C. H. Forbes-Lindsay

“ The following quotation from the Unión Española, of Habana, affords a typical illustration:
“Political anarchy, by which the country is at present confronted, is daily growing greater. It would seem as though all the political elements had made an agreement to perturb, or rather to dissolve, the nation, for the tendency on all sides is to dissolution. It is time the true patriots sounded the alarm, and that politicians pause in their work of destruction, curbing bits, that the Cuban people may continue the ministering of its destinies and in the possession of self-government. ”

“ She is a willing slave to her husband and children, often with bad effect upon him and them. A little more independence, a little less self-sacrifice, on her part, would be better for all parties concerned. But every Cuban girl is taught that her sole mission in life is to fulfill her duty as wife and mother to the best of her ability. She has been schooled to consider herself the absolute property of her husband and to render him unquestioned obedience. ”

“ It is difficult to hold the publicity man down to a consistently honest story. He must be an enthusiast to serve his employers well and, with perhaps the best intentions in the world, he shuts his eyes to the disadvantages which pertain to farming in Cuba as well as to farming in any part of the world, and expends his eloquence solely on the roseate aspects of the situation. The literature of the best of the land companies is deceptive inasmuch as it draws a picture of the results attainable under the most favorable conditions, and not those which the average settler will experience. ”

“ On the guajiro falls most heavily the burden of supporting the most expensive and extravagant government in the world. This because that government dare not bear too hardly with taxation upon the great corporations and wealthy property owners. An important part of the game of finesse which is necessary to the life of any administration in Cuba consists in keeping in the good graces of the money interests, for it is in the power of these to stop the fat grazing in the political pastures by forcing American reoccupation, and even perhaps annexation. ”

“ Strangely enough, in view of the number of books that have been written about Cuba, there is no adequate history of the Island in the English language—none that may be justly deemed comprehensive and trustworthy. Many important events in the life of the country have never been properly recorded and much that is of great interest still reposes undisturbed in scattered documents. A candid account could hardly be expected of a Spaniard or a Cuban, but it might be supposed that an American would treat the subject with impartial fairness. ”

“ For a full century he has conspired to throw off the galling yoke of Spain, and he would never have done it but for the intervention of the United States.
As a young man he is apt to be foppish, libidinous and indolent, in striking contrast to the sturdy little Spanish apprentice, of Habana. Cuban children are too often spoilt by fond and over indulgent parents. The effect upon the girls is modified by the restricted home life to which they are subjected. In the boys it shows in selfwilfulness, lack of principle and utter absence of respect for things that the Anglo Saxon is apt to reverence. ”

“ A contracting foreman: “In the mechanic trades men are constantly presenting themselves as applicants for any positions to be had, assuring us with the greatest apparent candor that they unite all the qualifications of expert masons, carpenters, painters, plumbers, and gas-fitters. We don’t employ such men any more. A modest range of acquirements is one of the best credentials a mechanic can offer us.”
A government engineer: “The labor cost of all kinds of construction is half as much again as in the United States. ”

“ Among those best acquainted with Cuba and the Cubans, opinion differs widely as to the negroes. There are those who go so far as to believe that they will be a retarding factor in the development of the country, while others consider them the most promising element of the laboring population. Both these views are extreme, and, as a matter of fact, any prediction as to the future of the Cuban negro must include a great degree of pure surmise. What he has been is not a safe basis for inference of what he will be under entirely different conditions. ”

“ If the economic development of Cuba holds little promise for the people of the country, they have even less to look for in the political prospect. The period of self-government following freedom from the Spanish yoke has been marked by utter failure to meet the demands and the responsibilities of the situation. The Palma administration, ushered in with the highest hopes and the utmost encouragement, was tainted with corruption and cut short by revolution. ”

“ The country that produces one great staple{122} by the agency of slave labor lays itself under a curse that will be felt long after the conditions are changed. For well-nigh a century sugar-cane has been the one chief source of Cuba’s wealth and it has cast a blight upon everything else. The sugar industry has exercised a detrimental influence upon the material welfare, morals, and health, and the independence of the people in general. But for it, blacks would never have been introduced into the Island in numbers sufficient to affect seriously the general population. ”

“ As a rule, the Cuban has not a passion for acquisition for its own sake. The question{140} of money is an ever present and insistent one with the middle and working classes in Cuba as elsewhere; but when current demands are met, and they are not excessive, the Cuban is usually satisfied. He is not ambitious to accumulate. Men in political life, with uncertain tenure of office, expensive ambitions, and the worst kind of precedents to influence them, are said not to be trustworthy, but Cuba should not be judged by its politicians. ”

“ Obviously such a system of taxation worked the utmost discouragement to the acquisition of property and the pursuit of industries. Had the design of the Peninsular Government been to ruin the Island and to suppress all development, no more effective measures for the purpose could have been devised. None but a country superlatively rich in natural resources could have carried such a burden. Like the other American colonies of Spain, Cuba received contributions, or situados, from Mexico. ”

“ What is the prospect of the Cubans working out an orderly and efficient government unaided? Up to the present, notwithstanding ample opportunity, there is not even the nucleus of a stable and rational political party in the country. The best men stand aloof, or find themselves hopelessly excluded from participation in public affairs. ”

“ Considering only the industrial classes, there is no reason to reproach Cuba with a particularly low standard of commercial and personal integrity. One will not find there conditions equalling those in countries where greater intelligence and social discipline have long prevailed, and where reasonably good government has been habitual; but the moral standards of the people in the respects mentioned are not such as to present a serious bar to the industrial development of the country. ”

“ The Spanish business man is as keen and shrewd a trader as you may find anywhere, and, moreover, he is as precise in discharging his obligations as a Chinaman. He possesses tremendous energy and pertinacity of purpose. Americans cherish a threadbare and somewhat senseless joke which hinges on the word mañana. It is entirely misapplied when aimed{112} at the Spaniard in Cuba. If he leaves anything of importance until to-morrow it is because to-day is too full of performance to admit of addition. He is the first to rise and the last to close his shutters in the community. ”

“ There is no question about the assured success of the man who may undertake farming in Cuba with the proper equipment. He must have ample capital,—that is to say, enough{243} for all calculable requirements and a little over. He must defer serious work until he has made a thorough study of the conditions. He should then devote his efforts to the production of the surest crops, those entailing the least hazard in cultivation, and for which there is a permanent market with a steady demand. If, furthermore, he uses intelligent methods in the cultivation of his land, he can not fail of success. ”

“ Therefore, in forming a judgment about the working people in Cuba, one has to allow for this national equation. The climate of the Island does not encourage long-continued physical labor apart from all question of race. The American, the Spaniard, the native, and the negro are all subjected to this influence. But a moderate amount of any kind of work can be done by any of these under the right conditions. The immigrant from the North brings with him a fund of physical stamina superior to that of the native, which runs for life and is not bequeathed to his successors born on the Island. ”

“ With new capital and skill the average cost of production in Cuba can be reduced, and with either free sugars or a uniform rate of duty in the United States, assessed upon all sugar (a countervailing duty to offset foreign bounties being always maintained) , she can hold her own and recover her prestige as a sugar-producing country, but the margin of profit in sugar manufacture is so small, and the world’s capacity for production so great, that Cuba{182} cannot recover her prosperity in the face of any advantage to be given to sugars from other countries entering the United States. ”

“ A country may be greatly prosperous and the mass of its people be miserable in the extreme. Mexico is an example in point. Cuba is another.
Throughout the hardships and hazards of the war of independence the insurrectos were supported by the belief that American enlistment in their cause, upon which they counted for success, would be followed by an era of permanent prosperity for the masses. The man who bore the brunt of the fighting, buoyed by these high hopes, realizes now that he was exploited{150} by a handful of his own countrymen and deserted by his expected saviour. ”

“ By dint of a close and constant study of the situation he can usually find a valid excuse for indulging in the relaxations of leisure whenever it is not absolutely necessary for him to labor for his support.
The Cuban is therefore neither thrifty nor frugal. As a workman he responds only to the incentive of necessity. The Spanish laborer in Cuba usually works with the aim of accumulating a competency; not so the Cuban. The one produces and consumes little; the other produces only what he may consume. The Spanish laborer has few and simple ideals, but they are fixed and permanent ”

“ All people possessing great love of approbation and an excessive desire to please are apt to be more or less insincere in social intercourse. Extend the ethics of an afternoon tea to all statements of fact in business relations, and one has an atmosphere of reliability or the reverse about equivalent to that in Cuba. Men tell you things they think you will like to hear. ”

“ The ancestors of the guajiro came mainly from Catalonia and Andalusia, and were a good, hardy stock. Time was when he occasionally owned slaves and a fair extent of land, but nowadays he is more often than not a squatter in a little corner of that no-man’s-land which seems to be so extensive in the central and eastern portions of the Island. In comparatively few instances he has title to a few acres, lives in a passably comfortable cabana, possesses a yoke of oxen, a good horse, half a dozen pigs, and plenty of poultry. ”

“ Every sugar planter claims to have an asphalt property on his estate, and every other man knows where there is one in which is a fortune for his friend. Many of these deposits have been worked, more or less extensively, in past years. Oil has been found in Cuba which has been successfully refined in the island and used as a luminant, also as a fuel; asphalt is mined there which is being employed as an enricher in the manufacture of gas, and is also doing duty as a material for roofing and street paving ”

“ The Island is exploited for the benefit of everyone but the natives.
Additional capital is constantly coming in. New enterprises are continually being floated. In a way these are beneficial to the community at large, but, with the exception of the official class, they work little good to the natives. In fact, they decrease the Cuban’s chances of ever doing anything for himself. Capital and corporations create wealth, but precious little of it finds its way into the pockets of the guajiro, or the negro. ”

“ One of the peculiarities of the tobacco plant is that a very slight change in the conditions under which it is grown will effect a considerable change in the character of the leaf produced. Plants raised in soils composed of precisely the same chemical ingredients will yield quite different tobacco when those ingredients happen to be present in varying proportions.{186} In Cuba, as elsewhere, it is no uncommon thing to find tobacco of the highest grade upon a piece of land within a stone’s throw of another field where only the poorest quality of leaf can be produced. ”