishing a decent, efficient administration of public affairs. These operations must be done quickly and be planned chiefly by the judgment of the man on the spot, acquainted with local conditions. The results of a free hand are plainly visible in Santiago. The same policy must be followed elsewhere, or summer will bring dangers from which the unacclimatised population may well seek to escape.

As this is being written, the first difficulty has arisen at Santiago in relation to the distribution of the customs revenue. The order of General Brooke to send the customs receipts to Havana has met with opposition. This is a natural result of the peculiar conditions existing there, and no one can be blamed for it. For nearly five months no municipal, internal, or local taxes have been collected; and with the exception of about ten thousand dollars collected by Mr. Donaldson as cemetery and meat taxes, the entire revenue of Santiago Province was derived from customs dues. This money has been expended, as above shown, by General Wood in cleaning up the city, in making new streets, in renovating public buildings, in fighting disease, and in many other ways, all with a view of benefiting the community. All this and much more was justifiable in the emergency with which he was confronted. Meanwhile the machinery for collecting local and other public dues was, for various reasons, not put in motion until a few weeks ago. The taxes from these sources rightfully belong to the municipality, and hereafter will be expended thereon. The Spanish authorities collected all the taxes, local and general, returning of the local taxes but a small percentage to the municipalities. There is no intention on the part of the military authorities of the United States in Cuba to use these local taxes for other than local purposes, but it stands to reason that the customs taxes must be collected by one central authority, equalised and expended for the general welfare of the whole community. The ports of Santiago Province, being practically the only ports in possession of the United States, naturally used all moneys collected. January 1, 1899, all other Cuban ports came into possession of the United States, and Santiago becomes again part of the Island of Cuba, and as such is entitled to equal, but not special consideration.

The people of Santiago have had over one hundred thousand dollars of local taxes remitted, in consequence of the delay in getting the tax-levying and tax-collecting machinery at work. This has been saved to the community. All these taxes, being local, would have probably been spent on local works or would at this time have been available for such purposes. It is not the intention of the Government to have these sent to Havana, nor does the order include them. New York might as well demand that she be allowed to keep all the customs dues collected at that port, or, more to the point, Havana. Over sixty per cent. of all Cuba’s customs dues are collected at Havana, but Havana will have to pool her receipts, just as New York does, and take back such portion as appropriations for public works as may hereafter be decided to be rightfully her share. There is really no need for the people of Santiago to get excited over the order, which is reasonable, just, and in the line of fair government. On the contrary, the people should rejoice to think they have had so much of the money expended in improving the city, and that for several months they have practically been relieved of local taxes.

The Custom-House at Santiago the author found to be under very capable management. Mr. Walter A. Donaldson, who has had charge of the office, has performed the rather difficult initiatory duties devolving upon him with enthusiasm and ability. His knowledge of Spanish and his long training in the customs service of the United States have enabled him to recast the old Spanish methods and inaugurate the more businesslike methods of our own custom-house without much friction; and as a result we find to-day a complete organisation at Santiago, with branches at all the other ports in the province, working efficiently and collecting the revenue. While Mr. Donaldson has been able to dispense with about twenty of the seventy employees, he has retained fifty of the Cuban and Spanish already in the service, and with five United States officers is able to collect the revenues expeditiously and administer the affairs of the port with general satisfaction to the merchants and shippers of Santiago.

Mr. Donaldson estimated, that at the end of December, the total custom-house receipts in his entire district would aggregate in the neighbourhood of four hundred thousand dollars. It is safe to say that the collections in this port for the twelve months under American administration will be twice the amount collected during the last twelve months of Spanish control. As the rates of the tariff have been reduced two-thirds this fact would seem to be a good sign alike for the interest of American administration and the possibilities of a low tariff for producing sufficient revenue. As is stated elsewhere in this volume, the hope of sufficient revenue to manage the affairs of the Island is largely—under greatly reduced taxation—based upon honest and efficient collections. If it were otherwise, the natural consequence of reducing the rates of duty by two-thirds (a measure which the President of the United States has authorised) in a tariff capable of producing a revenue of fifteen million dollars per annum, would mean a revenue of five million dollars per annum. To accomplish this feat and still have fifteen or even ten millions of revenue the future management of the custom-houses in Cuba must be more businesslike and more honest. The industrial importance of Santiago will be treated in the chapter on Mines and Mining, the idea of this chapter being to give a glimpse of some of the changes in this old city already brought about by American military occupancy.

CHAPTER VI

OUTLOOK IN CUBA FOR LABOUR

THAT the wounds of Cuba will soon heal with the rapid promotion of work, is undoubtedly true. This is the struggle the United States is now entering upon, and the employment of the people should be the first aim of those responsible for the management of affairs. There will naturally be many disappointments, some disillusioning. The condition of labour in the Island requires the most serious attention of our Government. A brief history of it during the present century may elucidate the existing situation.

In 1815, after the Napoleonic wars, the principal nations of Europe came together and agreed upon the Treaty of Vienna. An important provision of this Treaty was that henceforth slavery should be abolished. Spain, in common with other nations, signed this agreement, but, as is her habit, kept it not. The horrors of slavery were continued in her colonies, and in the middle of the present century almost reached the depths of inhumanity. At this time the population of Cuba was nearly a million people, and the traffic in human flesh and blood was a prosperous and profitable business. How long it would have continued is impossible to say, had not England interfered. After painful delays, much threatening, and innumerable broken promises on the part of Spain to observe the Treaty of Vienna, England agreed to give that country two millions of dollars to compensate those who owned “slave factories” in Havana, provided the nefarious business was stopped. Spain simply pocketed the money, told her noble sons engaged in the slave business in Cuba to look out for British cruisers when bringing slaves, assured them that no harm beyond the loss of cargo should come to them if caught—and the plantations of Cuba continued to be supplied as usual with slaves. Interesting facts in relation to conditions in Cuba during this period, when British cruisers kept watch of Spanish slave-ships, have been recently given in a series of articles in the Century Magazine, written in 1859.

According to this chronicle, the Spaniards in Cuba were in open sympathy with the slave-dealers, and a story is told of a slaver chased by a cruiser into the harbour of Havana, the shores being lined with people cheering the slaver. The cruiser would have effected a capture, but the slaver, dodging into a corner of the harbour, came to anchor, and her officers told the slaves on board to jump overboard and swim ashore, as the British were cannibals and would eat them all if captured. The slaves escaped to the shore, where the Spaniards picked them up and laughed at the British and the trick.

The same writer notes that by law the British must sell captured slaves by a mixed commission at fifty dollars each for a seven years’ term of labour. These slaves were known as emancipados and each wore a tin tag on his neck, showing the date of his sale and the date of the expiration of his slave service; but emancipados, strangely, seldom reached the end of their terms; the Spaniards prevented that, by taking the tag from an emancipado whenever one of their slaves died and putting it on the corpse. This was sufficient evidence that the emancipado was dead, and the Spanish owner had a new slave. As for the general condition of the emancipado, it was much worse than that of the real slave, for his master, knowing he must soon lose him, treated him cruelly, by overwork and starving, and when at last the poor emancipado had his freedom, he had neither strength nor health to enjoy it.

A Cuban gentleman, now over threescore years and ten, told the author, in Cuba, that nothing in ancient or modern history exceeded in horror the slave-trade of Cuba during this period. In spite of England’s watchfulness, it could be made profitable, even if occasional mishaps sent a shipful of unhappy Africans, chained together below decks, to the bottom of the sea, or a catastrophe set fire to the load of writhing humanity, fettered to prevent escape. Naturally a large percentage died on the voyage, and the condition of those landed was so awful that a description would be impossible in these pages. It will suffice to say that upon one occasion a young Cuban, who had been sent down by his employer to land some of these unfortunate creatures, was so impressed by the awful spectacle that he shot himself through the brain with a revolver and died on the spot.

So long as this traffic continued, and the plantations of the Island were supplied by the unhappy African victims of man’s inhumanity to man, there was no labour trouble in Cuba. Under such conditions sugar-growing was a comparatively simple process, and those engaged in it became wealthy. The day of reckoning, however, was at hand. After repeated disappointments, England succeeded in absolutely stopping further importations of slaves into Cuba. Up to the time of the breaking out of the insurrection of 1868, black labour had been almost exclusively used on the sugar estates of Cuba. Bad as slavery is at the best, there was in Cuba probably the worst system ever known. The work was of the hardest, the climatic conditions severe, and the unhappy victims of cupidity were ill-treated and brutalised. With such a beginning, continuing in one form and another until 1885, how could such conditions produce aught but dissatisfaction and misery at the present time?

The same causes demoralised the Cubans. They were reared in luxury and idleness and looked upon work as fit only for slaves. The owners of plantations were rich men, their children were educated abroad, and, as a rule, spent most of their time in foreign travel. A large proportion of them were simply alien landlords. Unskilled in business, when the change took place and the slaves were freed, these people were not prepared to meet the new conditions which confronted them and to adjust themselves to a new form of life. Here the Spaniard, who is always anxious for gain, took advantage of the situation, and at the end of the rebellion of 1868-1878 the Cuban planters, who were formerly rich, found themselves impoverished. Their slave labour had been taken from them, their opportunities for further employment of contract coolies had been lost, and they found themselves in need of outside assistance. The Spaniards and some others responded by advancing money to them at the current rate of interest (twelve per cent.), but the planters, unaccustomed to economise, could not pay expenses and interest, and year by year their debts grew heavier. Some managed to continue operations, but many broke down under their burdens and their plantations went to satisfy their creditors, chiefly Spaniards. Short of labour, the crops declined; and to add to their troubles, beet-sugar made its advent. The European beet-growers, with a clear knowledge of conditions in the Island, were quick to take advantage of them and push their product forward to supply the Cuban cane-sugar deficit, and so successful were they that at the end of the insurrection of 1868, say in 1878, Cuba was practically bankrupt. Competition with the European beet-growers was difficult, and it was impossible to induce capital from the United States to restore the sugar industry of Cuba, owing to a lack of confidence in the stability of the government of the Island.

CANE CUTTERS.

During the ten years of rebellion, the planters were able to protect their property by paying regular taxes to the Spanish Government, and at the same time allowing a certain amount to the insurgents, who agreed for this not to destroy the plantations. During this period they employed slave and coolie labour; but they were then subject to the Moret law, which was, in effect, that each planter should liberate a certain number of his slaves each year, and this was to continue until slavery had disappeared. Before this occurred, however, the treaty of Zanjon was made, whereby all slaves were liberated. By the Moret law, numbers were given to the slaves by the municipality, the name and number of the slave written on a slip, which was put in a box and each year ten per cent. of the names were drawn out. The owners were then officially notified that certain slaves, giving their numbers, were free, and this was published in a local paper. Most of these slaves remained with the planters. This law had a very good effect.

Returning for a moment to the outbreak of the rebellion of 1868, it is necessary to refer to another sad page in the history of labour in Cuba; namely, the introduction of coolie labour from China. In 1869 the importation of slaves into Cuba was stopped, and then commenced the traffic in coolies, who were shipped from China, cargoes of them being landed at Havana. They were brought over under a contract for eight years by a company in Havana which had its own line of steamers. The contracts were sold to anyone who wished to buy them, at from four hundred to five hundred dollars per contract. The conditions of a contract were that the Chinaman was to serve for eight years. He was to be paid at the rate of four dollars per month, with rations, and was to receive two suits of clothes and a blanket. If ill for fifteen days, his wages were to be deducted and his time lost.

One of the conditions of the contract was that at the end of eight years he was to be considered a citizen of Cuba with such privileges as were extended to Spanish subjects. Before the expiration of the eight years, however, those holding these Chinese contracts were notified by the Spanish authorities that at the expiration of the contract of any coolie in their employ they were to deliver said coolie to the authorities of the locality where they were at work. Here, the authorities placed the coolie on public land, obliging him to work for the municipality, and held him there until someone offered to take him under a new contract. This was entirely by force and not optional on the part of the coolie. The conditions of the new contract were for four years more at seventeen dollars per month, twelve dollars of which were to be retained by the municipality, and five dollars were to be given to the coolie. At the expiration of the four years, if the coolie’s conduct had been satisfactory to his employer, then the municipality was to return to the Chinaman the money it had retained. The treatment of these coolies was quite as severe as was ever meted out to an African, and when this condition of affairs was learned by the Chinese Government, a commission was sent to Cuba to investigate. A report was made to the Chinese Government, which resulted in the prohibition of further coolie emigration from China to Cuba.

Confronted by the loss of his slaves and by the prohibition of further contracts for coolie labour, the Cuban was at a loss whither to turn for help. His only hope lay with the Spanish peasants and the Canary Islanders, and these, in as large numbers as could be secured, were imported. They were much more valuable than the slaves or the coolies, but jealousies arose among the Cuban labourers, and the newcomers, being less numerous, were unable to protect themselves and in many instances were forced into the towns for protection, thus leaving the planters quite as short of labour as before, and at the same time increasing the complications of the labour problem.

In this condition we find Cuba to-day. The great problem will be how to obtain labour for the plantations, for the mines, and for agricultural purposes, in order to carry on the work of industrial reconstruction. All sorts of schemes have been suggested, but upon examination of the conditions in Cuba, it is feared they will prove impracticable. The life of the labourer, in consequence of the lack of diversified employment, and the fact that labour in Cuba is the severest kind of toil, has few attractions. If the Spanish soldiers are willing to remain and take up peaceful pursuits, it will aid in the solution of the problem. Possibly Italians may be induced to emigrate to Cuba, if assured of a stable government and plenty of work. The opportunity (small allotments and homes) is limited, and the drudgery on large plantations, without family life, is not likely to attract those from Europe who are ever eager to seek homes and broader opportunities in the United States.

When in Cuba, the author visited many plantations and talked with many planters and overseers on the labour question. The extracts from notes taken on the spot will be found instructive on this point. The following excellent explanatory account of farm labour was prepared by an American who has spent the best part of his life on Cuban plantations and is now working a prosperous colona, or cane farm:

“From the 1st of December to the 1st of June an average of about 350 people were employed; of these ten per cent. were Canary Islanders or Spaniards, ten per cent. negro women and boys (white women do no field work), twenty per cent. native whites, and about sixty per cent. negroes and mulattos. From the 1st of June to the 1st of December an average of about 150 were employed. Women do no field work during this period.

“During harvest I give the negro women preference and pay them the same salaries as the best male labour; they are more constant, their work is usually well done, and each one keeps her man straight, which is an appreciable item.

“Next I prefer the negro, because he is, as a rule, a more faithful worker than either the native white or mulatto, the most of whom are addicted to gambling, and they cannot be depended on from one day to another.

“For stowing cane on the cars, ploughing, ditching, road repairing, and railroad work, Canary Islanders and Spaniards are preferable; they are more used to this kind of work, more constant, and have fewer vices.

“For cane cutting, carting, planting, and cultivating, native labour, in particular negro labour, is preferable; because the natives, being experts, work more rapidly, the cane plant suffers less injury, bringing in more remunerative returns, and its life is prolonged, which is a big item to the farmer; the natives are also much less addicted to smoking in the field, and danger from this source is materially reduced. But as a rule they are dishonest, and untruthful in the extreme, and this is general and applies both to whites and blacks, the latter being the champions. Canary Islanders and Spaniards are cigarette smokers and they are dangerous in the cane fields.

“At the present time labour is very poor and very much demoralised. Many of the abler men are in the insurrection, a great number of those remaining have seen mothers, wives, and children dying a lingering death from hunger; some could obtain work for their food, while others earned a salary of from six to eight dollars per month in depreciated Spanish silver. Provisions were high, and the Government increased taxes on meats and other necessaries, until these poor ignorant people, bent down by great sorrow and seeing no help for themselves, gave up in despair and became indifferent.

“During the past crop, as well as at the present time, I employ a considerable number of Asiatics, but many of these are opium smokers and much debilitated, and we calculate on sixty per cent. only being at work, while forty per cent. are resting in their barracon.[9]

“During the summer months wages for field labour averaged about $17 per month. Cost for maintaining labour averaged about $7.50 per month in gold; cost for maintaining overseers, foremen, carpenters, cooks, stewards, guards, etc., amounted to about $12 per month.

“Rations for each man per day were as follows:

“Clear beef, one pound, or its equivalent in tasajo or salt fish.

“Rice, one pound, or its equivalent in beans, peas, macaroni, etc.

“Lard, two ounces.

“Coffee, one ounce.

“Sugar, two ounces.

“Bread, six ounces, or instead of bread, sweet potatoes, plantains, or melanga.

“Sweet-oil, bacon, salt, and spices sufficient to season the food.

“During the winter months, cabbage, tomatoes, and turnips are served every day without regard to rations.

RULES AND REGULATIONS

“When a labourer enters his name on the pay-roll he receives his machete or hoe, tin plate, tin dipper, and spoon, the same being charged to him and credited when returned.

“Time-keeper makes his rounds twice every day.

“Away from the batey[10] smoking is absolutely prohibited, and the penalty is immediate dimissal.

“Salaries are paid any day between 11 A.M. and 1 P.M., Sundays excepted, to those who desire the money.

“Except in case of sickness, meals are charged to those who are not at work.

“To the sick such medicines as we have are given free; the most prominent of these is quinine.

“If a man remains in the barracon sick for more than two days he is sent to his home, or to a hospital. If it is an injury received in the service of the colona, he is cared for until able to work again.

“The bell tolls at 4 A.M. for the people to get up; at break of day, after having drunk a cup of coffee, they go to the field; at 11 o’clock they return to breakfast; at 1 o’clock they again go to the field; at 6 o’clock they come in to dinner, and at 8 o’clock the bell sounds silence, after which absolute quiet is enforced. The negro is fond of his music and dancing, and this is permitted at seasonable hours, and sometimes the overseer gives special permission to prolong their amusements beyond the usual hour.

“Gambling is prohibited, but the rule cannot be successfully enforced.

“In the dry season (at mid-day) when the people are in the batey, sentinels are stationed on the hills to give timely warning of cane fires.

“Armed guards patrol the fields by day, and guard the cattle at night—this applies to times of peace.

ADVANTAGES OF LARGE COLONAS OVER SMALL ONES

“During my experience in this vicinity I have never known a single instance where a small colona prospered or was able to extricate itself from debt, and this condition is owing to various causes. A colona employing from three hundred to four hundred men can be carried on more economically than one employing from one hundred to two hundred men. The high-salaried men in the one are very nearly the same as in the other, but the small farmers with fifty or two hundred acres fare much worse. These purchase everything they require at retail, often paying from fifteen to thirty per cent. more than the large farmers, who purchase at wholesale and receive rebate for prompt payment. A small farmer employing ten men requires a cook; the larger, employing three hundred men, requires but two cooks. The small farmer is always cramped for money, has but a limited credit with the central, and outside of that none, except with an occasional country storekeeper, who may consider the risk and accommodate him by charging exorbitant interest. The money which ought to be expended on the cane fields goes to pay this interest, his fields get to such low ebb that the cane no longer pays the expense for harvesting, he can obtain no money for replanting, fails to pay his rent, and the owner of the land takes possession of what remains, resulting in some other poor fellow stepping in only to repeat his predecessor’s experience.

“The cost for preparing, breaking up, cross-ploughing, making, furrowing, seed cane, planting, cultivating, wear and tear to implements, and weeding one caballeria[11] of cane to maturity, and doing it well, is from $1400 to $1600, according to conditions of soil, salaries, etc., and under normal conditions will here require from three to four years before the farmer can see any profits, and then only by intelligent management and good soil; soil which requires planting every three to five years will ruin any man.

“The average yield of cane per caballeria in Guabairo for 1895 was about 71,500 arrobas,[12] and the cost per one hundred arrobas for weeding, cutting, carting, and delivering to the central amounted to about $1.84.

“During the crop time we employed from one hundred and fifty to two hundred Chinamen; of the balance of the labourers, probably there were more negroes than Spanish, with the white Cubans in a distinct minority. The Chinamen we have here now make very steady workmen, but they are weak, and not able to do as much work per day as either a negro or a Spaniard can do in the field. The best workmen we have, if we can get enough of them, are the negroes. One negro in cutting cane, can do as much as two of any other class; but I do not think this country is adapted for the American negro, from what I have heard of him, as he would have to put up with hardships here, and a style of eating and living which, I imagine, is not as good as he has in the southern part of the United States. The immigration of Chinese is prohibited, although a few manage to get in at a time. I do not know of any other restrictions on immigration. I do not believe the Jamaica negro would make a good workman; for, from what I have heard of him, he is very lazy, and would not be at all a desirable labourer. Thus our only hope for labour is to retain here the Canary Islanders, because they are harder working and can stand the climate better than others. They are men who can save money here, and that in itself is proof that they must be steady workmen, because they earn so little. Galicians are also good workers, but so far as I know of the men working here, the Canary Islanders are the best. The white men are mainly employed as stevedores in the batey, though they are also good labourers in the field.

“As a rule the labourers are not married. The families of the married labourers live in the villages in the neighbourhood. The men must sleep in the batey at night. Sunday they work half a day, and get paid for a full day, provided they have worked five full days during the week; otherwise they only get half a day’s pay. The men sleep in large rooms called barracones; sleeping in hammocks, and not taking their clothes off. Many of them possess but one suit, and on Sundays, after breakfast, they go to a stream, wash their clothes, lie around until they are dry, and then put them on again. For the better class of workmen, employed in the factory, the machinery helpers, etc., we have bath-houses. These men have rooms, and as a rule they are unmarried. Most of the labouring men, if they have families, when they are paid off, go away for a day, or a day and a half, and take their money to their families, and then come back to work. Those who are not married, keep on working or stay off a few days. It is quite uncommon to find a labouring man who can read and write. Their chief vice is gambling, the Cuban and Spaniard being similar about this, though we try on this estate to prevent gambling as much as possible. The Chinese gamble and smoke opium. The bell rings at 8 P.M., at which time the men are supposed to be in their barracones, and are not supposed to walk around the batey, this rule not being enforced except during the last two years.

“The price of labour, in 1895, for cutting cane, etc., before the insurrection commenced, varied from fourteen dollars to twenty dollars per month, Spanish gold. This has fallen off to from twelve dollars to fifteen dollars, Spanish silver, paid during the past crop for the same labour—in American gold about fifty-five per cent. of this. The maintenance per month per man is nine dollars, Spanish gold. This fall in wages was necessitated by the fall in the price of sugar, and by the fact that but few plantations in the neighbourhood were able to continue working.”

Labour seeking employment in Cuba must face these conditions. That the field will prove sufficiently attractive to tempt immigration in large numbers, even from the poorer sections of Europe, is doubtful. Still, with more prosperous times, the Canary Islanders may try their fortunes in the future as they have tried them successfully in the past; and so with Italians, Spaniards, South and Central Americans, and even the Southern negro of the United States, despite the fact, as stated above, that the American negro will not come to Cuba because the work is too hard and the food and accommodations too poor. But the American negro will, unwittingly, no doubt be the pioneer of a new labour era in Cuba. With the coming of the new order and new people, will come higher ideas of labour, and that which has ennobled labour in the United States will have its elevating influence among the labouring people of Cuba. Herding labourers in barracones like so many cattle, sleeping them, feeding them, bathing them, with less care than is shown to fine cattle, ruling them with whip and spur, making no provision or allowing no time for their mental or moral improvement, regarding them merely as so much live stock, but of less value than cattle, because when too old to work they cannot be slaughtered and eaten, it is small wonder that the crying need of the sugar-planter for two centuries has been sufficient and efficient labour. When the planter, under the newer influences which shall soon prevail, learns that by education, by the adoption and enforcement of sanitary regulations, by the establishment of homes, by the observance of the decent amenities of life, by the liberalising of religious belief, by the recognition of human rights, and by the general uplifting of the sentiment of work, a sufficiency of labour may be easily secured, and its efficiency guaranteed, the problem so long unsolved will be made as clear as day, and Cuba will enter an era of prosperity for all classes that will astonish and attract the world.

There is at this time a steady increase in the demand for labour on plantations and, in Santiago Province, for the mines. While in Cuba the author received one cable despatch calling for fifteen hundred labourers for the mines, while three large planters stood ready, among them, to employ a thousand men to work in the sugar fields. In the neighbourhood of the sugar plantations all the able-bodied men had either been killed in battle, died of disease and starvation, or were still in a state of practical destitution, hidden away in the insurgent camps. Those who offered themselves for employment were, as a rule, too weak to endure the hard labour. Three years of privations and lack of food had destroyed their stamina. To be sure, there is surplus labour in Havana,—able-bodied labour,—but those who applied there had no means of transportation to the localities where they could obtain work. Through a suggestion made by the writer to an enterprising American concern, four hundred of these Havana labourers were sent to Santiago. It is estimated that at least three thousand additional labourers could be well employed in these mines at once, if it were possible to send them from the spots where starvation stares them in the face to the localities where work can be obtained for those able to endure, as already indicated, the hardest toil under trying climatic conditions. Many Spanish soldiers desire to remain in the Island. They have formed alliances in Cuba; some of them have married and have families there. These men have come before American officials and entreated them to aid in finding them employment of some kind, either as Civil Guards, in the mines, or on the plantations. As a rule they make industrious and faithful labourers. Attention is called to an extract from a letter written by a prominent business man of Havana,—the man, in fact, who in October was employed to send the four hundred labourers from that city to Santiago:

It is believed this indicates clearly and without exaggeration the present conditions in Havana as regards would-be labourers and their suffering for want of work. During fifteen years’ experience in operating iron mines in Cuba, those who know say, the labour question there has always been the unsolved problem, as never during that time have they been able fully to supply their wants in this direction. If the number of labourers has not in normal times been sufficient to satisfy the requirements of all industries in Cuba, how much will it fall short under the new conditions? The only hope for the renewal of prosperity in the Island is, first, the rehabilitation of the sugar industry; second, a revival of work on the tobacco plantations; and third, a full complement of men in the mining districts. These industries are the basis of the prosperity of the Island. A better distribution of labour will aid somewhat, and if this is accomplished intelligently by the United States Government, employment can be found for thousands whose presence in Havana without work is a menace to the city. It should be borne in mind that the Cuban harvest is in the winter months, and therefore plans should at once be inaugurated by which those who want work can be immediately brought to those anxious to give them employment. A small expenditure of money in this direction now will save a large expenditure in the future in some other and less desirable ways.

It is useless to try to create new industries until the old and strong industries of the Island are re-established. If it is difficult, after the Spanish soldiers leave, to secure the necessary labour for the plantations, producing, as they will this year, a maximum of 400,000 tons of sugar for export, where are the labourers coming from to produce the high-water mark of 1,100,000 tons of sugar? The process of industrial reconstruction will necessarily be slow and depend in a large degree upon the stability of the Government and the rapidity with which the people settle down to work. There is no possibility, however, of a surplus labour supply. Work can be found for all capable and willing to perform hard labour now that the affairs of the Island have passed into the hands of the United States military authorities and the new customs tariff has gone into force. From this time the work of repairing the dismantled sugar plantations should go forward and thousands of labourers will be required. Whatever may be the future of Cuba, the present must be provided for and life and property and the right to labour be protected.

The disposal of the insurgent troops is so intimately interwoven with the labour problem that it is difficult to separate the two. Some of the insurgent troops should be, and probably will be, utilised as Civil Guards, supplementing the United States forces; but those who are not needed for this purpose should be systematically aided as far as possible in any endeavours they may make to secure work. Men with hardly clothes to cover their nakedness, who have existed for three years on a diet that would kill the ordinary American labourer in three weeks, and who have practically foraged for their daily existence, must be helped a little before they can stand alone—helped at least to the extent of food and raiment and transportation to the locality where there is work in abundance.

Lastly, in this connection, the need of homes in Cuba is one of the most pressing. The condition of those who labour on the plantations is truly deplorable. They literally have none of the necessities of civilisation. A complete state of savagery would be preferable to the condition of those employed on the sugar estates, who toil from early sunrise to sunset on rations of the plainest sort, and live in huts built of the bark of palm trees and thatched with the palm leaf.

CHAPTER VII

THE POPULATION OF CUBA

THE number and the characteristics of the people of Cuba are matters of doubt. If not of doubt exactly, at least there seem to be many discrepancies in relation to the numerical side of the problem, and great variation in opinion as to the qualities and peculiarities of the several classes of inhabitants which constitute the people of the Island. Before attempting to discuss the traits of the people, it may be advisable to ascertain, as far as practicable, the component parts of the population, and for that purpose recourse must be had to such statistical data as may be found available. The census report of Cuba can be obtained, but it is not issued, like our own, in book form, or even as printed reports. The results, moreover, are not worked out with any degree of detail as to age, sex, race, marital condition, occupation, and such other data as make an analysis of the population of the United States a comparatively easy task. The first census of Cuba was taken as far back as 1774, and since then the population has been enumerated at various periods, apparently when it suited the convenience or desire of the authorities at Madrid. The last count of the people was in December, 1897, but the returns from this enumeration have not been tabulated. The authorities admit they are imperfect in the four provinces of Pinar del Rio, Havana, Matanzas, and Santa Clara, and that they lack entirely the population of Puerto Principe and Santiago de Cuba. It may, therefore, be expedient that this work should be abandoned and that the United States authorities should take a complete and satisfactory census of the Island in December (for it cannot be taken in the month of June), 1899, or December, 1900, either of which dates will be near enough to the date of our own Twelfth Census, which will be June 1, 1900—the earlier date will probably be better for Cuba and nearer our own census. Such an enumeration should elicit information in relation to occupations and such social topics as will aid in constructing a suitable government for the people of Cuba. The method of taking the Cuban census has been crude and the returns not very reliable. The organisation for the work has always been made in Spain and delegated to a Central Board in Cuba, which board is presided over by a Cabinet Minister—the last by Mr. Montoro, Secretary of State. The Secretary to this Board is the Director of Census. The schedules are then forwarded to the municipalities, who thus control their own enumerations. Fortunately for Cuba, there are no “boom towns,” so the returns are not unduly padded. The schedules for the rural districts are handled from the capital of the province. When the schedules are filled, they are sent to Havana, where the work of tabulation is performed. The completed work is sent to Spain for approval and promulgation. The method seems roundabout and cumbersome and must result in a large percentage of errors. The official who had charge of the last census admitted it was not exact—excepting possibly for some places where the municipal authorities took pride in the work. This was the case in Matanzas, where a census was taken in 1893, which seems on the face to be careful statistical work. A study of the census columns of unfortunate Cuba reveals the story of that Island in unmistakable terms. (See table on page 92.)

Disease and war have performed their fatal work and from time to time decimated the inhabitants. The cheerful side of the picture is the constant increase of population from 1852 to 1867. These few years were called the Golden Age of Cuba. The cholera visited Cuba at the end of the year 1868, and the Ten Years’ War began October 10, 1868, at which time many Cubans emigrated. This will explain the decrease of the year 1869. From 1870 to 1877 Spanish soldiers poured into the country, and not less than 200,000 Spaniards were sent there to crush the insurrection of 1868 to 1878 (Ten Years’ War).

A COUNTRY VILLA.

Then came the last war, which has been even more disastrous, and many competent authorities put the loss by disease, starvation, and slain at 400,000. It is impossible to verify these figures until we shall have an accurate enumeration of the population, so it must remain guesswork until then. Whatever the result of the next census may show, the fact remains apparent that the population of Cuba, by reason of its misfortunes, is far behind the natural increment; that is, the growth by excess of births over deaths. This is shown by the following table, giving the estimated population of the Island of Cuba from 1774 to 1894, by decades, taking the average rate of increase of the native population in the United States by census decades:

In the opening chapter of this volume the point was made that Cuba, had it been permitted to remain in peace and enjoy its advantages, should have had a population ranging from 4,500,000 to 5,000,000. That this statement is borne out may be noted in the subjoined table, which gives the estimated population of the Island of Cuba from 1774 to 1894, taking the average rate of increase of the total population in the United States, by census decades:

The rate of growth of the Western Hemisphere, had Cuba been allowed to enjoy her natural advantages, would have found her at the close of 1900 with close upon 5,000,000 population and a country as flourishing as that pictured in the early part of this volume.

The population of the Island of Cuba, as enumerated on the 31st of December, 1887, was 1,631,687. This population was scattered over an area of about 122,606 square kilometres. These figures give an average density of population of 13.31 inhabitants to the square kilometre, the maximum of which appeared to be in the province of Havana (52.49), and the minimum in the province of Puerto Principe (2.10).

Distributed as white population and coloured people, the latter comprising negroes and half-breeds and Asiatics, the proportions were as follows:

It will be observed that the number of whites is greatest in the province of Havana, but the highest percentage of whites is found in the province of Puerto Principe (80.52). The province of Matanzas shows the greatest number of the coloured race, which is explained by the fact that slavery prevailed more extensively in that province than elsewhere. The proportion of males and females was as follows:

Notice that in each province, males are in excess of females. The immigration of women into Cuba has always been small. The proportion of males and females of the white and coloured races is as follows:

Notice that the proportion of males is larger in the white race than in the coloured. The enumeration of the population of Cuba in 1877 resulted as follows:

The increase in population from 1877 to 1887 was 110,003 individuals, or 7.23 per cent. The number of whites increased 70,454; the number of coloured people increased 39,549. Asiatics in this census, numbering 43,811, were included with the whites.

CUBAN “GUARACHERO” (MINSTREL).

There are four classes of Cuban residents: the whites, the coloured, the blacks, and the Chinese.

The whites comprise native Cubans, Spaniards, and foreigners; a certain proportion in the interior being Canary Islanders, who are fitted by constitution, habits, and tastes for farm work.

The native Cuban is usually bright, and is gifted particularly with a remarkable memory. Children are very precocious, and, when given educational advantages, they develop into men of no mean ability. In addition to the intelligent Cubans residing in the Island, whose reputation in different branches of learning extends abroad, there are many who have attained honourable distinction in foreign countries, in competition with others whose advantages were conspicuously greater. Dr. Albarran, the well-known Paris physician, and Albertini, the violinist, are two of the many Cubans who have struggled and succeeded in Europe by dint of their individual exertions and natural talents. In America, a most distinguished professor of civil engineering, two leading civil engineers in the navy, and the most eminent authority on yellow fever in the country are native Cubans.

Havana is the only city in Cuba where any instruction is obtainable, and it is noticeable there that even the boys of the poorer classes are anxious to follow the university courses after leaving school.

In former days the sons of wealthy Cubans led the typical life of gentlemen of leisure. It was customary among them to take a profession, if that could be accomplished with little or no exertion. The remainder of their lives was usually spent in travelling through Europe. The present generation, however, is very different. It is composed of the sons of men who have been on the verge of bankruptcy for many years, owing to their thoughtless extravagance. They have had to work for their living from the moment they have left college, and, owing to the increasing poverty of the Island, they have never been able to reconstruct the fortunes ill spent by their forbears. The consequence is that one finds in Cuba the younger generation to be, as a class, vastly superior to the older men in principles, education, and working capacity.

The Cuban is more analytical than inventive. His mind easily grasps subjects on which he has received very little information; but he is decidedly lacking in inventive and constructive power.

The Cuban mother is very affectionate, but her maternal fondness often leads her into indulgence of the many failings of childhood, that, in later life, are impossible to overcome. Prevarication and pilfering are no uncommon failings of child-life in Cuba. Despite these weaknesses, children are so generous that their parents find it hard to prevent them from sharing their pocket-money with their young friends. Their politeness and affability are striking.

Cuban hospitality is proverbial. In the old and prosperous days of wealth it was a common thing for whole families to constitute themselves guests at the country-house of some friendly sugar-planter, and spend Christmas or Holy Week there without having given the host a word of warning. The planter, far from resenting this proceeding, invariably provided entertainment for his self-invited guests in the shape of riding parties, picnics, and dancing, considering himself highly honoured by the unforeseen advent of his friends. Like most Southerners, the Cubans are musically inclined. They dance well, and prolonged dancing parties are a favourite form of amusement.

There was an old Spanish law, in force up to some years ago, which entitled all suitors in marriage, whose proposals had been opposed, to demand that the lady’s parents state before the courts the reasons of their objections. There are interesting cases recorded of proud young Cubans who, animated by a high sense of honour, have availed themselves of this harsh expedient, in preference to breaking their vows to their lady-loves. The opposition in most cases was due to the fact that the father of the young lady was Spanish and the suitor Cuban. There is an instance of a man prominent in Havana circles who, taking advantage of this privilege, married a lady, and refused to accept his wife’s patrimony, and the father-in-law brought suit to compel him to do so. It was only after many years, when the allowance, handed periodically to the court, had accumulated to a considerable sum, that a compromise was reached and a reconciliation took place between the father and the married couple.

Cubans are very much attached to family life. Deep affection usually exists among the members of families, and they follow each other’s affairs with great interest, even after the families break up.

In Cuban houses, the first morning meal, or “coffee” as it is called, consists of coffee and rolls; breakfast then follows at ten or eleven o’clock, consisting, usually, of fried eggs, hash, fried plantains, sweet potatoes, meat, and café au lait. Dinner takes place at six or seven o’clock. Occasionally fruit is served at two or three o’clock. Visits are exchanged in the evening; but ladies follow the European custom of calling in the afternoon. Most families have an “at home” one evening every week to receive their friends. Married ladies may go out shopping alone early in the day. Among intimate friends young men occasionally call on their young lady friends alone, but this is not general, European customs prevailing.

The Cubans are very fond of fencing, and it is remarkable that the good fencers scarcely ever have duels, or seek quarrels. Duelling is practised ad libitum in all Cuba among the upper class. Just before the war it had become an everyday occurrence; in fact, in one week as many as five duels took place between men well known in Havana society and clubs. As a rule the seconds manage to stop the fight after the first wound, even catching at the pretext of a flesh wound on the forearm; appealing to the attending surgeon to state whether he considers the wound will impair the free use of the arm, and also if there is any chance of nervous twitches setting in from the pain. It is unnecessary to add that the surgeon invariably finds that it is very likely that all of these contingencies may occur—thereby stopping the duel, and “honour is satisfied.”

Baseball, bull-fights, and cock-fights were the most popular entertainments until recently; cock-fights have waned now in popularity considerably, whilst bull-fights are patronised by the Spanish element exclusively. Baseball continues to hold public favour, and since its introduction some twenty years ago a taste for athletics has developed among the Cubans, which was lacking before. Horse-racing was in vogue while there was capital to import foreign half-breeds, but it has now completely died out.

The foreign population of the Island is comparatively limited. A large number of German merchants are engaged in all branches of the tobacco business, which they practically control. It will be found that the knowledge and experience of the Germans in this respect have given them preferment in the direction and management of the largest syndicates and tobacco firms. A sprinkling of English, Americans, and French are to be found throughout the country.

The coloured inhabitants of Cuba (mulattoes) are usually the children of black women and white fathers—the cases of a white woman having children with a black father being so rare as to be nearly unknown. In the cities the mulattoes are servants,—not hotel waiters, for they are all Spaniards,—barbers, and occasionally musicians. Mulatto women, though usually very statuesque in appearance, are unprincipled and insolent.

A NATIVE HUT.
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY J. F. COONLEY, NASSAU, N. P.

The Cuban negro inherits from his forefathers, the African slaves, a physique and a character strengthened and tempered by the toil of generations. During the sugar season he works steadily, from four in the morning until sunset every day, taking only two hours of rest with his meals. The coloured population shows no inclination to be on terms of equality with the white, and though under General Calleja’s administration negroes and mulattoes were all granted the handle of “Don” (Mr.) to their names, and though the right to be recognised in hotels, theatres, street-cars, etc., on equal terms with the whites has been extended to them, they have not availed themselves of the privilege to any extent.

The savagery of the African negro has, unfortunately, shown itself among his descendants in the Island. Some years ago a secret society called “Ñañigos” was introduced in Havana. These Ñañigos are divided into bands, whose object is to fight and kill each other. They commit all sorts of depredations and crimes. It has often been shown that the police have been in their pay. Some four hundred were banished some time ago to Spanish penitentiaries, together with political suspects, with whom they were chained in couples and marched through the streets of Havana prior to embarking. This is one of the many acts of refined cruelty that the Spaniards committed during the late insurrection; most respectable and honourable men, accused of sympathising in the cause of the rebellion, were chained arm to arm with negroes of the lowest caste, who, besides being convicted for crime, defiled the very atmosphere around them from the filth of their attire. The Ñañigos have lately been returned to Havana and set free, where they have lost no time in renewing their criminal work.

The Chinese element was brought over by contract for working on sugar plantations. They were virtually slaves until the Chinese Government intervened in their behalf.

The following extract from the comprehensive report of Mr. Robert T. Hill, of the United States Geological Survey on the Island of Cuba, may be considered as authority on the subject of population:

Mr. Charles M. Pepper, in one of his newspaper letters, speaking of the negroes in Cuba, cites instances of their industry and thrift, and says:

CHAPTER VIII

SANITARY WORK IN CUBA

UNDERLYING the prosperity and happiness of the people of any country is health, for without it there can be no strength, no energy, no success, even if all other conditions be favourable. This is true of every section of the world, and is notably true of Cuba, which with almost every advantage that nature could bestow has ever been feared for its malarious diseases, the fatal typhus, and the dreaded “yellow jack,” which acknowledges no master save the frost. For years the world has quarantined against Havana, and other cities have drawn away from this sister in the tropics as from one plague-stricken. Yet this condition is not of nature’s making, but of man’s, and by man shall it be changed into something better. Spain in herself was a tyrant contagion and everything she touched became diseased and rotten to its vitals. And this terrible condition was not only physical, but moral, for moral uncleanness is sure always to follow physical uncleanness. This truth constitutes a corollary out of which has grown the maxim, “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.”

The first consideration, then, with the American authorities who have undertaken to clean Spain’s Augean Stables in Cuba is sanitation; and already the best thought and knowledge and experience we have are being brought to bear upon the stupendous task before us.

STREET VIEW, SANTIAGO DE CUBA.
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY J. F. COONLEY, NASSAU, N. P.

As has been stated, Cuba is not naturally unhealthful for a hot, wet country; and among the mountains in its interior and in many places along the coasts, removed from the filthiness of aggregated population, the average mortality is not higher than it is in lands of better repute for healthfulness, and the general health is quite as good. As might be expected, there is not that strength and robustness of physique characterising the people of the higher latitudes, nor is the climate conducive to the pink-and-white health of northerners; but though the people are less rugged of constitution and frame and lungs, and lack the outward signs of northern health, they are by no means constant subjects for physicians’ care and they are anything but chronic candidates for the cemetery. Even in the nasty cities they are not all so, for there are many who are able to have their own houses well located, and to adopt modern methods of sanitation for their own private use. But the public health is not considered of importance, and there is not a city in Cuba which is not wofully lacking in good water, good drainage, and good health. One or two towns, which in America would have a contagion flag run up over them, are so much cleaner than the average that in every description of them by any writer appears the statement that they are said to be the cleanest towns in Cuba. It may be said in this connection that the towns are not large.

Beginning with Havana, the capital of the country and the largest city in it, the stories of its great filthiness can scarcely be believed by those who have seen the place upon the surface and moved about in beautiful parks, in brilliant cafés, on the lovely drives, and elsewhere, among pleasure-loving people, all clothed in their clean white suits and smoking their dainty cigarettes. Yet Havana is viler than words can express; and the vileness has slopped over until her harbour is a veritable cesspool, whose waters are deadly, and whose bottom is so covered with filth that ships will not drop their anchors in it, because it is necessary to clean and disinfect them before they can be taken on board. Havana has been in Spain’s possession for four hundred years, and that harbour is a typical result of Spain’s good government. In the city itself the poor people are huddled in ill-built houses—there are only about eighteen thousand houses in the entire place—more densely than in any city of the world, on narrow streets without sewerage, upon the surface of which garbage and all kinds of refuse are thrown. No attention is paid to ventilation. The houses are built so low that the floors rest upon the soft, damp—in many places swampy—ground; the material is a porous conglomerate which absorbs moisture as a sponge does. Sinks are totally inadequate or absent. Water is not sufficiently supplied, and there is scarcely any effort by the authorities to exercise that care and provision for the public well-being which is characteristic of every properly governed city in the world. As an indication of what might be expected from such a condition of affairs the following table, prepared for American officials by the Havana Department of Sanitation showing the number of deaths for the first eleven months of 1898, is cited:

And this out of a population of about 200,000, in which there were only a few, if any, reconcentrados to starve to death. During this period there were only 2,224 births, showing a net loss of 14,336, or about seven per cent. of the population; a condition of health which would produce a panic in a northern city as soon as the figures were known. Speaking of these figures, Captain Davis, who has been inspecting hospitals, prisons, and public buildings under General Greene, says:

New York City at this rate would have a death-roll of 270,000 a year and London 450,000, and the deaths in the United States, which are now about 1,000,000 a year, would be about 7,000,000. Of course the figures for 1898 are greatly in excess of other years, owing to the war and the generally disturbed condition of affairs, but even in the healthiest years the death-rate was two or three times greater than the average of other cities.

The leading diseases are consumption, a common disease in hot, wet countries; diarrhœa, dysentery, cholera infantum, and fevers, worst of which is the yellow fever, which is present in Havana every month of the year, although much worse at certain times than at others. It is said that portions of Havana are permanently infected by yellow-fever germs, but Surgeon-General Sternberg, Dr. Wyman, Supervising Surgeon-General of the Marine Hospital Service, and other authorities say that by proper sanitary regulations and careful quarantining, the city may be made free of the disease and kept so, as is the case in Jamaica, where the English have had control for years. The work of sanitation will be difficult and expensive, and years will be required to accomplish it, but it must be done before Havana’s future is assured. Sewers are few and far between, and those which exist are filled with refuse from the streets and are never cleaned, as the odours that rise from them constantly most disagreeably testify. They empty into the bay. Most of the drainage is surface, and as the city lies so low that a heavy wind across the waters of the bay will inundate many of the streets, it will be understood that the drainage is sluggish, and that what should be carried off by water is usually left to be rotted and dried by the sun—except in the rainy season, when it rots without drying. Much of the lower part of the city is built on swamp and “made-land,” and what this means for the health of those who live upon it needs no elucidation.

The following statement, made by José M. Yzquierdo, civil engineer, of Havana, under date of September 28, 1898, will throw some light upon street-sweeping contracts in Havana, show why the work cannot be properly done, and also indicate the part that the city authorities have always taken in the good cause:

What is true of Havana is true in lesser degree of the other cities and towns of the Island, the degree being governed chiefly by the difference in size; the larger the town, the nastier it is.

Cienfuegos, which, by the way, is the most promising town in the Island, in the commercial sense, is notoriously ill policed, and is a sprouting-ground for all manner of diseases. A report dated November 21, 1898, made by D. E. Dudley, Sanitary Inspector, U.S.M.H.S., notes the fact that its elevation above sea-level is only about eight feet and it is surrounded by a belt of lowlands from eight to ten miles wide. The streets are seventy feet wide, unclean, and out of repair, and in the wet season are fields of nasty mud. There are three sewers, one from the Hotel Union, and another from buildings in the same block, and the third and only public sewer is from the Civil Hospital. The first two of these sewers empty into the bay at the steamer wharf, about two feet above the water-line, and when the wind is in the right direction the gases and vile odours are blown back into the buildings, filling them with stenches. The Hotel Union, the Charity Hospital, and a few private dwellings have modern water-closets, but elsewhere over the city the houses have shallow privy sinks, which are emptied at night and the contents dumped against the cemetery walls. Around the cemetery is also the dumping-ground for garbage, dead animals, and all the refuse of the city, the disposal of which is not under any especial authority. This dumping-ground is a mile and a half from the Hotel Union. Dr. Dudley says:

During the first ten months in 1898 the total number of deaths in Cienfuegos was 3626, out of a population which before the war was 21,500; adding soldiers and reconcentrados, it might be said to be 25,000, and at these figures a monthly death-rate of 362 is something fearful to contemplate. Estimating the deaths for a year at 4144, we have a rate of 166 per 1000. In the ten years ending December 31, 1889, reported by Dr. Luis Perna, over fifty per cent. of the deaths were from infectious and contagious diseases due almost entirely to bad or no sanitation. During the same year the births exceeded the deaths by 1982, a much better showing than in Havana, the difference there being 12,433 against the population in four years, and in Matanzas, 2397 lost in eight years.

Of the effect of proper sanitary regulations and personal attention on tuberculosis, Dr. Perna says:

Matanzas is situated on high ground, with the rivers San Juan and Yumuri running through it, and the natural facilities for drainage are excellent; but only two streets have sewers, and these drains have few or no connections with buildings. The water supply is of excellent quality, from springs seven miles away; but only two thousand of the five thousand houses take it, and the majority of the people prefer to buy water from street vendors, who are quite as likely to get it from fever-infected wells as elsewhere. There are public fountains, but those who need Cuban water most are too lazy to carry it home. Privies and sinks are more numerous than modern closets, and are handled as elsewhere, with the usual results. The streets are narrow (thirty feet wide), dirty, and unpaved; in the wet season they are vile. The houses are built of porous stone, which absorbs the dampness; the floors, laid on the ground, are overflowed by the rains, and their smell at all times is difficult to describe and dangerous to health. The deaths per year for 1895 were 1465, with a nominal population of 50,000, although it was cut to 35,000 by the insurrection; in 1896, 2399; in 1897, 6795; and in 1898, to September, 3901—which fearful figures may be accounted for by the fact that Matanzas was the centre for reconcentrados, and they died like sheep—eighty per cent. of them from starvation. The only disinfection that could reach this condition was applied to Spain by the United States, and there will never be any more epidemics of starvation in Cuba, or any more reconcentrados, for that matter. But even without her reconcentrado population, Matanzas is no health resort, and the cleansing hand must be applied to her early and rigorously.

MARIANAO WATER VENDOR

Cardenas, a city of twenty thousand people, more or less, is set down in the midst of a swamp, rarely more than ten feet above sea-level, and oftener only three or four. Its narrow streets are lacking in pavements or sewers. Lying contiguous to the south-east side of the city are more than thirty thousand acres of swamp, a fecund breeding-ground for typhus-and yellow-fever germs. Twenty years ago a commission was appointed to inquire into the construction of a canal to drain this swamp into the Anton River, but at this present date no canal is in sight, and the fever germs go merrily on in their work of supplying the cemeteries with subjects. The water supply is good, but many of the people prefer to buy dangerous well-water from street vendors, because of its cheapness. At Cape Hicacos, near Cardenas, are extensive salt-pits, the chlorides of which are supposed to act as a disinfectant, and that immediate locality is said to be the most healthful along the coast.

Puerto Principe, a town of forty thousand inhabitants, the largest of the inland cities, is situated on high ground, well watered and well drained, and though antiquated and utterly lacking in modern conveniences or sanitary regulations, as they are known among northern people, is so much more healthful than other Cuban towns as to warrant a milder animadversion than in the case of others. Yellow fever is only known sporadically, if at all, and contagion and infection are so much less flourishing than in the coast towns that Puerto Principe seems positively healthful in comparison, albeit in an American community the condition of the city would warrant the impeachment of any board of health having control of its sanitation.

Santiago de Cuba, with a population of, say forty thousand, is next to Havana in importance among the cities of Cuba, and has been accumulating filth since 1514, when the first Spaniards settled there. Just what nearly four hundred years of Spanish sanitation means is better imagined than experienced. Moreover, its location is down among hills which shut off the breeze, and in summer the city becomes intolerably hot and dangerous to health. It is situated on a hillside, with a landlocked bay before it, removed from all sea or coast currents, and for 384 years the drainage of the town—not by sewers, for they do not exist—has gone into this bay, until its bottom and waters are vile beyond expression. In the city itself filth everywhere prevails—or did prevail until the United States authorities took charge, since which time Governor Wood and his assistants have done an amount of cleaning up that is as wholesome as it is difficult to accomplish. This work has been so vigorously prosecuted and the results so beneficial that a chapter has been devoted to the subject. It is said that in time man may become accustomed to any condition of life, and the dozen generations of Santiagoans seem to have got used to their town, for its ordinary death-rate was but 29.8 per 1000, with an increase to 33 to 35 when yellow fever or smallpox became more violent than usual. In 1895 the death-rate went up to 51.2 per 1000, and in 1896 to 82.77. Four thousand people died in that year, and this is the last record known. This large increase was due to the presence of unacclimated troops from Spain, and though it may explain the high death-rate, it scarcely can excuse a sanitary condition which is so fatal to Spanish soldiers, who have had experience with Spanish sanitary regulations in their own country until they ought to be almost used to it. In 1896 there were 372 deaths from yellow fever and 509 from smallpox. Santiago has one inventive sanitarian in the person of Dr. Garcia, who, five years ago, devised a “cold box” for the case of yellow-fever patients. As is known, the frost will kill the germs of yellow fever; and as natural frost is impossible in Cuba Dr. Garcia hit upon the idea of producing artificial cold. His device is simple enough. The main feature is a small house, say five feet by seven, and six feet high, which is practically a refrigerator, with double roof and walls for packing the ice. A window is put in for light, and the patient is laid in his bed in a temperature of about freezing. He has no attendants inside, except when needed, and he is watched through the window. This method usually kills or cures the patient in from twelve to thirty-six hours. At first the box was not successful, for condensation practically drowned the patient out; but that was remedied by draining the water off. There is a great difference of opinion in relation to the efficacy of this treatment; some physicians entirely disapproving it, while others as strongly recommend it.

What may be done for the proper sanitary regulation of Santiago is a serious problem, as, owing to the distance from the sea and the landlocked character of the bay, the sewage, which may be easily drained down the sloping streets of the town, is bound to remain near the shore. For the present, Major Barbour, Superintendent of the Santiago Street Department, disposes of the sewage by sprinkling it with petroleum and burning it.

Manzanillo, population nine thousand, with a large and beautiful military plaza, has filthy streets and no public improvements of any kind looking to the health or comfort of the people; and the people seem to like it. The streets are unpaved, and Manzanillo mud is an alliterative term which has become a household word for the nastiest mud on the Island. The town is twenty feet above the bay, with hills to the rear, and near it are great swamps filled with mosquitoes and malaria, which spread themselves abroad in every direction.

Guantanamo, population nine thousand, seven miles inland, one hundred and fifteen feet above the bay of the same name, is situated on the river Guaso, and might be easily and thoroughly drained; but no efforts have been made in that direction, and malaria and fevers prevail. With any kind of decent care, the city could be made as healthful as any in the same latitude.

Pinar del Rio, the capital of its province, with 5500 population, is situated 25 miles from the sea, 160 feet above it, and on a hill 70 feet high. It is in the midst of the famous Vuelta Abajo tobacco district, and it might be made a clean town; but its streets are narrow and filthy, its people are a mixture of French and African, and it is a reflection on the great American Republic, in that it was founded in 1776.

Batabano, the southern seaport of Havana, thirty miles away, in its narrow, dirty streets presents a condition of neglect and nastiness suggesting that it is also a receptacle for the surplus refuse of the capital.

Guanabacoa, a high and beautifully located city of twenty-five thousand people, just outside of Havana, several degrees cooler than the capital city, in the midst of pleasant breezes and cool groves, has narrow, filthy streets, no pavements, no public improvements, small houses with no modern conveniences, huddled together, and is a dozen times worse than if nature had not done so much for it.

Güines and Marianao are so much cleaner and sweeter than any other towns as to make one wonder why they are the exception instead of the rule.

Possibly it is hardly fair to call attention to or animadvert upon the sanitary regulations and conditions of Santa Clara, an inland city and capital of Santa Clara Province, seeing that in ten and a half months of 1897 there were over one hundred thousand deaths in the province, of which nearly one third occurred in Santa Clara district. These were chiefly reconcentrados, and show that there are some things Spanish even worse than Spanish sanitation. The town has a population of twenty thousand, is situated in a healthful locality, and while little has been done toward public health, there is no yellow fever.

As with the cities and towns above mentioned, with the two exceptions named, so of all Cuban aggregations of population. Everywhere there is ignorance, carelessness, filth, disease, and death, and only education, care, and time can remedy the evil. It may not, cannot be that Cuba will ever enjoy the robuster health of the north, but she can be clean, and to that end must every ability of knowledge, labour, and means be directed, not only by those who are in authority, but by those whose direct welfare is at stake.

Outside of the cities, conditions prevail which will be more difficult, if not in many cases impossible, to remedy. Much of the Island along the coasts is swampy; there malaria and fevers breed, and these sections, if not capable of drainage, must be deserted by man, and left to the alligators, toads, and lizards. Many of the swamps may be drained and the land converted into fields yielding rich harvests; these should be given the proper attention. In many places the tropical forests are of such dense and tangled growth that no sunlight ever penetrates them, and here, after nightfall, deadly miasmas arise, full of poison and disease. Vast areas of such forests are filled with valuable timber, and when these woods are cleared and converted into money, and the sunlight can get in and exercise its saving grace upon the land, a wonderful improvement will follow.

Back from the coasts, particularly in the eastern part of the Island, the land is high and well drained, with mountains in some portions rising from five thousand to eight thousand feet above the level of the sea. While the heat and humidity incidental to the latitude prevail all over the Island, they are much less in the uplands than along the coast, and the climate for half the year is very agreeable and the air has a brilliant clearness that has become famous. Over all these lands there should be in the future a population which should develop into a contradiction of the tradition that the people of the tropics live because they are too lazy to die.

CHAPTER IX

CITIES AND TOWNS OF CUBA

THE political divisions of Cuba, known as provinces, are six in number, and are named as follows, beginning at the west: Pinar del Rio, Havana, Matanzas, Santa Clara, Puerto Principe, and Santiago de Cuba; the capital city of each bearing the same name as its province.

Of the provinces it may be said that Pinar del Rio, with an area of 8486 square miles, has a population of 225,891 (167,160 white and 58,731 black), and is the centre of the tobacco industry, the famous Vuelta Abajo district lying within its limits; sugar, coffee, rice, corn, cotton, and fruits are also raised. Havana, with an area of 8610 square miles, has a population of 451,928 (344,417 white and 107,511 black). It is the centre of manufacture, the capital province, and the most populous province of the Island. Matanzas, with an area of 14,967 square miles, has a population of 259,578 (143,169 white and 115,409 black), and is the centre of the sugar industry; corn, rice, honey, wax, and fruits are produced and the province contains a deposit of peat and copper. Santa Clara, with an area of 23,083 square miles, has a population of 354,122 (244,345 white and 109,777 black), and it is rich in sugar, fruits, and minerals, including gold deposits in the Arino River. Puerto Principe, with an area of 32,341 square miles, has a population of 67,789 (54,232 white and 13,557 black), and is a mountainous region, with the largest caves and the highest mountains; building and cabinet woods and guava jelly are its chief products. Santiago de Cuba, with an area of 35,119 square miles, the largest of the provinces, has a population of 272,379 (57,980 white and 114,399 black), and not only possesses all the agricultural products found in the other provinces, but also has deposits of gold, iron, copper, zinc, asphalt, manganese, mercury, marble and alabaster, rock crystal, and gems, and its commerce is most extensive.

SQUARE IN FRONT OF GOVERNOR’S PALACE AT SANTIAGO DE CUBA.

There are 115 cities and towns in the Island having an estimated population of 200 and upwards named as follows:

In addition to these are 132 places with less than 200 population, including railroad stations, bathing and health resorts, and farm hamlets.

As will be observed by the student of municipal nomenclature, the Spanish were liberal to Cuba in christening the towns in the Island, however parsimonious the mother country was in respect of all other things; and many Cuban towns have more name than anything else. The oldest town is Baracoa, in the province of Santiago de Cuba. It was laid out in 1512. Its chief products are bananas, cocoa, and cocoa oil, and there are some remarkable caves near by, noted for beautiful stalactites and well preserved fossil human remains.

The largest city in the Island is Havana, the capital, to which a chapter is devoted elsewhere in this volume.

A MULE TRAIN, SANTIAGO DE CUBA.
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY J. F. COONLEY, NASSAU, N. P.

Matanzas, in size the second city of the Island, and the capital of the province of Matanzas, is, in some particulars, the most attractive city of Cuba, although but one-fourth the size of Havana. It lies seventy-four miles by rail to the east of Havana, on the fine bay of Matanzas, with beautiful hills at its back. The town is divided into three parts by the rivers San Juan and Yumuri, two streams which water the valley of Yumuri, situated behind the hills of Matanzas, and presenting the most exquisite scenery in Cuba. The climate and soil of the valley make Yumuri, to Cubans, synonymous with poesy and Paradise. Notwithstanding the commercial importance of Matanzas, the Spanish authorities have neglected the wharves and permitted its harbour to become so filled with sediment from the river that ships are compelled to load and unload by means of lighters in the roadstead. The city was founded in 1693, and has paved streets, usually thirty feet in width, with three-foot sidewalks; interesting stuccoed houses of two stories, coloured drab and ochre, with balconies; pleasant parks, with fountains and flowers; a pleasure promenade and drive—the Paseo; one of the best hotels in Cuba; several theatres, among them the Esteban; some notable churches, including the Hermitage, on Mount Montserrat, at whose shrine marvellous cures are said to be effected. The people are well content.

The leading industries are rum distilleries, sugar refineries, guava-jelly factories, machine and railroad-car shops. Shipments of sugar and molasses to the United States in 1891-95 were about $60,000,000. The city has gas-works and an electric-light plant, but no street-cars, and since 1872 it has had a fine water supply, though only about half the houses are connected with the water system, and many of the people still buy water of street vendors, without knowledge as to the source of supply or purity of the water. Sewers run through only two streets, though the location of the city is well adapted to secure excellent drainage. The suburbs, or rather divisions, of the city by the river are known as Versailles, on the north-east, and to the south-east, Pueblo Nuevo. Through the latter part of the city leads the road to the famous caves of Bellamar, three and a half miles, where many invalids resort for the health-giving qualities of the warm air of the caverns.

The most beautiful and striking feature of Matanzas is the cañon of the Yumuri, a great gorge of perpendicular walls green-clad with tropical vegetation through which the rivers of the Yumuri Valley flow down to the sea. This is a constant resort for the pleasure-loving Matanzans, and they thoroughly realise its beauty and value to the city. There are many interesting drives and excursions by river and rail from Matanzas. The waggon roads extending into the interior, as everywhere in Cuba, are in wretched condition; the railroad connections by several routes are fairly good, the roads being equipped with American-cars and engines. Its population of fifty thousand is nominal, having been reduced about one-third by the war.

The third city in the Island is Puerto Principe, capital of the province of Puerto Principe, and known to the natives as Camagüey, the original name of the town and province. It is forty-five miles from the south coast and thirty-five from the north, although it is forty-five miles from its seaport, Nuevitas, with which it is connected by its only railroad. It is located in the midst of what once was the grazing district,—though the cattle are now destroyed,—and being on a plain seven hundred feet above the sea it is a healthful place. Camagüey is a back-number town, so to speak, having narrow streets with narrow sidewalks, or none at all, old houses, old fashions, and fewer foreigners than any of the other Cuban towns. It is distinctively Cuban, and the new era of Cuba will no doubt work a long time on the good people of Camagüey before they set aside the old things and step out into the procession of progress, clothed in the uniforms of the modern “hustlers.” In this city of over forty thousand people there is not a hotel, and the inhabitants are noted for their hospitality.

Of great commercial significance is Cienfuegos, one of the south-coast cities, and in some respects one of the best towns on the Island. It is situated on the landlocked bay of Jagua, with one of the safest harbours in the world, and though built only since 1819, and restored after a hurricane in 1825, it has developed a spirit of energy and progress rare in Cuban cities. It has an extensive and growing commerce, with numerous wharves and piers for its shipping; a railroad 190 miles to Havana and one to Sagua la Grande on the north coast; electric lights and gas-works; 25,790 people; 3000 stone and wooden houses; the famous Terry theatre and one of the finest plazas in Cuba; a good location for drainage, but with stagnant water in the streets, and no sewers; much bad health, and one of the finest opportunities on earth to take advantage of the new order of things and convert its energy and youth into a power that will make Cienfuegos the Chicago of Cuba. There is one good hotel. The only serious strike that ever occurred in Cuba took place in Cienfuegos among the longshoremen, and resulted in the sending of all the recalcitrants by the authorities to the Isle of Pines as criminals. The bay of Jagua is noted for its beautiful clear blue water with a bottom of the whitest sand. The climate is more variable than that of Cuban coast cities as a rule, the mercury marking as high as ninety-three degrees in summer and going down into the fifties during the night in the rainy season.

The Cuban city held to be the most healthful, though sanitary regulations are practically unknown, is Trinidad, in the province of Santa Clara. It is also one of the oldest, having been founded by Diego Velasquez in 1514. It is three miles in the interior from its seaport, Casilda, though coastwise vessels of light draft can approach it by the river Guaurabo. The town has a picturesque location, on the slope of La Vija (“Lookout”), a hill rising nine hundred feet above the sea. The harbour of Casilda is three miles long by one and a half miles wide, and has only about eleven feet of water. From this bay Cortez sailed for Mexico. There are several fine public parks and drives, and socially Trinidad in the winter season is one of the gayest cities on the Island. It is lighted by gas, and though it has no sewers, its location is such that the rains keep it washed clean. The population is eighteen thousand. In good times Trinidad has shipped to the United States $903,700 worth of sugar, mahogany, coffee, and honey in one year, but times have been poor in recent years, and Trinidad is one of the towns which will feel the reviving effects of the new era of prosperity.

Santa Clara, the capital of the province of that name, has a population of twenty-five thousand, and is popularly known as Villa Clara. It was founded in 1689, and was once known for its great wealth and beautiful women; its glory in this latter regard still continues. It has one excellent hotel, kept in modern fashion, and a fine theatre. Its railway connections are excellent in all directions; indeed, it is the terminus of the Cuban system of railways. It is 248 miles by rail from Havana, and thirty miles from the north and forty from the south coast. Its location is high, and a fine grazing country surrounds it. Minerals also abound, and ten thousand tons of a fine asphaltum have been shipped in a year. Silver yielding as much as $200 per ton has been found, but the mines have not been worked. Evidences of natural gas are present near the town. Santa Clara has wide streets, and despite its healthful location, it is, by reason of poor or no sanitary regulations, an unhealthful place, though there is never any yellow fever.

YUMURI RIVER AND ENTRANCE TO THE VALLEY, MATANZAS.

The capital of the province of Santiago de Cuba is Santiago de Cuba, generally known as Cuba to the natives and Santiago to foreigners. Owing to its war record it is the best-known town in the Island. It is situated on the south coast, one hundred miles from the west end of Cuba, and its harbour is one of the safest and finest in the world, having an opening into the sea only one hundred and eighty yards in width, extending back six miles into a beautiful bay, three miles wide at its greatest width. Santiago has a population of forty thousand (estimated sixty thousand in 1895), and is the second oldest city in Cuba, the capital having been removed thither from Baracoa in 1514 by Velasquez. It is historically the most interesting city in Cuba, and it promises to be for the future second in importance to none in the Island, except Havana. It became a bishopric as early as 1527 and is now the metropolis of the Catholic Church in Cuba, the Archbishop of Santiago being the Primate. The celebrations of church festivals are conducted with ceremonies more elaborate than those anywhere else in the Island, and the cathedral, in the Hispano-American style, is the largest in Cuba, if not the handsomest. It is said that in a Santiago theatre Adelina Patti made her first public appearance, at the age of fourteen years; Velasquez is buried in this city, and so is Antomarchi, the physician of Napoleon, who died, as his emperor did, upon a foreign island. Cuba’s greatest poet, José Maria Heredia, was born here, as were Milanes, Dona Luisa Perez de Montes de Oca, Dona Gertrudis Gomez de Avellanda; and Placido, next to Heredia in merit, passed several years here.

Although well located for drainage, Santiago is one of the most unhealthful towns in Cuba, and its beautiful bay is little better than a cesspool. Yellow fever and smallpox have been the prevailing epidemics for years, but under the new order a new condition will arise. Santiago, with very poor business houses and offices, does a flourishing trade, wholesale, retail, and in shipping. The surrounding country has many people employed not only in agriculture, but in mining as well, for Santiago is the centre of the mining district. Its railway facilities are practically nil, being located two hundred miles east of the last railway leading anywhere. The city is Moorish in its aspect. It is sufficiently ancient to be without hotels, though there are several clubs where civilised beings may be entertained comfortably. The fortifications about the city are interesting: the Morro,—which is one hundred years older than that of Havana,—La Socapa, La Estrella, and Smith Key—all these have received much mention during the late war. The mining interests of Santiago will be considered under a separate chapter.

Cardenas may be said to be the newest town in Cuba, and is known as “the American city,” owing to the fact that many Americans are located here in business, or make it their headquarters, with business interests elsewhere in the Island. It was founded in 1828, is a thriving town, with wide streets, numerous wharves, a plaza with a bronze statue of Columbus, and is a purely commercial city. The harbour is shallow, and the piers running into it are from three hundred to one thousand feet in length. Although without sewers and located on swampy ground, Cardenas is not unhealthful as the term is understood in Cuba. There are fine water-works, but many of the people still prefer to buy water of street vendors. Gas and electricity light the town. Its chief business is in sugar, but, unlike other Cuban cities, it possesses numerous and varied manufactures, producing liquors, beers, metal-work, soap, cigars, fabrics, etc. It has connection by steamer and rail with the chief points of the Island. The population is 20,505, over 15,000 of which is white. Cardenas exported goods in 1894 to the amount of $10,008,565, of which $9,682,335 was in sugar shipped to the United States, as against $10,000,000 the previous year. Her imports in 1892 were $4,900,000, and in 1895 the United States sent 32,283 tons of coal to this port. Situated in one of the richest agricultural sections of Cuba, Cardenas is also not poor in mineral wealth, notably asphalt. Peculiar mines of asphalt are found in the waters of the bay. The mineral is broken loose by bars dropped from ten to twelve feet through the water upon it, and the pieces are scooped up with a net. The supply of the mineral is renewed from some unknown source as fast as it is taken away. One of these mines has furnished as much as 20,000 tons, and the supply is inexhaustible. Asphalt of the first grade is worth from $80 to $125 per ton.

Sagua la Grande, twenty-five miles from the mouth of the river of that name, is almost wholly a sugar town. It has a population of 14,000, and is the northern terminus of the Havana Railway system. Its seaport is La Isabela, with a poor harbour; and its exports in 1895 reached nearly $5,000,000—with a great falling off since, as it has suffered as much as any town in the Island from the insurrection. As an indication of this it may be said that immediately before the insurrection there were 23,500 cattle, 4500 horses, 4000 hogs, 700 sheep, and 450 mules in the Sagua district, practically all of which have been destroyed or stolen. Sagua has an ice plant whose product has sold at $3 per hundredweight. The railway from Sagua to Cienfuegos marks the boundary between the western and eastern districts of Cuba.

Caibarien is another nineteenth-century town, having been founded in 1822. Its houses are of brick, and its warehouses of recent styles of architecture. Its population is fifty-five hundred, and it is said to be not unhealthful, though its general level is not much more than ten feet above the sea, and the country is swampy. Its chief industry is sugar, although recently an active business in sponges has grown up, principally of local consumption, the annual value approaching half a million of dollars. The harbour is extensive, but shallow and poor. A railway extends to San Andres, twenty-eight and one-half miles in the interior. Some waggon roads, unusually good for Cuba, connect it with various sugar estates. The future possibilities of Caibarien are numerous and great.

Manzanillo is the best town on the south coast between Trinidad and Santiago, and was founded in 1784. It has a population of nine thousand, and is the seaport of several interior towns and a rich sugar district, and is also the gateway to the fertile valley of the Cauto River, the most important stream in the Island. It has a fine plaza, and numerous inferior houses on fairly good streets, wider than the usual Cuban street. There are no water-works, gas-works, electric lights, or street-cars. The town is one of the most unhealthful in the Island, and of Manzanillo mud the author has spoken in a previous chapter. The principal shipments are lumber, tobacco, sugar, honey, and wax. In 1892-93-94 four million feet of mahogany and two million one hundred thousand feet of cedar were exported.

Pinar del Rio, the capital of its province, should be particularly interesting to Americans, as it was founded in 1776. It is a brick and stone town of 5500 population and is neither clean nor attractive. It has very few foreigners and is in no sense a modern place. It is, however, of commercial importance, being the centre of the famous Vuelta Abajo tobacco district, which produces the finest tobacco in the world. Pinar del Rio is essentially a tobacco town. It is connected with Havana by a highroad (calzada) and also by railway. The town is lacking in most of the modern conveniences, and the spirit of the people is not quick to respond to new notions.

An alphabetical list of the lesser towns may serve a useful purpose to the reader whose geography of Cuba is as yet not complete.

Artemisa (Pinar del Rio) is a town of five thousand people, with a paved road to Guanajay, nine miles, and a railway to Havana, thirty-five miles. It is in a fine tobacco and sugar district, and is a low and unhealthful place, but beautifully shaded with palms.

PANORAMA FROM THE ROAD TO THE CAVES, MATANZAS.

Bahia Honda (Pinar del Rio), with about two thousand population, is one of the chief seaports of the mountain coast; and although it possesses none of the visible evidences of future promise, still it is one of the places which impress the visitor with belief in its future greatness. Its population is largely black, its wharves are miserable, its houses are poor; though over one hundred years old, it is not a port of entry—and still Bahia is promising. The harbour is one of the finest on the coast, the surrounding country is rich in tobacco and sugar soil, the climatic conditions are favourable, and the new times will be good times for Bahia.

Cabanas (Pinar del Rio), with a population of fifteen hundred, has a landlocked, shallow harbour, four miles by seven in extent, and its connections with the interior are bad. It came into prominence during the war, and was partly destroyed by General Maceo.

Consolacion del Sur (Pinar del Rio) is, after Bahia Honda, the chief commercial town of the province. It has a population of two thousand, and is in the centre of the Vuelta Abajo tobacco district, with eight hundred plantations tributary to it.

Guanajay (Pinar del Rio) has a population of six thousand, is the junction of several paved roads, and is considerably above the average interior town in progressive spirit. It is lacking, however, in modern conveniences and suffered by the war.

San Cristobal (Pinar del Rio), though one of the oldest towns in the Island, is very enterprising and its people are energetic and prosperous. It has a railway and good waggon roads, and its thirty-five hundred people have a good climate and good health. It is in the midst of the Vuelta Abajo tobacco district.

San Diego de los Banos (Pinar del Rio) is to be especially mentioned for its wonderful sulphur baths. In one enclosure there are four of these springs, having a temperature of ninety degrees, and they have effected cures in leprosy, other cutaneous diseases, and rheumatism which are passing belief. It has beautiful surroundings of hill and sea and its caves of Arcos de Carguanabo are famous.

Vinales (Pinar del Rio), a small town of 925 people, is the interior terminus of the railroad running to the north coast and the celebrated San Vincente mineral springs.

Batabano (Havana) is the southern seaport of the city of Havana, thirty-three miles to the north, and connected with it by rail and paved roads. The town, in two parts, La Plaza and Surgirdero, is meanly built, and has about nineteen hundred people. It has no harbour, but is the western terminus of the south-coast line of steamers. The waters about Batabano are notable for the beautiful submarine views they present to observers on steamers. Batabano is hot and unhealthful.

Bejucal (Havana), built in 1710, has a population of six thousand two hundred, an elevation of three hundred feet, and a situation in the midst of pleasing scenery. The town itself is unattractive to the eye, but its health is good, the people being noted for their long lives.

Cojimar (Havana), four miles from Havana, has a beautiful sand beach, the finest in Cuba, and in time will become a profitable seaside resort, though now unimproved. The British landed here in 1762.

Guanabacoa (Havana) is practically a suburb of Havana and has a population of twenty-five thousand. With every opportunity and possibility of being a clean, modern city, it is quite the reverse.

Güines (Havana), thirty miles from Havana over a fine waggon road, and forty-four by rail, has a population of about seven thousand, and one of the most desirable situations in the Island. It has bridges over the river Catalina, a good hotel, a fine railway station; about it lies a rich agricultural and grazing country, and the town is, in respect of health, thrift, and progress, a model town—for Cuba.

Jaruco (Havana), with a population of two thousand two hundred, claims recognition chiefly because it is clean. Naturally its health is better than that of most Cuban towns.

Madruga (Havana) is famed for its warm mineral springs. It is fifty-five miles from Havana by rail. Population three hundred.

Marianao (Havana), a suburb of Havana six miles away, has a population of twelve hundred, and is said to be the cleanest and prettiest town in Cuba. Its people are entirely of the better class.

Regla (Havana), a suburb of Havana, connected with the city by ferries, has the largest and finest sugar warehouses in the world and a bull-ring vying in popularity with those of Havana.

San Antonio de los Banos (Havana), with seven thousand five hundred people, twenty miles from Havana, is the most popular mineral-springs resort in the Island and its climate is famous for its health-giving qualities.

Colon (Matanzas), on the railway between Matanzas and Cardenas, in the heart of the sugar-producing district of this section, has six thousand five hundred people and is of much commercial importance. Like all the others, it needs public improvements.

Jovellanos (Matanzas), also known as Bemba, is a coloured town, the bulk of its population being negroes, and its only hotel is kept by a Chinaman.

Macagua (Matanzas) is noted for its extensive sugar estates. Some of the largest in Cuba are immediately around it. Population four thousand one hundred. It has a railway to Colon and Santa Clara.

Calaboya (Santa Clara) has a population of fifteen hundred and possesses, in the bridge over the Calaboya River, the longest railway bridge in Cuba. Otherwise it is not important.

La Cruces (Santa Clara) is a railway junction and was at one time actively engaged in shipping horses, cattle, and sugar. The people are active and energetic, and have been complimented with the name of the “Yankees of Cuba.”

La Isabela (Santa Clara), called also Concha and La Boca, is the seaport of Sagua la Grande, and has five thousand people. It is the shore terminus of the railway to Sagua and is of considerable commercial importance, with a cosmopolitan people.

Remedios (Santa Clara), with a population of seven thousand, is in a fine country and is one of the cities of the future, naturally and logically.

Sancti Spiritus (Santa Clara), also known as Santo Espiritu, founded in 1514, is one of the old towns of the Island. Despite its size (seventeen thousand), it is of no great commercial importance, and is a dirty town in a good location for cleanliness.

Santa Isabel (Santa Clara), with a population of five thousand, does a good business in sugar and cattle. Cienfuegos is its seaport and is connected with it by a railroad twenty-five miles long.

Tunas de Zaza (Santa Clara), with fifteen hundred population, is in such a poor country agriculturally and aquatically, that the railway has a monopoly in carrying vegetables and water supply to the people. The town is hot and healthful. It has shipped as much as half a million dollars’ worth of sugar, mahogany, cedar, honey, beeswax, etc., to the United States in one year.

Nuevitas (Puerto Principe), population seven thousand, is a town of promise and no public improvements. Water, in the dry season, commands nearly as high a price as whiskey. It is the seaport of Puerto Principe, Cuba’s largest inland town, and is connected with it by forty-five miles of railroad. It has a fine harbour and a good location for drainage. It was at or near Nuevitas that Columbus first saw Cuba. Its annual exports to the United States have, in a good year, exceeded one million dollars.

Banes (Santiago de Cuba) is noted for its fruit business, as many as 4,651,000 bunches of bananas having been exported since 1890. Thirty-two thousand pineapples were shipped in 1894, but the insurrection ruined the business in 1896.

Baracoa (Santiago de Cuba) is the most eastern port of importance on the north coast. It is the oldest town in Cuba and formerly was the capital. It was founded in 1512 by Velasquez, whose house is still shown to the traveller. Baracoa is far behind the times, but it has all the potentialities for future greatness. The country along the coast is not healthful, but the interior is not only fine scenically but also excellent as to its health standard. There are no good roads and no railways of any kind. Baracoa imports about nineteen thousand pints of beer per annum from the United States, and Milwaukee sells at twenty-five cents a bottle. Copper, cocoanuts and oil, bananas, and cocoa constitute the exports. General Maceo and his followers inaugurated the last Cuban revolution in Baracoa, on the 20th of February, 1895, and within a year had marched through the Island to Mantua in the west of Pinar del Rio.

THE PLAZA, CIENFUEGOS.

Bayamo (Santiago de Cuba), with a population of about 4000 and an age of about 350 years, is a Spanish relic city, being very like the earlier cities of the mother country. It has eleven churches. It has none of the modern conveniences and no railways, and its waggon roads are impassable in the wet season. Bayamo never had a boom. It was the cradle of the Ten Years’ War.

Cobre (Santiago de Cuba), founded in 1558, is famous for its copper mines. It has a magnificent sanctuary, in which is the little statue known as the Virgin of Charity, which is claimed to have effected miraculous cures of all kinds.

Gibara (Santiago de Cuba), also spelled with a “J,” is the seaport for Holguin, with which it is connected by a railroad seventeen miles long and by a very bad waggon road. It has a population of about five thousand. It is greatly in need of improvement.

Guantanamo (Santiago de Cuba) has a population of nine thousand, and is the centre of the coffee district. Other agricultural products and minerals abound. It was founded in 1843, and still is not a modern town in the matter of conveniences. It is unhealthful because it has no sanitary provisions. It has a fine harbour and is of much commercial importance. It came into prominence during the late war.

Holguin (Santiago de Cuba), with a high and healthful location and fifty-five hundred people, ought to be a much better town than it is, and will improve under the new order. It is fifteen miles from the north coast, and is in the centre of the hardwood industry. It was of great military importance during the late war.

Jiguani (Santiago de Cuba), with a picturesque mountainous location, and an old castle in the vicinity, will be attractive to tourists and artists.

Of the 570 islands, or keys, on the north coast of Cuba and the 730 on the south, the Isle of Pines is the only one of sufficient size to be of importance; its area being 1214 square miles to 1350 square miles for all the other 1299 Islands. The Isle of Pines belongs to the judicial district of Bejucal (Havana), and was first called “Evangelist Island” by Columbus, who discovered it in 1494. It has a population of 2000, of which 1800 is about equally divided between its two chief towns, Nueva Gerona and Santa Fe. The people are rather superior to those of the Island of Cuba, and the climate is drier and better than that of the main Island. Besides the pines which flourish on the island, there is a great quantity of mahogany, cedar, and other hardwoods. There are deposits of fine marble, as well as of silver, mercury, and iron, yet to be developed. Turtle fishing and pineapple raising flourish to some extent. The Isle of Pines is really two islands, separated by a tide-covered swamp, over which there is a causeway. The south portion is rough and barren, while the northern part is fertile and pleasing to the eye. The towns are poor. Its mineral waters are much recommended for affections of the stomach.

A few of the other islands, or keys, are inhabited in a small way, and the largest of them, Cayo Romano, has an area of 140 square miles, with three hills rising from its flat plain.

CHAPTER X

HAVANA

WHATEVER may be said of Havana, the capital city of the Island of Cuba, however sonorously its high-sounding name, San Cristobal de la Habana, may be rolled forth, what titles of Queen of the Antilles, Key of the New World, or other titular effervescence may be thrown about it by the sentimental Spaniard, or the vivid-minded visitor, the plain, prosaic fact remains that Havana for centuries has smelt bad, and man’s other four senses are utterly routed from any field of enjoyment when his nose goes on the warpath. Unfortunately Havana has, for this reason, never been the city of delight that Nature intended it should be for at least one third of every year of its existence. In the great majority of instances bad smells arise from a condition of sanitary neglect which means bad health; and Havana has been, to all intents and purposes, a plague spot for centuries. Yellow fever is always present, malarial diseases of all kinds are prevalent, smallpox rings the changes at every opportunity, and every ill that tropic flesh is heir to has found a home and government encouragement in Havana.

This chapter on Cuba’s capital city is thus introduced because, before anything else is done looking to the reorganisation and the regeneration of the city and the Island, thorough measures for the health of the people must be formulated and put into immediate and active operation. With the new order must come thousands of new people; and if these newcomers, accustomed, as the poorest of them are, to better sanitary regulations and conditions than have existed in Havana and Cuba, are permitted to enter the Island and inhale its deadly stenches, Cuba will become an international cemetery and it will receive a backset worse than the worst Spain ever did for it.

Whatever Havana is now commercially, the time was when it ranked eighth among the commercial cities of the globe, and the wealth of its people was of the fabulous kind which characterised everything in the New World. The city was founded about 1519, and it received its name, San Cristobal de la Habana, from a small town of that name established by Velasquez near Batabano, on the south coast. This was practically the first settlement, but the second town absorbed the settlers of the less important place. So large was the hope of a great future for the new town that Diego Velasquez, the first Governor of the Island, called it Lláve del Nuevo Mundo, the “Key of the New World.” Later, Las Casas obtained a grant of civic rights for it, and it became the permanent capital. It was burned by the buccaneers in 1528 and was rebuilt by De Soto, who discovered the Mississippi, and he surrounded the city by well constructed fortifications. It was captured and sacked by the pirate Jacob Sores in 1556, but was refortified, and in 1573-1589 Philip II. built the castles, Morro and Los Tres Reyes, which still exist. In 1628 an attack of the Dutch fleet was repulsed, and in 1762 it was taken by the British. It was restored to the Spanish July 18, 1763, who held it until December 31, 1898, when it passed into the hands of the United States as trustee for the people of Cuba.

The approach to Havana from the sea is most pleasing to the eye, the narrow entrance to the harbour (one thousand feet wide) being flanked on either side by castellated forts, the best known of which are Morro Castle and Cabañas, whose names are familiar to all Americans since the Spanish-American war. The harbour is three miles in length by one and one half miles in width, is naturally very fine and of ample capacity for the business of the port; but the Spanish authorities have, for four hundred years and more, permitted it to be filled with the filth of the city and the sediment from various small streams which empty into it, until now a large part of it is useless for navigable purposes, and it is a constant source of ill-health to both native and visitor. The natural depth of the harbour is forty feet, but it has filled up to such an extent that an available depth of only about eighteen to twenty feet is possible. The tide on the Cuban coast rises and falls only about two feet. The water-front of the bay, comparatively of small extent, is lined with docks and piers, some of them built of iron, and of the first class. Still, the bulk of the shipping business is done by lighters, and the harbour is alive with small boats. Two lines of ferry-boats connect Havana with Regla, across the harbour, where the principal coal docks are situated. The harbour sea-wall, which is backed by a wide street lined with parks and fine buildings, gives to the city a most attractive appearance from the water.

Havana has a fluctuating population, variously estimated at from two hundred thousand to three hundred thousand souls; at present it is probably not greater than the former number. The people represent the best there is in Cuba, in point of wealth, education, and progress, and they are largely Spaniards, either Spanish-or Cuban-born. The city is by far the largest and richest in the Island, and has always been to Cuba what Paris is to France. The city is especially noticeable in that its houses, built of the absorbent, porous stone of the Island, are painted in yellows and pinks and greens and blues and whites, with a prevailing red in the tiled roofs. Of the seventeen or eighteen thousand houses of the city, three-fourths are of one story and only about two dozen have four stories. The people live very closely together; the rich and the poor, the good and the bad, are strangely huddled, all of them more or less regardless of the simplest laws of sanitation. It is not so great a wonder that the health of the city is so bad, as that any health exists. Rents are high, with the result that as many poor persons as possible live in one house, and the moral health suffers no less than the physical. If any animals are owned—as, for example, horses—they find quarters on the ground floor. Except in the best houses (and some fine specimens of elegant homes exist in the city), modern conveniences are unknown. Iron bars take the place of glass in the windows and doors, and windows are always open in dry weather. The domestic life of the Havanese is an open book to all who wish to look upon it as they pass, for the houses open directly upon the street, and the lower story is on the street-level. Most of the floors are laid directly on the ground, and it would seem as if the people did all in their power to maintain a low degree of health. All the good houses have marble floors.

Churches are numerous all over the city, the Cathedral in which the remains of Columbus are said to have reposed being the chief in point of interest.[13] The women of Havana constitute a large portion of the congregations; the men give little attention to church attendance.

The Government buildings are numerous, but neither modern nor beautiful. The cigar factories and tobacco warehouses are commodious structures; indeed, some of the former occupy what were at one time official or private palaces. The retail stores are usually small places, with the stocks of goods mostly in the windows.

There are numerous parks. The Parque Central, the first in importance, is the fashionable centre of the city. About it are hotels, theatres, public buildings, and cafés; a band plays there during certain evenings, and at night it is a blaze of light and alive with promenaders. The streets in old Havana, that portion originally within the walls, are very narrow; often the sidewalks are not wider than two feet, and sometimes they are entirely lacking. In the newer portions of the city the streets are thirty-three feet wide, with five-foot sidewalks. Some of the streets are paved with blocks of stone in poor fashion, and some are dirt roads which are almost impassable in the wet season. Naturally, this condition of the streets does not improve the public health. Some effort was making when the war began, looking to street improvement, and contracts were let to an American firm; but the war stopped all operations in that direction. The handsomest street in Havana is the Cerro, running up the hill back of the city, and lined with handsome villas in grounds and gardens of tropical loveliness. Here many of the aristocracy reside. Another fine public promenade-street is the Prado, which follows, as nearly as may be, the line of the old walls. The Prado, and the Paseo de Tacon, are the Champs Élysées of Havana, and on many nights the former is as brilliant as that famed Parisian promenade.

Havana lies so low that a wind tide will inundate the streets near the water; and as much of that portion of the city is built on made-ground, the material being of the worst sort of refuse, it is scarcely to be expected that health will abound. Owing to the narrowness of the streets, the possibilities for street-railway building are small, although there are twenty-seven miles of track in the city, with cars run by horse power; in the suburbs by steam dummies. The field for development in this line presents especial attractions for American capital, and the future promises much. The cab system of Havana was unusually good before the war. At that time there were six thousand public vehicles, with a maximum fare of twenty cents, and many were so cheap that labouring people could afford to use them as street-cars are used in this country. The volante, once the national vehicle of Cuba, has been relegated to the rougher roads of the country districts. There is also a ‘bus line, doing about three times the business of the street-cars.

The sewerage system is in a deplorable condition, and the last effort made to improve it was stopped by the war. What should be done is a problem to be solved by American engineers, and had Colonel Waring, of New York, not fallen a victim to Havanese filth, he would no doubt have done for the city what Spain in all her years of possession failed to do. The task is now upon the shoulders of General Ludlow, whose efficiency is beyond question. The city is lighted by gas and electricity, the works being operated by a Spanish-American company, controlled from New York City.

The water supply of the city has been excellent since the new aqueduct was completed, in 1893, after thirty-two years of delay. The water is gathered from about four hundred springs in the neighbourhood of Vento, ten miles from the city; it is calculated that they will yield nearly forty millions of gallons every twenty-four hours. The aqueduct, tunnel, and receiving basin cost $3,500,000. The reservoirs, four miles from the city, with a capacity of eight millions of gallons, cost $566,486, and the laying of pipes, etc., $1,566,374, or a total of over $5,000,000. The works are owned by the city.

The telephone system, owned by the Government, is leased to the Red Telefonica de la Habana, and had, previous to the war, twenty-one miles of line and fifteen hundred subscribers.

Two companies comprise the fire department of the city, and these are of the old-style “volunteer” variety. One of the companies is supported by the city, the other by private enterprise. Fires are rare and seldom extensive, the annual losses not aggregating half a million dollars, and insurance companies find Havana risks most desirable.

The death-rate of Havana is about 33 per 1000, a figure 25 per cent. in excess of the majority of American cities. In one year (1893) there were 6610 deaths to 4175 births, showing a loss in population of 2435. While yellow fever and diseases due to lack of sanitation are the chief causes of death, it is noticeable that 20 per cent. of the deaths are due to consumption, a disease not generally understood to prevail in the soft air of the tropics. The proportion of illegitimacy, which is 147 per 1000 births in Austria, the leading European country in this regard, is over 250 in Havana among the whites. What it is among the blacks is unknown.

There are 120 tobacco manufactories of the first class in the city, and many of lesser rank, and thousands of people find employment in them. Some of the larger factories employ between 400 and 500 hands each. The shipments of cigars from Havana from 1888 to 1896 reached the enormous total of 1,615,720,000; the United States taking 739,162,000, or somewhat less than half. Owing to the heavy tariff, the shipments decreased from 188,750,000 in 1888 to 60,000,000 in 1896 and for several years previously. Ninety-nine per cent. of the Cuban cigars received in the United States come from Havana.

Havana easily leads the other seaports of the Island in commerce, about one-third of all the shipments from the Island coming from that port. An average of 1200 vessels a year clear from the port, with an aggregate tonnage of over 1,500,000. In 1894, 1309 foreign vessels entered the port, having a tonnage of 1,794,597 tons.

Commercially, Havana occupies a most important position, and when by the adoption of modern ideas in all matters of progress she has regenerated herself, cleansed herself, rejuvenated herself, there is no doubt that she will take her place among the rich and powerful cities of the world.

The Botanical Gardens are situated on the Paseo de Carlos III., next to the Captain-General’s estate. They were originally intended for giving practical lessons in botany to the students of the University of Havana; but there was so much disorder during these lessons that they had to be suppressed. These gardens are on one of the most beautiful places in the outskirts of Havana and have been comparatively well kept. Some ten years ago a stone and iron wall that had surrounded the Campo de Marte was removed from there and placed around the Botanical Gardens. If the Spanish Government had attended to the cultivation and preservation of tropical plants and fruits in the way that has been done in the British colonies, especially in Jamaica, these gardens would be to-day of the greatest utility; but with the characteristic slackness that they have shown in all the branches of administration of public affairs they have neglected botany, and, from a scientific point of view, the gardens are of little or no value. Probably a scientist could find in some of the gardens for the cultivation and sale of flowers just as valuable material as he could here. Let us hope that under the new regime the necessity of studying the tropical flora will be realised.

HAVANA, FROM ACROSS THE BAY.

Education in Havana and in all Cuba is in a very primitive condition—old-fashioned, theoretical systems are general, and the lack of practical applications of the different subjects taught is greatly felt. This difficulty is mainly due to the fact that the Government has hitherto controlled education in all its branches, and, far from applying to its improvement the receipts from other sources, it has attempted to arrange matters in such a way that the bulk of the expense should be borne by a portion of those receiving instruction. In the last Cuban budget the revenue from matriculation fees alone reached $90,000. These fees are paid by students of all schools which are not free. If to this the other items, as, for example, “examination fees” and “inscription of certificates,” are added, the receipts will probably reach $150,000, nearly two-thirds of the total sum of $247,000 yearly appropriated for public instruction in the same budget.

Under Spanish Government control all teaching is divided into three classes: first, or primary instruction; second, or elementary instruction; and professions. To follow these courses, a student must have matriculated and passed the examinations of the preceding ones, either in Spain or a Spanish Government college, no foreign titles being respected. There is only one examination required to pass from first to second instruction; the third instruction, however, is a five years’ course, divided as follows:

First year: Latin and Spanish grammar, geography.

Second year: Latin and Spanish grammar, Spanish history.

Third year: Arithmetic and algebra, universal history, rhetoric, French, English, or German.

Fourth year: Geometry and trigonometry, philosophy (logic, ethics, and psychology), and languages (French, English, or German).

Fifth year: Physics, chemistry, natural history, agriculture, physiology.

After being examined in these each year, the student passes the Bachelor of Arts examination, which consists of two oral exercises on the subjects he has studied during the previous five years. To enter the professional courses at the University a candidate must show the title of A. B.

It must be said to the honour of some schools, that, although they have been bound to follow the plan of studies ordered by the Government, they have not confined themselves to it strictly, and other courses have been taught in them in addition. The best schools in Havana are the Jesuits’, the Pious schools, and one or two others of a smaller number of students. There is a class of cheap day-schools both in the city of Havana and throughout the Island which is very objectionable; the instruction given is very bad and the children are so neglected that they acquire in a very short period of time a number of vicious habits and lose all idea of morality and self-respect. Cuban children are generally gifted with remarkable memories, and this is taken advantage of by some of their teachers, who cram their heads with stuff which they cannot understand and which consequently proves utterly useless to them.

The University of Havana is established in the old convent of Saint Dominic in the centre of the city, facing the back of the Governor’s Palace. The building is over three hundred years old and is a typical specimen of the old Spanish monastical architecture; the quadrangles are surrounded by arched cloisters, the stone steps are long and wide, and the walls are six feet thick of solid masonry. All the mortar on the outer wall has long since fallen off, and the building has more the aspect of an old-fashioned fortress than of a peaceful temple of contemplation and learning.

When the old Dominicans owned the convent they instituted a free school for children, and as the requirements of the city became more pressing they extended their teaching to other and higher branches of learning, among which the study of law, medicine, and philosophy was included. They also had an annex school for special instruction.

At present the lectures are given by graduates of Spanish universities who have taken the degree of Doctor in the course they may have followed. The number of students, in some years, has reached two thousand. None of them sleep in the building. To be a professor it is necessary either to have acquired distinction in the vacant chair of the special profession, or to be the best in a public contest against all the others aspiring to the chair, or to be appointed by the Crown.

The students of the Havana University wear no caps and gowns, but the professors on every official occasion appear in their “togas” and caps, which are black, with tassels, lining, and cuffs of the colour of their respective faculties. Medicine is yellow, Law is red, Science is dark blue, Philosophy and Letters, light blue. Pharmacy, purple, and so on.

In spite of strict orders from the rectors and professors and covert threats from the Spanish Government officers, no student has attended lectures on the 27th of November since 1871, when seven students were unjustly accused by the Spanish Volunteers of having desecrated the tomb of a patriot. It was in vain that a brave Spanish officer, called Capdevilla, showed that the scratches on the glass of the coffin were covered with moss: all he succeeded in doing was to provoke the Volunteers, who did their best to kill him, and to spoil his career; he lived twenty-seven years more and was never promoted. He died in Santiago. The students were executed two days after their arrest. When the son of the man whose tomb had been the cause of so much villainy went to Cuba for his father’s remains, twenty years after that event, a notary public attended the ceremony and the son was a witness to the declaration that all was in exactly the same condition as at the time of the burial. A monument was erected to the memory of the students after the Spanish Cortes had declared that they had been innocent of the charge that had been brought against them. There is a significant statue of a blindfold woman with broken scales in her hand on one side of the monument whilst History on the other side appears recording.

After this disgraceful act it is not surprising that the students of Havana University furnished such a ready contingent to the ranks of the rebellion.

When in Havana last September the author, accompanied by Admiral Sampson, paid a visit to the Boys’ Technical School. It was just starting up again after the blockade, and though there were not many scholars, the opportunity was afforded to observe the possibilities of this admirable institution. Many specimens of the boys’ work were given to the author, and on returning to the United States some of them were shown the President, who expressed gratification at these signs of industrial life and a hope that the school would be provided for in the new budget of the Island. The Havana Provincial School of Arts and Trades is an institution for the promotion of technical knowledge among workmen and the training of youths (preferably artisans’ sons) in the theories and practice of trades. It is maintained at the expense of the Deputation of the Province of Havana.

The first courses given in this school commenced in 1882. In 1889, thanks to the efforts of its founder, Don Fernando Aguado y Rico and some zealous assistants, some shops were added to the school. They succeeded in having an increase allowed in the appropriation voted by the Provincial Deputation. The present cost of the school is $16,350 a year. This school is absolutely a free school. The instruction is divided into day courses and night courses. In view of its limited resources, to provide for boarders in the institution has, thus far, been impossible, consequently all the pupils are day scholars. A good deal may be said of Mr. Aguado’s work in this school. It is to be regretted that, like so many others who work for the public good, the results should not correspond to the labour. He conceived the idea of creating this school a few years after graduating from the University of Havana. After several unsuccessful attempts he managed to start his enterprise, and since then the improvement of the instruction and the general welfare of its scholars have been the main object of his life. The acquisition of a lot of ground and the building of a suitable house for the shops for mechanical training have been the most important steps taken since the foundation. The new building is outside the city and is high and airy. Part of the ground purchased will have a building erected for an agricultural and industrial museum.

It is to be regretted that this school, which is the only one of its class in Cuba, should furnish accommodation for only the limited number of 491 pupils. A city of 250,000 inhabitants, like Havana, should be able to provide more for this object. It is to be remarked that, out of the number mentioned, as many as 316 take night courses.

THE PRADO, HAVANA.

There is perhaps no branch of instruction that may lead to such important developments in Cuba as the training of her youths in the mechanical trades; the want has been felt for a long time, and with the only exception of this school no efforts have been made to alleviate it. The Cuban, being naturally quick, makes a good mechanic, but unless he is trained to his work and has some knowledge of technicalities he can never reach the degree of skill which the modern mechanic requires to master his trade. However bright a man may be he can never acquire perfection in any branch of industry if he confines himself to the results of individual practice and personal observation. In a place like Cuba, where the wealth and prosperity of the country depend materially on one industry like the sugar industry, which is worked with huge machinery, there is no excuse for bringing over every year foreign engineers and mechanics to oversee any important repairs that may be necessary, or to erect new plants. One would expect that being constantly on the ground, seeing daily the working of this machinery, those interested would acquire such complete mastery of the processes that, far from having to depend on outsiders, they would be making and suggesting improvements. The explanation is, as has been stated, merely the want of technical knowledge; give the Cubans complete mechanical instruction, technical and practical, and tangible results will be seen in a remarkably short period. Let us hope that Mr. Aguado will continue working with the zeal and ardour that he has shown heretofore, and that ere long he may enjoy the satisfaction of seeing his work completed in a way that may exceed his most sanguine expectations.

Havana feels the want of good hotels. There are some where a certain degree of comfort may be had by paying high prices, but even then it falls short of what can be obtained in other places at very much lower rates. Travellers in Cuba have to be satisfied with taking what they can get in this respect, as among those of so-called first-class standard there is little difference between one hotel and another. Anybody who has been in Havana during the winter months can have no doubt how profitable an investment would be an hotel on American lines. As every steamer arrives there is a rush for rooms most uncomfortable for travellers, to say nothing of their disappointment after they have succeeded in securing what, judging by the rate, they expect to find an unusually fine apartment, and which actually turns out to be a small whitewashed den, with very second-rate furniture and an iron bed. No curtains, no carpets, and bare walls. The most frequented are the Inglaterra and Pasaje hotels. Besides these, there is the Louvre, which, though much smaller than the other two, is beyond comparison more comfortable and better furnished.

There are several theatres in Havana. The Tacon, now owned by American capitalists, is the third largest in the world.

The Church of the Merced (Mercy) is the most fashionable in the city. The Belen (Jesuit) is the most frequented. It has, connected with it, a school, a laboratory, an observatory, and a museum of natural history. More men go to the Church of Santo Domingo than to any other because more pretty women go there.

Fine suburbs of hill and seashore hedge Havana in. Notable among these are Jesus del Monte, the highest point, 220 feet; Cerro, Chorreta Vedado (beautiful and fashionable), Marianao, eight miles out; Regla, across the harbour, famed for its bull-ring and large sugar warehouses; Guanabacoa, Casa Blanco, Playa de Marianao (seashore); La Cienaga, Puertos Grandes, and others of less importance. These places are of varying quality, from the very fashionable to the kind which exist because existence there is cheaper than in the city. The roads (calzadas) leading out of Havana are, as a rule, good, though, owing to the war, some are just now in bad repair.

Weather observations have been made in Havana since 1859. The rainy season continues from June to November; the rest of the year is dry, although about one-third of the rainfall of the year comes in the dry season. The average rainfall is about 50 inches. The temperature varies from 64 degrees to 85 degrees, and the humidity, which rarely falls below 75, makes the heat most oppressive. The early morning and late afternoon and evening are the hours devoted to business and pleasure.

The Jersey mosquito is a silken-winged messenger of mercy compared with his cousins in Havana.

There are many asylums and hospitals in the city which are not lacking in funds or attention, but they are all conducted upon antiquated notions, which greatly lessen their usefulness. As in other Catholic cities, Sunday is the amusement day of the week, and all the Havanese are out in gala attire on that day after morning service at the churches. There are many parks and promenades. The Alameda, the Plaza de Armas, the Parque de Isabella, and the Prado are the chief places of resort.

CHAPTER XI

COLONEL WARING’S SANITARY REPORT

WHEN in October, 1898, the late Colonel George E. Waring, of New York City, who had been sent by the Government to investigate the physical condition of Havana, became the victim of the monster he had sought to throttle, he had already written a large portion of his report, and he left copious notes for the completion of it, from which his efficient secretary and assistant, Mr. G. Everett Hill, prepared a full report. From this report the following extracts are made:

“The death-rate of the city has always been high. In five years (not consecutive) between 1800 and 1819, with a population less than one-third of the present number of inhabitants, 26,576 people perished from yellow fever alone. In 1832 the cholera killed 10,000. The official reports of the Spanish garrison show that up to January 16, 1896, more than 82 per cent. of the total losses were due to yellow fever. In 1897 the total mortality by disease in the Spanish army in Cuba was 32,534.

“At present the death-rate in Havana is enormous. The mortality for the week ending October 6, 1898, was 536—an annual rate of 139.36 per cent. per 1000. Since then owing to the change of season and to the removal of certain contributing causes, it has fallen to 114.4.

“The surroundings and customs of domestic life are disgusting almost beyond belief. Sixteen thousand houses, out of a total of less than 20,000, are but one story high, and at least 90 per cent. of the population live in these—averaging say 11 to each house. Usually the house covers the entire lot, so that there is no yard; though one or two courts are commonly included in the building. According to the general—almost the universal—plan, the front rooms are used as parlours or reception rooms. Beyond them is a court, on which open the dining-rooms and sleeping-rooms. Beyond these, on another court, are—I might say is—the ‘kitchen, stable, and privy, practically all in one.’” In Colonel Waring’s own words:

The water supply of Havana is very pure and abundant,—more than two hundred gallons per head per day:

In the notes which Colonel Waring brought with him from Cuba, the following improvements are specified as absolutely necessary for the sanitary redemption of Havana:

(1) The immediate organisation of a Department of Public Cleaning,” under the full control of a single Commissioner experienced in the conduct of such work,” who should have authority to act as occasion may require.

The chief function of the Department would be the maintenance of a “constant state of cleanliness” in all the streets and places of public business or resort, including the abattoirs and markets. “It should also control the disposal of all wastes, except sewage—by cremation and otherwise.”

(2) The construction of a system of sewers “to receive the liquid wastes of all houses of the main city.” The topography of the city divides it naturally into several districts. Each of these should be served by a distinct sewerage system, which should discharge directly into the harbour or the Gulf, as the case may be. “ Before such discharge, the effluent should be effectively clarified by one of the various well known methods; so that it would carry only its dissolved impurities.” The dilution would be immediate and more than sufficient; for the daily movement of sea water into and out of the harbour is about six thousand times as great as would be the day’s discharge of clarified sewage from the harbour slope of the city.

(3) The clearing out and filling with clean earth of all the cesspools and garbage-vaults, and the supplying to each house of a suitable water-closet connected with the public sewer system. The closets furnished should be practically automatic in operation, and not liable to damage from ignorance or carelessness. They should be made so that no foreign substance able to cause an obstruction in the house drain or the sewer could pass out of sight. If more elaborate plumbing be desired, this may be put in by the householder, under proper supervision, at his own expense. The immediate installation of the water-closet in each house is the only course which will make possible the annihilation of the cesspool; and Havana will not be a healthy city until this result is accomplished. The benefit that will be gained when it is done is out of all proportion to the insignificant cost of the doing.

(4) The paving, or repaving, of all the streets with the best quality of asphaltum. Some form of artificial paving of the streets of cities is indispensable. Mr. Edwin Chadwick says that between the two divisions of a town population, similarly situated in general condition, one part inhabiting streets which are unpaved and another inhabiting streets that are paved, a difference of health is observed. He cites instances showing the sanitary benefit resulting from paving.

Laying aside all considerations of comfort and economy, which in themselves are sufficient to warrant its construction, asphaltum is the best paving material from a hygienic standpoint. Being a monolithic sheet it is impervious alike to the rise of exhalations from the earth and the soakage of liquids into the earth. It is easily cleaned; and, as it can be cleaned without sprinkling, it can be cleaned dry. At intervals it can be thoroughly washed with a hose, and all surplus water removed immediately with a squeegee. The absence of dust and the minimising of noise are hygienic benefits of secondary degree.

(5) The erection of a new abattoir, adequate to all the needs of the population, and furnished with modern appliances for the inoffensive utilisation of the entire animal, so that no refuse remains to be got rid of.

(6) The construction of “a suitable and sufficient incinerating furnace, for the complete and inoffensive destruction of garbage and other refuse,” including dead animals, street sweepings, mattresses, discarded clothing, rags, excelsior, paper, and similar substances, which might serve as vehicles of contagion. The experiments made by Colonel Waring while Street Cleaning Commissioner of New York, indicated that such a furnace may produce steam in quantities large enough to be valuable.

(7) The reclamation and drainage of all the marshes, or at least of those bordering on the harbour on the south and west. “This reclamation to be made after the ‘Polder’ method of Holland—by diking out the harbour and the watercourses and removing the water by pumping.”

(8) The establishment of a “power-plant sufficient for this pumping, for pumping sewage where necessary, and for propelling the machinery of the abattoir.”

In concluding his paper, Mr. Hill says:

General Greene, U.S.A., has submitted an extended report on the city’s condition. General Greene notes that about sixty per cent. of the street surface is not paved, and that which is paved is in very poor condition. In some streets are small drains, connecting by gratings with the gutters, but no official record is kept of them, and no city plat shows whither they go, but as in Havana all sewers lead to the bay, it is supposed that is their destination. Some few private houses have their own sewers, but no official knows anything further than that permits were granted to build them and they are never cleaned. In parts of the city a drain two feet deep and two feet wide, covered or uncovered, runs alongside of the streets and into these all manner of ill-smelling and nasty refuse is dumped and left to wash away by the rain or to rot in the sun. For four years previous to the war the authorities had been considering an elaborate plan of street improvement and sewerage system, submitted by an American contractor, but no action had been taken. The estimated cost was $7,000,000.

For three hundred years or more house drainage has been discharged into cesspools, varying in size from three to ten feet in diameter, and from four to eight feet deep, closed at the top with a stone. While rules for taking proper care of these cesspools are plenty, enforcement of them is so neglected that some of them have not been cleaned in five years. They are not cemented inside and they drain off into the soil and rock, infecting everything in reach.

The paved streets (surface) are cleaned by contract, by methods prevailing in this country twenty-five years ago, and the work is fairly well done. The cleanings are carried eight miles from the city, where they are dumped and left on the ground, and the condition there is fearful. During the blockade the authorities ordered the cleanings to be dumped into the marsh near the Christina Street station, and here in the wet soil they remain, a dangerous menace to health. The thousands of reconcentrados and soldiers in the city used the unpaved streets as open privies, and when the Americans went into the city they found these streets utterly noxious and foul, and set to work at once to clean them, the street-cleaning contractor being permitted to continue his work on the paved streets.

There is but one slaughter-house in the city and it is owned by the municipality. It is mortgaged, like other city properties, to the Spanish Bank. From three hundred to four hundred cattle are killed daily, and the offal, which might easily be saved, and is, in American slaughter-houses, is dumped into Chavez Creek, where it is left to rot in the sun. The construction of a new building in a different locality has been long discussed, but opposition has been made to it, and nothing has been done. In the meantime the dumping continues in Chavez Creek.

The military hospitals have not yet been examined. Of the nine city hospitals, asylums, and homes examined by Surgeon Davis, three were in fairly good condition, two in bad condition, and four are most deplorable. Some of the houses are overcrowded and the inmates half starved. These hospitals can be put in good condition very soon.

The two principal markets, the Colon and the Tacon, are owned by the city and mortgaged to the Spanish Bank. Their sanitary condition is bad as it can be, but it can be remedied easily and quickly.

An elaborate code of Health Regulations, a volume of fifty pages, exists, but it is seldom or never referred to or its provisions carried out. Dairies prevail in many parts of the city, where twenty to thirty cows are kept in stalls in the same house where human beings live; livery stables are located in the most thickly settled parts of the city; dead dogs, cats, and other animals are left in the open streets for weeks; slops, filth, and night soil are thrown out of the windows and doors on the streets in the poorer localities and no kind of regard is paid to health regulations of any kind.

The condition of the harbour is gone into at length, one new fact being noted, to wit: that the water is so foul that the bottom cannot be seen two feet below the surface, while at Marianao, eight miles away, the bottom at twenty feet is plainly visible.

Both General Greene and Surgeon Davis are of the opinion that the harbour is not such a menace to health as are the cesspools, slaughter-house, and general filth of the city, and that it should come last in the cleaning process.

In recapitulation, General Greene says:

EXTRACTS FROM REPORT OF THE HAVANA YELLOW FEVER COMMISSION, 1879

TEMPERATURE

“This is conceded to be a climatic element of greatest importance, and the ‘annual mean’ to be the chief factor. Throughout the West Indies the mean annual temperature, near the sea, is from 78 degrees to 80, the mean daily range is only about 6 degrees, and the extreme annual range does not usually exceed 20 degrees. At Havana the mean annual temperature varies in different years from 77 degrees to 79; the mean temperature of the hottest months, July and August, varies from 82 to 85 degrees; and of the coldest months, December and January, from 70 to 76 degrees. The minimum temperature is very rarely as low as 50 degrees, and the maximum as rarely exceeds 100 degrees; in fact, the thermometer, in the shade, seldom rises above 94 degrees. There are no records nor any tradition of frost having ever occurred except on December 24 and 25, 1856. It is alleged that even in the sparsely inhabited mountains in the east of Cuba, where the Tarquino peak reaches an altitude of about 8000 feet, frost rarely occurs, and snow never.”

RAINFALL

“During the sixteen years, 1859-74, the average number of rainy days at Havana was 113; the minimum number, 97 days, occurred in 1869, and the maximum number, 141 days, occurred in 1862. The average amount of rain for the sixteen years was 49 inches, the minimum was 42.5 in 1861, and the maximum was 70 inches in 1867. The maximum amount of rain falling in any one season is from May to September, inclusive, but especially during August and September. The rain then descends with such rapidity that it runs off in torrents; but, as is seen, the usual belief that the annual rainfall is excessive is erroneous. The annual mean relative humidity varies in different years from about 73 to 74.5, and that of the different months of the year from 66 to 79; the minimum, occurring in any day of the year, may be as low as 34, and the maximum as high as 96. Evaporation is extremely rapid.”

ANNUAL DEATHS IN HAVANA, 1870-79

“Spanish army losses to January 16, 1896:

“Total mortality of Spanish army in Cuba in 1897 (from Public Health Report, U. S. Marine Hospital Service, April 29, 1898):

“The above table ... clearly proves that ‘the actual sanitary condition of the principal ports of Cuba’ is very unfavourable, since, in recent years, their death-rates have ranged from 31.9 to 66.7. It also proves that the sanitary condition of the inland towns is very little, if at all, better than that of the seaports. The high death-rates of Guanabacoa and of Marianao are especially notable, because these suburban towns, within three and six miles of Havana, are summer resorts, and enjoy, especially Marianao, a high repute for salubrity. Taking a general view of the death-rates for the total population of all the twenty towns in the above list—towns selected solely because the only ones which furnish reliable official reports, though many others were solicited, it will be found that twenty-six death-rates are given; that these range from 23.5 to 66.7, and that, while only eight of the twenty-six are under 35, twelve of them are 50 or more.”

“The portion of the city in worst repute is the fifth district, and especially Jesus Maria, one of its wards. This is, to considerable extent, reclaimed swamp lands, filled in largely with street refuse and garbage. It fronts the bottom of the harbour. Its rough, unpaved streets are in many places almost impassable in wet weather, even to pedestrians. Great mud-holes, covered with green slime, and fit only for the abode of hogs, are numerous. The houses, as well as the streets, have an uncared-for, filthy, and disgusting appearance; and the sickly, anæmic residents look as dirty and cheerless as the streets and houses.

“The Punta or Colon wards in the third district—at least the portions which immediately front the sea—have a reputation almost as bad as the Jesus Maria ward. The foundation rocks were, during the last century, excavated to build fortifications, and these excavations were filled up with street refuse and garbage; hence this ward is, like Jesus Maria, to some extent, reclaimed land. These portions are alleged to be very unhealthful, while houses only six or eight blocks distant are not so; comparatively light rains flood the banquettes and run into the houses. The streets are wider and the houses better than in Jesus Maria. Some consider the location of the latter, at the bottom of the harbour, a chief cause for its unhealthfulness, but the unhealthy portion of the city now referred to fronts the sea.

THE PRADO AND INDIAN STATUE, HAVANA.

“The Pueblo Nuevo ward, still farther to the west, also fronts the sea, and is built on a slope which attains an altitude of nearly seventy feet. Notwithstanding these advantages, it is very badly drained, and has, as it apparently deserves, an ill repute for healthfulness....

“The three suburban wards, Jesus del Monte, the Cerro, and Vedado, enjoy the best reputation for salubrity, and also for their freedom from yellow fever. Intelligent residents are readily found, who will assert with great assurance that no one is ever attacked in these wards except those who have been elsewhere infected. The summit of Jesus del Monte has an altitude of 67 meters, or 220 feet, the highest point in Havana, or its immediate vicinity. However, there are few, if any, houses about the summit; the average level of the ward is only 80 feet, and more inhabitants live below than above this level. The natural drainage is excellent, the houses in the elevated portion occupy more ground and are better ventilated than in Havana.”

GEOLOGICAL FORMATION

“The surface soil of Havana consists for the most part of a thin layer of red, yellow, or black earths. At varying depths beneath this, often not exceeding one or two feet, lie the solid rocks. These foundation rocks are (especially in the northern and more modern portion of the city, towards the coast of the sea and not of the harbour) quarternary and especially tertiary formation so permeable that liquids emptied into excavations are absorbed and disappear. In the southern and greater portion of the city, these rocks are of cretaceous formation, and so much less permeable that sinks and other excavations readily fill to overflowing. About twenty thousand persons or one-tenth of the population, live on land reclaimed from the sea, in large measure, by dumping on garbage and street refuse. Much of this reclaimed land was formerly mangrove swamps, and Havana still lies adjacent to these breeders of malarial poison. There are few if any towns in Cuba which are not subjected to malarial effluvia from mangrove or other swamps, and many of these suffer to greater extent than Havana.”

THE CLEANSING OF THE HARBOUR

“The sanitarian cannot hesitate to advocate, for general reasons if not especially for yellow fever, the cleansing of the harbour, the cessation of daily additions to it of large masses of filth, and the replenishment of it by constant currents of pure water. To accomplish the last, it has been much insisted on, in the United States, as well as in Cuba, that canals should be dug. Out of Cuba it ought to be better understood that Havana is by no means deficient in highly educated, skilful, practical engineers, who are fully alive to the sanitary interests of the city, and to the merits of this especial subject. Among these, Colonel Albear stands pre-eminent, and in September, 1879, he delivered before the Academy of Sciences an extremely able address on this subject, which is so full of instruction, on other local conditions also of interest to the sanitarian, that this address has been translated and is presented, as a most interesting part of this report. Colonel Albear seems to have conclusively demonstrated the impracticability of these proposed canals; and my own conviction is that if practicable they could not possibly place the small harbour of Havana in as favourable sanitary conditions as are by nature the large harbour of Matanzas and of Cienfuegos, where yellow fever none the less prevails.”

DRAINAGE

“In Cuban cities, generally, good drainage is not found except in such comparatively inextensive parts where nature required little or no assistance. Even in Havana, the oldest and wealthiest city, the visitor is often astounded, especially in the rainy season, by impassable mud-holes, and green, slimy, stagnant pools in the streets and in the backyards. This condition was found even in the Pueblo Nuevo ward, which is located so admirably for good drainage that little labour would be required to make it perfect.

“Messrs. Ariza and Herrera reported: ‘Havana has no sewers save in a few principal streets. These sewers have been built at interrupted intervals, without reference to any general plan for drainage. They are seldom cleaned and are generally obstructed in part or wholly with sediment or filth from the streets, and exhale offensive odours. As the sewers are few in number, the greater part of the water of the city empties through the streets, into the harbour or the sea; but the quantity flowing into the sea is comparatively small.’ Mr. A. H. Taylor, a civil engineer, thoroughly informed on this subject, testified that the sewers of only three streets subserved any good purpose whatever, and that the remainder were so defective that the city would really be much better off without them. Through the gratings, which have large interspaces, the dirt and refuse of the streets find such ready entrance that a number of these sewers were soon filled up, with apparently solid materials, to within a few inches of the surface openings. Since very few houses or privies are connected with sewers, these are less offensive than they would otherwise be, but no one who has seen them can find any words except of unhesitating condemnation for their grossly defective structure.”

THE PAVING OF STREETS

“Less than one-third of the population live on paved streets, and these are well paved and kept as clean, it is believed cleaner, than is usual in the United States. The remainder live on unpaved streets, which for the most part are very filthy. Many of these, even in old and densely populated parts of the city, are no better than rough country roads, full of rocks, crevices, mud-holes, and other irregularities, so that vehicles traverse them with difficulty at all times, and in the rainy season they are sometimes impassable for two months. Rough, muddy, or both, these streets serve admirably as permanent receptacles for much decomposing animal and vegetable matter. Finally, not less, probably more, than one-half of the population of Havana live on streets which are constantly in an extremely insanitary condition, but these streets, though so numerous, are not in the beaten track of the pleasure tourist, in which capacity the writer, in 1856, spent ten days in Havana without witnessing many of the evils now testified to with emphasis.”

DENSITY OF POPULATION

“Of the various evils recounted in connection with the subject of houses, there are two which deserve special attention. Many facts, besides those associated with the holds of vessels, justify the belief that the growth of the poison of yellow fever is specially favoured in warm, moist, ill-ventilated places, where air is closely confined. The low-lying floors touching the earth, the small, densely packed houses, the unusually contracted ventilating space in their rear, the large unventilated excavation for privies and sinks, all furnish, as is firmly believed, the most favourable breeding-places for the poison of yellow fever. In addition, statistics prove that in great cities subjected to their ordinary unfavourable conditions, the denser their population the sicklier and shorter-lived their inhabitants. Common-sense and experience unite to teach that the denser a population the more widespread and frightful the havoc of diseases, especially of communicable diseases. Elsewhere will be found a special report on the density of the population of Havana compared with numerous other cities, and it therein appears that more than three-fourths of the people of Havana live in the most densely populated localities in the world. A tropical climate renders this enormous evil still greater. Not only in Havana but throughout Cuba the average number of inhabitants to each house is unusually great, and this fact enables us better to understand the great prevalence in Cuba of those communicable diseases which its climate and other local conditions favour.

“The Registry Office in Havana reports that there are upwards of eighteen thousand fincas in this registry district, which comprises the village of Marianao in addition to the city of Havana.

“A finca is a piece of land, with definite boundaries or limits whether large or small, and whether it has buildings on it or not.

“Of the eighteen thousand fincas in the district about fourteen thousand have houses upon them, and the other four thousand being vacant lots in the city, or fincas rusticas, in the rural districts.

“At least twelve in every thirteen inhabitants live in one-story houses; and as the total civil, military, and transient population exceeds two hundred thousand, there are more than twelve inhabitants to every house. Tenement houses may have many small rooms, but each room is occupied by a family. Generally, the one-story houses have four or five rooms; but house-rent (as also food and clothing) is rendered so expensive by taxation, by export as well as import duties, that it is rare for a workman, even when paid fifty to one hundred dollars a month, to enjoy the exclusive use of one of these mean little houses. Reserving one or two rooms for his family, he rents the balance. This condition of affairs is readily understood when it is known that so great a necessity as flour costs in Havana $15.50, when its price in the United States was $6.50 per barrel.

“In the densely populated portions of the city the houses generally have no back yard, properly so called, but a flagged court, or narrow vacant space into which sleeping-rooms open at the side; and in close proximity with these, at the rear of this contracted court, are located the kitchen, the privy, and often a stall for animals.”

“Messrs. Ariza and Herrera report that in Havana the average height of the ground floor is from seven to eleven inches above the pavement, but in Havana, and more frequently in other Cuban towns, one often encounters houses which are entered by stepping down from the sidewalk; and some floors are even below the level of the streets. In Havana some of the floors; in Matanzas more; in Cardenas and Cienfuegos many, are of bare earth itself, or of planks raised only a few inches above the damp ground.

“The privy and the sink for slops, the open kitchen shed, and the stable immediately adjoin each other, confined in a very contracted space close to sleeping-rooms. The privy consists of an excavation which often extends several feet laterally under the stone flags of the court. Even if the sides be walled, the bottom is of the original porous earth or subsoil rock, thus permitting widespread saturation of the soil.”

LA LUCHA OCTOBER, 21, 1896

“These houses are veritable pig-styes. Houses which rent from thirty to forty-five dollars per month—an extremely high price for a country where wealth has been destroyed by war—are devoid of all comfort. They are unhealthful habitations. A very distinguished stranger, who visited us some time ago, said of them: ‘They are composed solely of four walls and a pavement which are stained with dampness and a privy whose fetid and constant emanations poison the air that must be breathed.’”

CHAPTER XII

MUNICIPAL PROBLEMS IN HAVANA

THE American authorities and American enterprise have jointly taken hold of the municipal problem of Havana with considerable energy. This subject is of such vital importance, not only to the industrial reconstruction of Cuba, but to the future of the Island itself, that no apology is necessary for devoting an entire chapter to it. The problems which General Ludlow, the present Governor of Havana, has taken up energetically are those relating to the reorganisation of the police force, public works, water and gas supply, fire department, and other branches of local government. Private enterprise, both English and American, has lost no time in securing the street-railway system and some of the public theatres, and in various ways engaged in semi-public enterprises, the result of which will be greatly to improve existing conditions, and make Havana a much more desirable city, both for business and residence.

Next to the question of sanitary improvement, which is absolutely imperative unless the United States stands ready to sacrifice thousands of lives next summer, is the organisation of the police force for the preservation of life and property. For several years past it is said the attention of the police of Havana has been directed more to political arrests than to prevention of crime. Whether these rumours are well founded or not, General Greene, whose report upon the sanitation of Cuba was presented in the previous chapter, is not prepared to assert; but he contends that at the time he made his report, last December, the police force was completely disorganised. As it formerly existed, the police force of Havana consisted of two parts, namely: the Government police, under the direct orders of the civil governor of the province; and the municipal police, under the orders of the Alcalde, or Mayor. The functions of the latter were mainly those of inspectors, to look after the enforcement of city ordinances in regard to buildings, public health, and such matters. They numbered 200. The Government police consisted of a battalion called the Orden Publico, the colonel in command of which was chief of police. The battalion numbered about 1200 men, and was recruited from the Spanish army, among men who had passed through not less than six years’ service, who held the grade of sergeant, and who had won certificates of perfectly good character. This force was disarmed and shipped to Spain in November, on the ground of alleged mutiny; the facts being that they claimed the money belonging to them which had been deposited with the regimental paymaster, and by him embezzled.

In addition to the municipal police and the Orden Publico, there was a force, detailed from the Guarda Civil, whose total strength was about 3500 men. This force constituted the rural police of the entire Island, under the orders of the civil governor of each province. About 300 were used by the civil governor of Havana for duty in the suburbs of Jesus del Monte, Cerro, and other outlying neighbourhoods.

At the time the control of the city passed from Spanish into American hands, the police force consisted simply of the municipal police, about 200 in number, with a few additions, all of whom were temporarily organised into a Government police force after the disarmament of the Orden Publico.

The city, according to General Greene’s report, is divided into ten districts, and these are still further subdivided into thirty-nine barrios, or wards. The barrios correspond in a measure to the precincts in New York, and in each there was a celador, corresponding to a sergeant in New York. He received $100 per month, and had charge of the police in his barrio, or precinct. There were five inspectors, each of whom had two of the principal districts under his charge. They received $125 per month. They were in turn subject to the orders of the chief of police, and he to the orders of the civil governor. The appointments to all of the positions named were made by the Governor-General on the nomination of the Governor. Each inspector had an office on the ground floor of the house where he lived, and these were all connected by telephone, through the Telephone Exchange, with the Police Headquarters on Cuba Street, near Quarteles Street. Similarly, each of the celadors had an office in his own house. There were a large number of details for special service at banks, theatres, public offices, and similar places, and while the nominal strength of the Orden Publico was 1200, yet vacancy, sickness, and other causes reduced its effective strength to 800 or 900.

According to this report, in the opinion of the civil governor, a force of 600 carefully selected men, thoroughly well organised, under proper officers, will be ample for the security of life and property in this city. The orders of the President of the United States authorised the organisation of a force of 1000 men. Subsequently the Secretary of War telegraphed General Greene to employ such number of men as was necessary. In the judgment of the commanding general the number authorised by the President was sufficient, and the proposed organisation, inaugurated by General Greene and just completed under the direction of General Ludlow, aided by ex-Chief of Police of New York City, McCullough, is as follows:

The total expenses for salary would be $56,360 per month, or $676,020 per annum. In addition there would be expenses for rent of office, telephone, telegrams, patrol service, 100 horses for use in suburban districts, and other expenses, which would bring the total cost of the police up to about $723,660 per annum.

It is proposed to put the entire police management under charge of an officer of the volunteer army, and to give him a deputy chief, who shall be a resident of the Island, and, if possible, experienced in police matters. Similarly, to put officers of the army of junior rank as inspectors in the principal districts—six in number—and to give to each a deputy inspector, who will be a resident. At the beginning, it is deemed essential that the police management should be in the hands of army officers who can be relied upon, but each will have a deputy who will be a resident, and if possible thoroughly experienced in the police service. It may be necessary to change these resident officers once or more before the best men for the positions are finally found. After the system has been in operation, and the men have proved their efficiency, it will be possible for the army officers to be relieved, and the native or resident officers to assume full control.

In his report on the organisation of the Havana police force General Greene says:

In accordance with the President’s instructions, every officer and member of the police force will be required to subscribe the following oath, which will be printed in both Spanish and English:

The uniform of the new Havana police officer will consist of straw hat, dark blue blouse and trousers, tan-coloured shoes, and white gloves.

The public works needed in Havana are sewers, pavements, a new slaughter-house, buildings for the police, fire, and health departments, and new hospitals. All of these will require a very large sum of money, and the ability of the city to raise this money is not yet evident. For the present, all that can be done is thoroughly to clean, disinfect, and repair the existing public buildings, either owned or rented, so as to make them habitable for the public officials, both American and native. The means of communication are entirely inadequate. They consist of lines of tramways running out to Jesus del Monte, Cerro, and the foot of the Principe Hill. The tracks are in bad order, the cars are old and dirty, and they are drawn by three horses each. The live stock is in bad condition, and the stables are filthy. These lines are owned by a company called the Ferro Carril Urbano y Omnibus de la Habana, under a concession granted February 5, 1859. The same company also runs, in the suburban districts, a few lines of very small omnibuses, drawn by two mules. The service is extremely bad. In addition to these facilities for transportation there is a “dummy” line, running from the centre of the city to the western end of the Vedado, a distance of about four miles. The track is in bad order, and the service is unsatisfactory.

Undoubtedly one of the first enterprises that will be pushed to completion in Havana will be an entirely new tramway system, with mechanical traction. General Greene recognises the necessity of this when he says in his report:

General Greene is undoubtedly right in saying that the new sewerage, gas, and water pipes, tramways, and paving of Havana should all be done at one time. If a general plan of this sort were inaugurated, the streets could be taken one at a time and finished. It should be borne in mind that this sort of work cannot be done as it is done in American cities, by reason of the fact that the streets are so narrow that to pull part of them up and leave any room for traffic is impossible. Added to this, the paving which should be done in Havana is more like masonry work than ordinary paving, because in consequence of the tremendous rains in the rainy season when the streets practically become small rivers (for it is not an unusual thing to see small boys swimming in the street), the sort of pavements we are familiar with would be entirely inadequate.

In the chapter on Havana mention was made of the excellent water supply. While the following description of the water supply of Havana by General Greene partially covers the statement already made, it brings out an interesting point in relation to the necessity of not only encouraging but also insisting on the additional use of water in Havana. It is nothing less than criminal for a city so abundantly supplied with magnificent spring water as is Havana not to insist upon its more liberal use. The waterworks themselves were built by American enterprise and there can be no doubt that those responsible for their management will be glad enough to increase the use of the water, and in so doing reduce the price to the consumer. However this may be, the water supply of Havana is so closely allied to its sanitary condition, that whatever the United States Government may decide to do in regard to its sewerage should be taken up in conjunction with the water supply. It is not a matter that should be left to the decision of the people of Havana themselves, but should be managed with no uncertain hand by those in authority, and the supply paid for by the city if the people are too poor or too indifferent to appreciate the necessity of cleanliness. Note what General Greene says on this point:

Of the efficiency of the fire department, General Greene, in his report, said that he was unable to speak without further knowledge. “It is generally considered,” he says, “to be very satisfactory, and the inhabitants of the city take great pride in it.”

The fire department of Havana appears to consist of two branches—the Municipal Fire Department and the Commercial Fire Department, the former being partly supported at public expense and the latter at the expense of private individuals.

The Municipal Fire Department is organised as a battalion, as follows:

The only paid employes, however, are a few machinists, drivers, clerks, and a telegraph operator. The entire expense in the budget of 1897-98 is as follows:

The apparatus consists of five steam fire engines in Havana, one in Jesus del Monte, and one in Marianao; two hose-carts, and one hook and ladder carriage.

There are 78 fire-alarm stations and 356 water-plugs distributed in different parts of the city.

The debt of the city of Havana on December 31, 1898, according to a statement signed by the Mayor and Controller, was as follows:

By the end of this year the floating debt will be still greater, and the total obligations of the city at that time will probably be about $12,500,000.

HOUSE OF PARLIAMENT, HAVANA

The mortgage for the loan of 1889 to the Spanish Bank is a document of 158 printed pages, including the index. It recites that in 1877 the city borrowed from the Spanish Bank a sum of money which, together with its interest, amounted in 1889 to $3,177,053.25; that the city was in arrears for interest and sinking fund, and that lawsuits have been in progress to compel the city to pay; that the city also desired funds for the completing the water-works and other purposes, and it was finally agreed that the city would issue $6,500,000 6 per cent. fifty-year bonds for the purpose of taking up the existing debt and completing the water-works, the expense of which was estimated at $1,850,000; and that the balance of the loan, which was taken at 90, was to be turned over to the city for general purposes. There was a further provision that the loan might be increased to $7,000,000 in case the city found it necessary, and this was done. The sinking fund provides for withdrawal by lot and payment of a certain number of bonds every three months during the fifty years, the amount at the end of the first quarter being $5000 and the last quarter $100,000. As security for the loan the city gave a first mortgage on the following property:

together with all revenues and receipts from them during the period of the loan. In addition the municipality mortgaged as further security upward of fifty houses which it owns in various sections of the city. The amount of this loan was $7,000,000, which has been reduced by the operations of the sinking fund to $6,721,000. The mortgage of 1891 is also for fifty years and at 6 per cent., with the same property as security. The original amount was $3,000,000, which has now been reduced by the operations of the sinking fund to $2,882,000. The amount of arrears of interest and sinking fund on the two loans is $343,600.56, which figures as part of the floating debt first above stated.

The floating debt of Havana arises from the failure to pay practically any salaries, contractors, or bills for materials during the whole of the year 1898, and for some debts contracted prior to this year. The items are given as follows:

This is prima facie a valid obligation of the municipality, and should be funded. But before making a new loan for the purpose of paying these debts it would be only proper to have a court of claims established, before which all the creditors of the municipality could appear and definitely prove the amount of their claims and the date at which they accrued.

The debt question of Havana can not be disposed of lightly. In his instructive report on the municipal finances of Havana, General Greene gives it as his opinion that $12,500,000 is not excessive for a city of the size and wealth of Havana. Discussing the question with prominent financiers of Havana, the author found that these gentlemen agreed substantially with General Greene, some going so far as to declare the city could easily stand double the present debt, which would bring it up to $25,000,000. According to the last census, the only city comparable with Havana in the United States that carries a debt approaching this was Cincinnati, which had then a debt of $24,737,611. Cleveland, on the other hand, with a population about the same, had in 1890 a debt of only $6,143,206. The other United States cities of about the same population are respectively Pittsburg, debt, $10,026,806; Buffalo, debt, $10,843,029; Milwaukee, debt only $2,915,900; and San Francisco, less than $1,000,000 of municipal indebtedness. The debts of both Boston and Philadelphia were in 1890 less than $30,000,000. It will be bad financiering to burden Havana at present with more debt. When the budget is fully examined by expert accountants a large floating debt will be found, some of which it may be right and just to pay, and much of which is fraudulent. There will be long past-due gas bills, aggregating over $500,000; unpaid bills for street cleaning; salary accounts unadjusted, and a great variety of debts the validity of which may have to be tried in the courts. To meet current expenses the revenues of the city will have to be increased and honestly expended. Naturally, the city will have to bear its share of the important sanitary work which must be done in Havana, but as this work is for the general welfare of the Island, part of it may rightly be taken from the general funds. Judged from an American point of view, the municipal debt of Havana at the present moment is quite large enough, and great care should be taken not to increase it beyond the danger line.

The revenue of the city is derived entirely from licences and indirect taxation. Real estate is not directly taxed, and the municipality does not receive directly anything from it. The Island of Cuba imposes, among other taxes, a duty of 12 per cent. on the estimated rental value of all houses in the city and country, and it pays over to the city of Havana 18 per cent. of the amount thus collected on rents within the city limit. The Island of Cuba also levies a tax on industry, commerce, and professions, and it pays over to the city of Havana 25 per cent. of all such taxes collected within the city limits. The other sources of city revenue, which are directly collected by the municipality, are the rent of houses owned by the municipality, revenues of the waterworks, slaughter-house, and markets, taxes on meat, coke, and wood, licences on factories and business of all kinds, and various minor licences. The total estimated revenue for the year 1897-98 is slightly in excess of $2,000,000, and the principal items, taken from the budget, are as follows:

These receipts amount to something between $8 and $10 per head of a population estimated between 200,000 and 250,000.

The expenses of Havana are such as are common in every city, namely: expenses of the Mayor and Council (Ayuntamiento), police, fire, health, schools, charities, correction, courts, street cleaning, lighting, repairs and paving, interest, and sinking fund. There is only one unusual item, namely: a contribution of $100,000 towards the expenses of the government of the province. The items are shown in the following statement, taken from the budget of 1897-98:

The current annual estimated expenses of Havana, according to the printed budget, which the author has had translated for 1897-98, were $2,090,441.95, and the revenue, of course, is made to balance. This looks all right on paper, but it is exceedingly doubtful that the present authorities will find the real facts corresponding with these figures. The items that are excessively high are moneys spent for salaries, for office of mayor, for gas, for street cleaning, for charitable institutions, for paving, and for contingent expenses. By “excessive” is of course meant excessive when compared with what the city receives for the money thus expended. The officials do little or nothing for their salaries, the gas is wretched and intolerably expensive, the streets are not cleaned, only the vilest patchwork in the way of paving has of late years been done, and the charitable institutions, so called, are in a miserable and filthy condition. In spite of this, the city of Havana is mulcted to this extent for these purposes:

If honestly and economically expended, these sums would produce good results without greatly increasing the taxes. The interest and liquidation of the debt makes an annual charge of $676,195, about one-third of the present total revenue of Havana; which, if not excessive, is quite enough under existing conditions of the population. General Greene thinks the revenues may be with safety increased, say to $3,000,000. There is force in this, but probably the better way would be before the debt and taxes are increased to try what an honest expenditure of the present revenue will do for the rehabilitation of Havana. Here is what General Greene says on this subject:

TACON MARKET, HAVANA.

Arbitrary changes are the one thing the military authorities should avoid in Cuba, for therein lies our greatest danger with these people. The fact that the people were accustomed to such action under Spanish rule makes them far more sensitive to such action than they otherwise would have been. Note the flutter in Santiago because of the order to send the custom-house funds to Havana, a perfectly righteous order in itself, but promulgated in too arbitrary a manner. Notwithstanding this it created something akin to a panic in Santiago, principally because it reminded the people of that province of the high-handed Spanish way of doing things. It is not advisable to increase either the debt or revenue of Havana at present, but, in the opinion of the author, it would be far wiser to keep the total revenues about as they now exist. The sources of revenue may be changed, however, to great advantage; increased in some directions, reduced in others. For example, ordinances should be passed compelling the owners of all houses not having water supply (and, according to General Greene, there are about 18,000 of these) to put in a water supply immediately. If this were done the water tax could be spread over a larger number of population, the individual taxes reduced, and yet the revenue from this source measurably increased. A good water-works, like that of Havana, should be made self-sustaining, and under proper management the profits from this department could easily be made sufficient to pay all the expenses, and at the same time to take care of the interest and sinking fund of the water-works bonds. From the American point of view the most unwise tax in Havana is that which has made the slaughter-houses of that city a constant source of scandal. To-day every kilogram of meat killed and used costs the people of Havana 4¼ cents, and thus the cost of living of the poorer classes is greatly increased; yet the revenues of the slaughter-house are pledged to pay the interest on the water-works bonds, when the water-works themselves are ample security for this purpose.

The real estate of the city should be reassessed fairly and justly, and a tax-rate arranged which would relieve many of the professions and industries of unnecessary taxation. It would seem from a glance at the budget of Havana that, if this were done, and the petty, annoying taxes abolished, sufficient revenue could easily be raised for all legitimate purposes. As a matter of fact, a very large proportion of the taxes collected for municipal purposes in Havana has been diverted from legitimate channels only to find its way into the pockets of those who have had charge of municipal affairs. According to the evidence of several witnesses who appeared before the author in Havana, a large amount of money was exacted from the people of the city by corruption, in the way of petty fines paid direct to officials, and not into the treasury of the state, and also large sums of money in the shape of payment for indulgences, much in the same manner as the Tammany officials exact tribute from those conducting illegitimate business or those engaged in breaking the ordinances of the city. Relief from this sort of exaction has been at once felt in Havana, but will not be fully appreciated until the present Governor of the city is able to ferret out and stop these several forms of imposition.

CHAPTER XIII

BANKS AND CURRENCY

THE heading of this chapter is somewhat misleading, for, strictly speaking, Cuba has neither banks nor currency—that is, of her own. The basis of the money which circulated in Cuba before the military occupation of the United States was Spanish gold, principally the centen, or twenty-five-peseta piece, the value of which had been inflated to $5.30 by royal decree. Owing to the scarcity of this coin and to the fear that it might leave the Island, in 1893 the French louis, or twenty-franc piece was similarly inflated by royal decree and made legal tender in Cuba at $4.24. The silver coins of Cuba were of Spanish origin: the peso, or dollar, the medio peso, or half dollar, the peseta, twenty-cent piece, the real, or dime, and the medio real, corresponding to our nickel. There are also the usual bronze coins. The silver money of Cuba has for some time been worth only its market value, and that subject to daily changes. At various periods in the history of Cuba the Spanish Government at Madrid has attempted to force bank bills on the people of Cuba, and such attempts, as a rule, have ended disastrously to the people of the Island. The Spanish Bank of the Island of Cuba, a semi-official institution, whose governor was appointed by the Spanish Government, has also at times issued bank bills, and to the credit of this institution they have always been redeemed ultimately. As much cannot be said of the Government, whose repudiated bank bills, aggregating about $17,000,000, are at this moment only worth six or seven cents on the dollar. The passing of the control of the Island into the hands of the military authorities of the United States has happily ended all the currency complications of Cuba, and the order of President McKinley, which went into force January 1, 1899, will in a short time not only bring order out of confusion, but gradually reduce the currency systems of Cuba to a sound basis, making gold and silver alike worth one hundred cents the world over—no more, no less. The object of this order is not only to unify the Cuban currency, but in time to replace the present system by the monetary system of the United States.

There is no need for entering further into the history of Cuban currency, but in the following pages will be given the reasons which led up to the Executive Order of December 28, 1898. Considering that the author was called upon by the President of the United States and the Secretary of the Treasury to make a report upon this subject, and the report was subsequently adopted and acted upon, therefore the facts herein stated may be regarded as official. The real point at issue in relation to Cuban currency and the only one which caused the United States authorities any trouble was that arising from the inflation by royal decree of the Spanish twenty-five-peseta pieces, popularly known as alfonsinos, or centen, and the subsequent inflation of the French twenty-franc piece, the so-called louis, which, as we have seen, were given a legal value of $4.24 and decreed since the end of 1893 as legal money.

The Spanish authorities at Madrid, having thus inflated two gold coins six per cent. above their current value and about ten per cent. above their intrinsic value—for the mint value of these two coins at Havana is $4.776 and $3.8208 respectively—the United States authorities at Washington were now called upon to inflate a third gold coin and make the American eagle worth $11 in Cuba and our $5 gold piece current there at $5.50. As a temporary measure this might have had some justification, and the statements in support of it from Cuban bankers, planters, and business men had a certain degree of plausibility. The process, however, is entirely artificial, and whatever was done in this direction to-day must be undone some other day, and the only question the Administration had to decide was whether the inflation should be taken out when the United States authorities took possession or the operation postponed to some more opportune time. The danger in following the advice of some influential financiers of Havana lay in the adoption by the United States Government of a bad precedent in Cuban financiering, inaugurated by the Spanish Government, a precedent for which the United States was in no manner responsible.

The reckoning day must come for all inflated values, whether of paper, of silver, or of gold; and when that day comes someone will suffer. Fortunately, in this case the degree of suffering was small, varying only from six to ten per cent. The practical question would seem to be how to disinflate these two coins with the least possible disturbance to mortgages, contracts, notes, and all classes of existing agreements to pay money.

Current matters will adjust and take care of themselves. It is generally known that all transactions in Cuba since the close of the war have been made with the belief that the United States would not continue the royal decree of Spain, and that the inflations would collapse with the disappearance of Spanish rule.

In Santiago the author found the bankers and financiers in favour of leaving matters as they existed and adopting similar methods in the rest of the Island, namely, reducing the $5.30 gold piece to $5. This was the view taken by Mr. Schuman, of Schuman & Co., Santiago.

On this question the Chamber of Commerce of Santiago, in a thoughtfully prepared memorial, submitted to the President of the United States, say:

Speaking to the author on the same subject, Mr. Brooks, of Brooks & Co., Santiago, a careful financier and capable business man, said:

A partial adjustment of the question was suggested to the author by Dr. Antonio Jover, director of the Spanish Bank of the Island of Cuba, and as Dr. Jover is an authority on Cuban finances, the statement thus made is quoted in full:

With these supplemental facts, the case is fully and impartially before the reader. To accept the proposition of the Havana bankers meant a continuation of the inflated value of ten per cent. To concede the proposition of Dr. Jover and the Santiago financier would reduce the inflation about six per cent., still retaining Spanish and French gold in circulation at a slightly increased value. (Dr. Jover even includes the British sovereign at $5.) The other and only remaining course would be to accept United States money at its full value for customs and taxes and the foreign coins at their intrinsic or mint value.

After carefully considering all these facts, the Honourable Secretary of the Treasury, Lyman J. Gage, prepared and submitted to the President the following order in relation to the future currency of Cuba:

FIRE DEPARTMENT, SANTIAGO DE CUBA.

In signing and promulgating the above order, the currency question of Cuba has been settled for all time to come on a sound basis. In offering to accept for the present the Cuban peso or silver dollar for sixty cents, American money, the United States Government merely delays the migration of the coin to Spain. At this price it is profitable to ship them to Spain, but at fifty cents they would have disappeared so rapidly that a commercial disturbance might have followed on account of scarcity of silver dollars and fractional currency. It is not probable, nor is it asserted that this adjustment can be accomplished without hardship to some debtors and a slight financial disturbance. It is not, however, apprehended that the trouble will be as great as some have anticipated. In Santiago the first step to absolutely sound finance was taken last summer and six per cent. of the inflation squeezed out. The business interests in that part of the Island were opposed to a continuation of the ten per cent. inflation, and merely asked of the United States Government that the several gold coins in circulation should be left at their face value. As one of the evils arising from disinflation, certain Cuban bankers put forward the fact that it will mean an increase of from four to ten per cent. in the wages of labour, which Cuban industries cannot afford. Such a result, if true, cannot be regarded as an evil, but, on the contrary, a benefit to the poorer classes, whose condition in Cuba is deplorable beyond description.

In the iron mines at Santiago the large American enterprises have already adjusted themselves to the new conditions and are paying their labour seventy-five cents per day American currency instead of a Spanish dollar worth sixty-five cents in Cuba and only sixty cents in exchange for United States currency. The author, when in the mining districts of this province, heard no complaints, either from the proprietors or the labourers. Stress was laid in the arguments before the President and Secretary Gage upon the loss to the debtor who has borrowed on a fictitious value and must pay the premium, and the unfortunate Cuban sugar-planter is especially singled out for sympathy. That the planter will suffer cannot be denied, but the advent of the United States into Cuba will lighten so many of his burdens that his condition is not without hope. All the customs duties on his imported food supplies, as will be seen in the chapter on the tariff, have been reduced, and many important commodities put upon the free list. The duty on his sugar machinery has been reduced to ten per cent. ad valorem; on his locomotives and railway supplies to twenty per cent.; and all along the line the taxes have been cut down. It is not probable that his land taxes will be collected during the present fiscal year, and the return of peace, establishment of law and order, and protection of property will immeasurably improve his lot. If, therefore, the sugar-planter of Cuba will gauge his present outlook by a glance backward and compare it with his condition last year at this time, he may face the new year with less gloomy premonitions as to his future than some of the testimony taken by the United States Government on the effects of disinflation would indicate. The action of the President, by and with the advice of the able financier at the head of the Treasury Department, will give Cuba a sound currency, which must be the foundation of her future fiscal prosperity.

The proof of the poverty of Cuba is a scarcity of capital, manifest in many different ways. The difficulty, not to say the impossibility, of selling sugar plantations proves the scarcity of capital and at the same time the precarious situation of the sugar industry. The decrease in the price of property is a natural consequence of lack of disposable capital, and this is why the rate of money is so high; it can only be caused by lack of capital, and not of money, since scarcity or abundance of money has only a limited influence on rates of interest. Nearly all the banks established for the last twenty or thirty years in Cuba have disappeared, owing to the losses experienced by the gradual increase of the poverty of the country; the want of resources rendering it impossible to start these banks anew or establish new ones with Cuban capital.

A few years ago there were in Havana, besides the Spanish Bank and the Bank of Commerce, the Industrial Bank, the San José, the Alianza, the Maritime Security Bank, and the Caja de Ahorros (savings bank). Excepting the first two, all have stopped working, and if the two surviving ones have outlived the others, it is because the Spanish Bank enjoys official privilege, and because the Bank of Commerce, though compelled twice to reduce its capital, owns valuable property, as, for example, the Regla warehouses and the United Railroads, which property, if the Island were prosperous, would be worth several millions more than it is to-day.

It is almost incredible that, having such extensive relations with foreign countries, the condition of banks in Cuba should be so precarious, especially as the Island feels more every year the need of banking facilities, without which no modern country can prosper. Although not as important as regular banks, savings banks are a gauge of public wealth, since their object is to gather the economies of the working classes and create capital for the promotion of industries. The only savings bank in Cuba failed in 1884, ruining in its fall not only those who had deposited their funds, but also the shareholders; and to this day no other institution has been established to take its place, and at the present moment there is not a single public institution where money can be deposited in large or small quantities earning interest!

In foreign countries the thrift of the working classes is the corner-stone of new industries. Are there in Cuba any economies or annual profits that can be capitalised? The sugar industry, the base of Cuban wealth, yields to-day no profit save in exceptional cases. The tobacco industry since 1895 has been in a critical condition, and as all the other industries depend on these two, or are of comparatively limited importance, it may be said that work and capital yield no profit in Cuba at present; since either no profits are realised, or, if they are, they leave the Island. This aspect of the present economic situation of Cuba is of immense importance and not only explains the actual situation at this moment, but shows that the hope of improvement alone lies in the prosperity of these industries.

The history of banking in Cuba is sad with financial disasters. The only bank which has survived during half a century is the Spanish Bank of the Island of Cuba. This concern was originally chartered as the Spanish Bank of Havana, and although it was a private institution, owned by shareholders, the Spanish Government maintained the right of appointing the governor, and in many other ways controlled its actions. At various times this bank has itself issued bank bills, and at other times it has been the medium through which the Spanish Government endeavoured to circulate its own paper money. The notes of the bank itself, as already stated, have never been repudiated, though during hard times, as a result of the Ten Years’ War, the bank bills of the Spanish Bank were at a small discount. Sixteen years ago the Spanish Bank of Havana was reorganised and the name changed to the Spanish Bank of the Island of Cuba. At the present time this bank has no bills in circulation; the paper currency now valued at but a few cents on the dollar, which was issued during the war by the Spanish Government through the Spanish Bank of the Island of Cuba, is not regarded by the shareowners of the bank nor by the public as the issue of the bank itself. The history of these bills is briefly as follows: In order to meet the expenses of the last war, the Spanish Government arranged to issue $20,000,000 worth of paper money. As a security and partial fund for redemption of the same, the Madrid authorities deposited in the vaults of the Spanish Bank of the Island of Cuba $6,330,000 in silver against this issue. For a while this bullion, together with the mandate of the Spanish Government that these bills must be accepted as legal tender, kept the currency floating somewhat below par. The people of Cuba, however, had been deceived so many times in relation to paper money that they were suspicious of these bills from the beginning, and when in due course of time Spain gradually and dishonestly absorbed from the bank all silver upon which the paper money had been issued, the bills depreciated until they were absolutely refused in all business transactions. This entailed considerable loss, as the street railways and cabs of the city were compelled to take them in spite of this great depreciation in value. Finally, they were repudiated on all sides. A temporary value was given this paper by accepting ten per cent. in the payment of customs dues. This raised it up to twelve to fifteen cents on the dollar. Immediately upon the military occupancy of the United States the value of these bills fell still lower, and they are to-day worth but a few cents on the dollar, and are held chiefly by Government contractors and speculators.

Realising that a decided change would take place in banking as soon as the United States took charge of affairs, the shareholders of the Bank of Spain met some months ago in Havana and reorganised the bank, making it a private concern, and changing its by-laws so that it could do business as a private institution, untrammelled by Government interference.

Among other uses to which the Government of Spain put the Spanish Bank was that of a collecting agency for practically all taxes other than those of the custom-houses. The value of receipts for direct taxation that have been delivered for collection to the Spanish Bank of the Island of Cuba, from the fiscal year 1885-86, when this institution commenced the collection, with right of seizure, to 1894-95, both inclusive, actual amounts collected, deductions, and amounts pending collection as per vouchers, and accounts rendered to the Treasury by this institution, are as follows:

The above table gives a good idea of how this arrangement worked during normal times. There were two or three features in it, however, which were bad, and which the author is glad to notice that the United States Government in renewing the agreement of the Bank of Spain for the present fiscal year, that is, the year ending June 30, 1899, has obliterated. The Spanish Government paid the five per cent. on the receipts given the bank, and not on the money collected. This resulted in great abuses, because the delinquents during the years of war were fifteen, sixteen, and forty-three per cent. respectively. The punishment of delinquents has also been considerably modified by the United States authorities.

The following table gives the receipts for direct taxation that have been delivered for collection to the Spanish Bank of the Island of Cuba from the fiscal year 1895-96 to 1896-97, both inclusive, actual amounts collected, deductions, and receipts pending collection up to December 12, 1898, as per data at hand in the Spanish Bank:

This table and the one preceding it were prepared for the author by the governor of the Spanish Bank of the Island of Cuba and differ from the table prepared by the Spanish authorities which will be found in the chapter on the revenue of Cuba. In the report furnished by the officials, the face value of the tax receipts is given in one column and the actual amount collected in another, the third column showing, under the caption of “Total Delinquent Taxes,” the amounts uncollected, without any explanation as to why they were not collected. The governor of the Spanish Bank in the two tables given above includes a fourth column, namely, deductions for which the bank was not responsible. The bank authorities claim that the amounts represented in this column were receipts which were not valid, inasmuch as they were claims in many cases upon persons dead and upon property which had been destroyed by fire. The governor of the bank thinks it an injustice to the bank to add these under the general head of delinquent taxes, without this explanation.

It is easy to enforce and collect the customs duties; but the collection of internal revenue taxes is a much more difficult matter. The United States authorities found, on coming into possession of the Island of Cuba, January 1st, that all the receipts of taxes for the present fiscal year were in the hands of the Spanish Bank of the Island of Cuba; that this institution had not only six or seven branch banks in various parts of the Island, but also in the neighbourhood of 258 sub-district or collecting agencies. The bank assumed all the responsibility of these agencies, and it was decided to place in its hands for the present fiscal year this work, for the reason that it had all the machinery and there would be no loss in revenue. An agreement was entered into between the Spanish Bank of the Island of Cuba and the United States military authorities, and an order issued from Washington to the bank to make the collection, but the arrangement engendered such opposition among the Cubans that the order was revoked and the work was placed entirely in the hands of the American authorities under General Brooke.

CHAPTER XIV

PAYMENT OF INSURGENT SOLDIERS

THE question of the payment of insurgent soldiers and of certain legitimate indebtedness incurred by the insurgent government has an important bearing upon the civil, if not the industrial reconstruction of the Island of Cuba. This matter was referred to a commission of Cuban officers, consisting of General Garcia, General José Miguel Gomez, Colonel Manuel Sanguily, Colonel José Ramon Villalon, Dr. José Gonzales Lanuza, Señor Gonzalo de Quesada, and Mr. Horatio S. Rubens, who acted as interpreter. This commission came to Washington in November for the purpose of aiding in the pacification of the people of Cuba. General Garcia unhappily was taken ill of pneumonia and died. This delayed the work somewhat and took from the commission one of its strongest members. The commission had several informal interviews with the President, the members of the Cabinet, and finally with the author, who, as Special Commissioner for the United States to Cuba, took the testimony of these gentlemen and prepared a report on the subject for the consideration of the President and Secretary of the Treasury. The substance of this report is of permanent public interest, as it was the first official step towards the settlement of a question that must be adjusted before the entire Cuban army will disband and go to work. It also has considerable bearing upon the industrial future of Cuba.

The gentlemen comprising this commission were briefly informed by the author as to the work committed to him, namely, an inquiry into the economic condition of the Island of Cuba and the recommendation of such measures for the commercial and industrial reconstruction of that country as might appear advisable after impartially consulting all interests. They were told that so far as the United States was concerned, Cuba had won her economic and industrial freedom. That the work had been performed with scrupulous regard to the interest of the people of Cuba. That the aim had been the rehabilitation of its industries and the building up of the country generally with as little friction as possible. That in accordance with instructions received from both the President and Secretary of the Treasury the tariff of Cuba had been framed so that there should be no discrimination in favour of the United States, and that the same tariff laws would be applied alike to all countries, so that Cuba was now free to purchase her supplies in the world’s markets wherever they were best and cheapest, and not compelled to buy in a dear market, as under Spanish rule. They were furthermore informed that hereafter the revenues of the country were to be used exclusively for the economical and honest government of the Island and that the largest portion would not be drained away to pay the enormous interest charged (aggregating $10,500,000) upon an indebtedness which had unrighteously been saddled upon a people already bowed down under the double yoke of war and debt. Lastly they were asked to state fully and frankly, as citizens of Cuba, their views on any subject bearing upon the reconstruction of Cuba.

In reply, these gentlemen said, in substance, that they were entirely satisfied with the course the Government of the United States had pursued in relation to these economic questions, and realised the fact that Cuba had become free, commercially and industrially. They then proceeded to discuss the important problem of how the existing transitory condition of the Island could best be changed to a permanent civil life, without friction in Cuba or trouble and annoyance throughout the United States. Their purpose, they avowed, was simply to co-operate with the United States toward the restoration of order, without which, in their opinion, there could be no reconstruction of industries and no return of prosperity. Their purpose was, they assured the author, to advise with the people of the United States, to the end that everything might be harmonious and that the people of Cuba might get to work as soon as possible.

Speaking for all the gentlemen above named, Colonel José R. Villalon said:

The above gives a fair summary of the general tenor of the testimony taken, and it is believed fairly represents the views of these gentlemen. Testimony was also taken in relation to the payment of certain legitimate debts which, as these gentlemen felt, the good faith of the people of Cuba had been pledged to pay. On being asked the probable amount of this indebtedness, they said it was not in excess of $2,250,000 or $2,500,000. The first and most important matter and the one which, they insist, will have much to do with the pacification of the Island, is the payment of some sort of compensation to the impoverished Cuban soldiers. These gentlemen were asked if they had in their possession any estimate as to the number of soldiers, the length of service, and the amount of money necessary for the purpose they had in mind. An itemised account, they were told, would make a useful supplement to the interesting and instructive testimony given.

In compliance with this request, these gentlemen prepared and presented certain tables, with additional verbal testimony. This testimony was subsequently reduced to writing. It purports to be a statement showing the number of officers and privates of the Cuban army and their time of service. On behalf of Cuba, these gentlemen informed the author that had Cuba been recognised as an independent nation, their first duty would have been to pay all legal obligations contracted during the struggle for independence. They request that the United States, acting as trustee for Cuba, will give this subject a careful hearing and enable the people of Cuba to disband the army and complete the pacification of the Island. They recognise the fact that $3,000,000 has been appropriated for a purpose similar to this, but regard it as inadequate. The figures submitted by these gentlemen, as representing the pay which the insurgent army, in their opinion, has earned, are somewhat startling. The summary is as follows:

The pay promised the Cuban army is very much higher (except in the grade of generals) than the amounts actually paid the officers and men in the United States army, as will be seen from the following comparison of the salaries of the two armies:

It is not assumed by the gentlemen who prepared the above estimates that claims of such magnitude could be seriously considered by an independent Republic. The resources of the Island at present are entirely inadequate to shoulder such a debt. Upon the reduced basis of the salaries paid the United States soldiers, the reduction would be about one half, or less than $30,000,000, an equally impossible sum. On the other hand, that some aid should be rendered by the United States to enable these soldiers to disband and go to work would seem both feasible and just. It could easily be met by the revenue of the Island, and would have a decided effect in securing permanent peace and the early establishment of a stable government in Cuba. If done now under the guidance of the United States it would prevent excessive payment to the troops hereafter. In the same manner the liquidation of the small amount of outstanding obligation—not exceeding $2,500,000—might settle the debt question for all time to come. Especially if all other advances for these purposes were prohibited until such debt was adjusted to the satisfaction of the United States. In case the ultimate solution of the Cuban question should be, as it is quite within the range of probability, annexation, the independent government will not previously have had the opportunity of incurring improvident indebtedness, which ultimately may have to be assumed by the United States. In short, whatever may be done in this matter, or however it may be done, the United States should control and safeguard the finances of the Island for a considerable period. It has been very truly stated that should an independent government be established and recognised, the United States will no longer be able to control the financial legislation of the Island. It can, however, by the plan proposed, and very properly, not only save money for Cuba while under its military possession or control, but also prevent the making of unnecessary improvident or other loans by such independent government, except with the consent, or approval in advance, of the United States. This can be readily done, if, when making an advance for the benefit of Cuba, the right to apply the customs receipts and other revenues of the Island to the repayment of the principal and interest of such advance be reserved to the United States. In this way all reckless expenditure may be prevented and all speculative or independent bond issues be avoided and at the same time quick assistance be rendered those whose position at present is deplorable in the extreme.

CHAPTER XV

REVENUE—CUSTOMS TARIFF

THE revenues and expenditures of the Island of Cuba for the fiscal year 1898-99, according to the reports obtained by the author from the Secretary of the Treasury, Marquis Rafael Montoro, may be thus summarised:

While the revenues are all derived from the various species of taxation exacted from the people of Cuba, the expenditures are divided into two important classes: those under the head of “Sovereignty Expenses,” or expenses of the General Government, which, according to this estimate, aggregate $22,500,808.59, and those which, under the head of “Local Expenses” aggregating $3,873,237.09, constitute the expenditures for the immediate necessities of the Island. In order to obtain a clear view of the possibilities of revenue and the probable future expenses of the Island of Cuba, these receipts and expenditures should be further examined.

Taxes in Cuba, as will be seen from the above exhibit, are collected under six general classifications, namely: (1) taxes and imposts, including excise and liquor taxes, and taxes on railway freight and passengers; (2) receipts from custom-houses, which include taxes on imports and exports, loading and unloading merchandise, fines and passports; (3) internal revenue, including stamped paper,[14] postage stamps, warrants for payment issued by the State, diplomas and titles, stamps on letters of exchange or deeds of transfer, on insurance policies, on matches, and on almost every other conceivable sort of deed and document; (4) lotteries, are put down in the above table as yielding $1,900,500; (5) revenue from State property, including rents and sale of lands and rent from docks; (6) revenue from miscellaneous sources, some of which seem somewhat mythical. These comprise the general sources of revenue which appear in this report, and from which the Secretary of the Treasury, Marquis Montoro, informed the author he hoped to secure for the fiscal year 1898-99 the following sums:

As to how much of this has been collected or how much can be collected, it is impossible to say with any degree of certainty. Spanish official reports are not very reliable documents at the best, and during the last three years of internal dissensions, frequent changes in officials, and war, they appear to be at their worst. The only possible light on the subject which the author was able to obtain was a statement of the actual taxes as levied between 1887 and 1897, inclusive, and the actual amounts collected at the custom-houses and by the Spanish Bank of the Island of Cuba, for under Spanish administration the latter institution collected all taxes other than customs.

According to these figures, the custom-house receipts of Cuba fell from $14,708,509.10 in 1895 to $9,648,369.94 in 1897-98. While the value of the tax receipts handed to the Spanish Bank for collection for the fiscal year 1896-97 exceeded $5,000,000, the actual money collected was only $3,266,583.37, while for the next fiscal year, 1897-98, out of receipts aggregating in the neighbourhood of $4,500,000, only $2,377,742.21 was realised. The exhibits show that rural real estate, which, under prosperous conditions, should yield in taxes from $880,000 to $1,000,000, is incapable of paying anything. Out of receipts aggregating in 1897-98 over $800,000, the Spanish Bank only collected $89,661.98 from these properties. Nor will it be possible in the reconstruction of the Island to secure revenue from these sources, for the burned and destroyed estates are yielding nothing to their owners. City property which, in times of prosperity, should yield upward of $2,000,000, or even $3,000,000, in 1897-98 only yielded $1,140,230.12.

This tax, however, and the receipts from customs will be the first to recover, as the immediate effects of permanent peace and honest government will be felt in the cities and towns and seaports. Lotteries will become a doubtful, if not impossible source of revenue. The collections from internal revenue may keep up to the estimate, though the income from State property and miscellaneous revenues seems upon examination a rather doubtful resource for the new government to rely upon. Judged from the actual revenue collected in 1897-98, had present conditions prevailed, it is extremely doubtful if the real revenue collected for 1898-99 would have reached more than half the rosy estimates put forth by the Marquis Montoro. The fact is apparent to those who know existing conditions in Cuba that the people of the Island are just now in such an impoverished condition that the agricultural interests are simply incapable of paying taxes.

The cities will soon be all right again, and under honest municipal government, taxes on urban property will be paid. The influx of commodities of all sorts, to make up for losses and destruction by war and low stocks due to the blockade, will increase the custom-house receipts. The reduction of duties on machinery and railway supplies may increase the importations of these articles, and thus the lower rates of duty will yield a revenue which the present high rates, by making importations impossible, fail to do. By putting an end to smuggling, and by honestly administering the custom-houses, the United States Government may increase the revenue, but the proposed reduction of duties of the amended tariff in a measure offsets this. Unless, therefore, some new source of revenue is found practicable (and the Spanish seem to have exhausted all known means of raising revenue), reliance for the future will have to be on five of the six revenue sources above enumerated. If for the first year or two they should yield in all $15,000,000, it will probably be all the revenue that may safely be estimated. Much will naturally depend upon the foreign imports. The cable despatches from Havana, as this volume goes to press, indicate that the customs revenue will be fully up to the author’s estimates.

Aside from special imports, such as specie, leaf tobacco, etc., the value of the imports of merchandise proper into Cuba the last normal year (1895) was upward of $60,000,000. An average tariff rate of twenty-five per cent. on this valuation of imported merchandise would itself yield $15,000,000. As a matter of fact, the duties collected in 1895 were $14,587,920.57, on a total importation of merchandise other than specie of $61,443,334.65, or about an average of twenty-five per cent. To be sure, the nominal tariff rates were much higher in 1895 than they will be in 1899, but there is a possibility of making up for the loss by reason of lower duties by abolishing smuggling and honestly administering the custom-houses. It is impossible, however, to estimate on this, because, to do so with any degree of success, it would be necessary to reduce to figures the losses of revenue by smuggling, undervaluation, and misclassification. This is an impossibility.

The tariff which the Spanish Government enacted and put in force in the Island of Cuba in September, 1897, and which, with modifications in the shape of war taxes, was in force in ports of Cuba in possession of the Spanish Government until the change of government, January 1, 1899, is based upon the preceding tariffs. Both this tariff and its predecessors seem to lack rational basis, so far as Cuba is concerned, the aim apparently being to secure, by the means of exorbitant customs duties revenue for the Spanish exchequer and profits for Spanish subjects, without the slightest regard for the welfare of the people of Cuba. While the duties seem to have been levied with this idea, the classifications and methods of administration are so complicated and obscure that they easily lend themselves to every known species of revenue fraud, from false classifications and undervaluations to smuggling of the most barefaced character. In fact, the author, after a careful inquiry into the Cuban tariff and an examination of several hundred witnesses in Havana and other cities of Cuba, reached the conclusion that almost every form of revenue iniquity has been perpetrated upon the people of this Island by the ruling powers.

Not only was the tariff constructed in a way that compelled the Cuban producer to purchase the articles he needed and could not himself manufacture, of Spain, instead of in the cheaper markets, but also it levied almost prohibitive duties on such articles as Spain could not under any circumstances send to Cuba. For example, the Spanish exporter was able, by a discriminating duty of more than one hundred per cent. against other countries, to import from Minnesota to Barcelona American flour and reship it to Cuba at a price just below the price of the American article shipped direct to Cuba, upon which a duty nearly three times as great as that exacted from Spain had to be paid. On the other hand, Spain took little interest in such articles as machinery and railway supplies, including steel rails and locomotives, because she neither produced them nor could she purchase elsewhere and reship as Spanish production.

The amended tariff for the Island, which went into force January 1, 1899, was framed on the general plan of the “open door” for all nations; that is, the merchandise of all nations will be admitted on an equal footing, or at the same rate of duty. There is but one uniform rate of duty, and that, as far as possible, a revenue, not a protective rate. In a few cases, a protective rate has been allowed, for the purpose of encouraging Cuban home industry, but as over half of all the imports into Cuba are food products, not produced to advantage in the Island, the rates of duty rarely exceed twenty-five per cent. ad valorem. In this connection, it will be interesting to note the value of the merchandise imported, divided by schedules or classes (page 217).

It will be seen from the following exhibit that Schedule 12, “Alimentary Substances,” covering all food products, is the most important of all the schedules, representing more than half the total imports into Cuba during 1895, and aggregating over $31,000,000. Next in importance to this is Schedule 4, “Cotton and Manufactures thereof,” aggregating nearly $6,000,000, or ten per cent. of the total imports; Schedule 1, “Ores, etc.,” aggregating in the neighbourhood of $4,750,000, ranking third, and so on through the list.

In conjunction with the above table, the following recapitulation of values of exports and reshipments into Cuba during 1895-96 is given:

The grand total of the trade of the Cuban ports for the last normal year was nearly $175,000,000. Perhaps with allowance for smuggling and undervaluations, this total may have reached $200,000,000; possibly it may have exceeded those figures. However this may be, Cuba, under a satisfactory government and normal conditions, may be easily said to represent from $200,000,000 to $250,000,000 in the world’s commerce. This fact gives some idea of the vast trade possibilities of Cuba after a complete rehabilitation and industrial reconstruction of the Island.

In the following table the author has carefully compiled from the several available sources of information the average receipts from 1886 to 1897, inclusive, of the several custom-houses of Cuba:

During the twelve years, it should be stated the largest amount of revenue was collected in 1886, when it was $15,330,778.96, and the smallest amount last year, namely, $9,648,369.94. The receipts show the working of the Reciprocity Treaty with the United States, which, while it greatly added to the prosperity of the Island, decreased the revenues which Spain sought to secure for herself.

From the above table it will be seen that the total amount of revenue collected during these twelve years averaged $12,645,894.08 per year; that the custom-house of Havana collected 69.9 per cent, and Cienfuegos—which is an important city, and, in the opinion of the author, the city which, under the new conditions, will show the most rapid development—9 per cent., ranking second. In the custom-house district of Santiago, the average revenue receipts per year have been 5.1 per cent. The inclusion in this district of Guantanamo, Gibara, Manzanillo, and Baracoa will probably increase the collections for the province to nearly ten per cent. of the total revenue of the Island.

The following is a similar table to that given above, but gives at a glance the customs receipts from imports and exports at each port:

During the war, as already explained, the customs receipts have naturally declined, therefore the year preceding that has been selected as indicating the average revenue from custom-houses, when not disturbed by commercial treaty, such as that made in connection with the McKinley Tariff law of the United States, nor the other disturbances, such as civil war and subsequently the blockade of Cuban ports by the United States navy. The value of the following table is in the fact that it shows customs receipts from the several sources other than those which may be considered strictly import duties.

Having treated as fully as possible on the revenue of Cuba in the past from customs and made such forecasts as to the probable revenue as would seem warranted by the official figures, the next chapter will be devoted to a summary of the schedules of the amended tariff now in force, which will probably remain during United States occupancy the customs revenue law of the Island.

PALM-TREE BRIDGE.

CHAPTER XVI

THE AMENDED CUBAN TARIFF—OFFICIAL

AFTER a careful consideration of the facts given in the foregoing chapter, Assistant-Secretary of the Treasury, William B. Howell, and the author recommended the adoption of the following amended tariff, the order for the establishment of which President McKinley signed on the 13th of December, 1898; and the tariff was promulgated and took effect in all Cuban ports in the possession of the United States January 1, 1899. The new tariff, at the time this volume goes to press, is reported by the several custom-houses of the Island as working smoothly, and yielding an amount of revenue equivalent to the estimates given in the chapters relating to the revenue of the Island.

CUSTOMS TARIFF FOR PORTS IN CUBA
FREE LIST

AVENUE OF PALM TREES, PALATINO.