Cuba saw its most illustrious sons, such as Heredia and Saco, wander in exile throughout the free American Continent. Cuba saw as many of the Cubans as dared to love liberty and declare it by act or word die on the scaffold, such as Joaquin de Aguero and Placido. Cuba saw the product of its people's labor confiscated by iniquitous fiscal laws imposed by its masters from afar. Cuba saw the administration of justice in the hands of foreign magistrates, who acted at the will or the whim of its rulers. Cuba suffered all the outrages that can humiliate a conquered people, in the name and by the work of a Government that sarcastically calls itself paternal. Is it to be wondered, then, that an uninterrupted era of conspiracies and uprisings should have been inaugurated? Cuba in its despair took up arms in 1850 and 1851, conspired again in 1855, waged war in 1868, in 1879, in 1885, and is fighting now since the 24th of February of the present year.

But at the same time Cuba has never ceased to ask for justice and redress. Its people, before shouldering the rifle, pleaded for their rights. Before the pronunciamento of Aguero and the invasions of Lopez, Saco, in exile, exposed the dangers of Cuba to the Spanish statesmen, and pointed to the remedy. Other farsighted men seconded him in the colony. They denounced the cancer of slavery, the horrors of the traffic in slaves, the corruption of the officeholders, the abuses of the Government, the discontent of the people with their forced state of political tutelage. No attention was given to them, and this brought on the first armed conflicts.

Before the formidable insurrection of 1868, which lasted ten years, the reform party, which included the most enlightened, wealthy, and influential Cubans, exhausted all the resources within their reach to induce Spain to initiate a healthy change in her Cuban policy. The party started the publication of periodicals in Madrid and in the island, addressed petitions, maintained a great agitation throughout the country, and having succeeded in leading the Spanish Government to make an inquiry into the economical, political, and social condition of Cuba, they presented a complete plan of government which satisfied public requirements as well as the aspirations of the people. The Spanish Government disdainfully cast aside the proposition as useless, increased taxation, and proceeded to its exaction with extreme severity.

It was then that the ten-year war broke out. Cuba, almost a pigmy compared with Spain, fought like a giant. Blood ran in torrents. Public wealth disappeared in a bottomless abyss. Spain lost 200,000 men. Whole districts of Cuba were left almost entirely without their male population. Seven hundred millions were spent to feed that conflagration-a conflagration that tested Cuban heroism, but which could not touch the hardened heart of Spain. The latter could not subdue the bleeding colony, which had no longer strength to prolong the struggle with any prospect of success. Spain proposed a compact which was a snare and a deceit. She granted to Cuba the liberties of Puerto Rico, which enjoyed none.

On this deceitful ground was laid the new situation, throughout which has run a current of falsehood and hypocrisy. Spain, whose mind had not changed, hastened to change the name of things. The capitan-general was called governorgeneral. The royal decrees took the name of authorizations. The commercial monopoly of Spain was named coasting trade. The right of banishment was transformed into the law of vagrancy. The brutal attacks of defenseless citizens were called "componte." The abolition of constitutional guarantees became the law of public order. Taxation without the consent or knowledge of the Cuban people was changed into the law of estimates (budget) voted by the representatives of Spain; that is, of European Spain.

The painful lesson of the ten-year war had been entirely lost on Spain. Instead of inaugurating a redeeming policy that would heal the recent wounds, allay public anxiety, and quench the thirst for justice felt by the people, who were desirous to enjoy their natural rights, the metropolis, while lavish in promises of reform, persisted in carrying on unchanged its old and crafty system, the groundwork of which continues to be the same, namely: To exclude every native Cuban from every office that could give him any effective influence and intervention in public affairs; the ungovernable exploitation of the colonists' labor for the benefit of Spanish commerce and Spanish bureaucracy, both civil and military. To carry out the latter purpose it was necessary to maintain the former at any cost.

I.

In order to render the native Cuban powerless in his own country, Spain, legislating for Cuba without restriction as it does, had only to give him an electoral law so artfully framed as to accomplish two objects: First, to reduce the number of voters; second, to give always a majority to the Spaniards; that is, to the European colonists, notwithstanding that the latter represent only 9.3 per cent of the total popu lation of Cuba. To this effect it made the electoral right dependent on the payment of a very high poll tax, which proved the more burdensome as the war had ruined the S. Doc. 231, pt 7—8

larger number of Cuban proprietors. In this way it succeeded in restricting the right of suffrage to only 53,000 inhabitants in an island which has a population of 1,600,000; that is to say, to the derisive proportion of 3 per cent of the total number of inhabitants.

In order to give a decided preponderance to the Spanish European element, the electoral law has ignored the practice generally observed in those countries where the right to vote depends on the paymeut of a poll tax, and has afforded all the facilities to acquire the electoral privilege to industry, commerce, and public officials, to the detriment of the territorial property (the ownership of real estate). To accomplish this, while the rate of the territorial tax is reduced to 2 per cent, an indispensable measure, in view of the ruin ous condition of the landowners, the exorbitant contribution of $25 is required from those who would be electors as freeholders. The law has, moreover, thrown the doors wide open for the perpetration of fraud by providing that the simple declaration of the head of a commercial house is sufficient to consider all its employees as partners, having, therefore, the right to vote. This has given us firms with thirty or more partners. By this simple scheme almost all the Spaniards residing in Cuba are turned into electors, despite the explicit provisions of the law. Thus it comes to pass that the municipal district of Guines, with a population of 13,000 inhabitants, only 500 of which are Spaniards and Canary Islanders, shows on its electoral list the names of 32 native Cubans and of 400 Spaniards-only 0.25 per cent of the Cuban to 80 per cent of the Spanish population.

But, as if this were not enough, a so-called permanent commission of provincial deputations decides every controversy that may arise as to who is to be included in or excluded from the list of electors, and the members of this commission are appointed by the Governor-General. It is unnecessary to say that its majority has always been devoted to the Government. In case any elector considers himself wronged by the decision of the permanent commission he can appeal to the "audiencia" (higher court) of the district, but the "audiencias" are almost entirely made up of European magistrates; they are subject to the authority of the Governor-General, being mere political tools in his hands. As a conclusive instance of the manner in which those tribunals do justice to the claims of the Cuban electors, it will be sufficient to cite a case which occurred in Santa Clara in 1892, where 1,000 fully qualified liberal electors were excluded at one time, for the simple omission to state their names at the end of the act presented by the elector who headed the claim. In more than one case has the same “audiencia" applied two different criterions to identical cases. The "audiencia" of Havana, in 1887, ignoring the explicit provisions of the law, excused the employees from the condition of residence, a condition that the same tribunal exacted before. The same "audiencia" in 1885 declared that the contributions to the State and to the municipality were accumulative, and in 1887 decided the opposite. This inconsistency had for its object to expunge from the lists hundreds of Cuban electors. In this way the Spanish Government and tribunals have endeavored to teach respect for the law and for the practice of wholesome electoral customs to the Cuban colonists.

The

It will be easily understood now why on some occasions the Cuban representation in the Spanish Parliament has been made up of only three deputies, and in the most favorable epochs the number of Cuban representatives has not exceeded six. Three deputies in a body of four hundred and thirty members! genuine representation of Cuba has not reached sometimes 0.96 per cent of the total number of members of the Spanish congress. The great majority of the Cuban depntation has always consisted of Spanish peninsulars. In this manner the ministers of "ultramar" (ministers of the colonies), whenever they have thought necessary to give an honest or decent appearance to their legislative acts by an alleged majority of Cuban votes, could always command the latter-that is, the peninsulars.

As regards the representation in the senate, the operation has been more simple still. The qualifications required to be a senator have proved to be an almost absolute prohibition to the Cubans. In fact, to take a seat in the higher house it is necessary to have been president of that body or of congress, or a minister of the crown, or a bishop, or a grandee of Spain, a lieutenant-general, a vice-admiral, ambassador, minister plenipotentiary, counselor of state, judge, or attorney-general of the supreme court, of the court of accounts, etc. No Cuban has ever filled any of the above positions, and scarcely two or three are grandees. The only natives of Cuba who can be senators are those who have been deputies in three different Congresses, or who are professors and have held for four years a university chair, provided that they have an income of $1,500; or those who have a title of nobility, or have been deputies, provincial deputies, or mayors in towns of over 20,000 inhabitants, if they have in addition an income of $4,000, or pay a direct contribution of $800 to the treasury. This will increase in one or two dozen the number of Cubans qualified to be senators.

In this manner has legislative work, so far as Cuba is concerned, turned out to be a farce. The various Governments have legislated for the island as they pleased. The

representatives of the peninsular provinces did not even take the trouble of attending the sessions of the Cortes when Cuban affairs were to be dealt with; and there was an instance when the estimates (budget) for the Great Antille were discussed in the presence of less than thirty deputies, and a single one of the ministers, the minister of "ultramar" (session of April 3, 1880).

Through the contrivance of the law, as well as through the irregularities committed and consented in its application, have the Cubans been deprived also of representation in the local corporations to which they were entitled, and in many cases they have been entirely excluded from them. When, despite the legalized obstacles and the partiality of those in power, they have obtained some temporary majority, the Government has always endeavored and succeeded in making their triumph nul and void. Only once did the home-rule party obtain a majority in the provincial deputation of Havana, and then the Governor-General appointed from among the Spaniards a majority of the members of the permanent commission. Until that time this commission had been of the same political complexion as the majority of the deputation. By such proceedings have the Cubans been gradually expelled, even from the municipal bodies. Suffice it to say that the law provides that the derramas (assessments) be excluded from the computation of the tributary quotas, notwithstanding that they constitute the heaviest burden upon the municipal taxpayer. And the majorities, consisting of Spaniards, take good care to make this burden fall with heavier weight upon the Cuban proprietor. Thus the latter has to bear a heavier taxation with less representation.

This is the reason why the scandalous case has occurred lately of not a single Cuban having a seat in the "Ayuntamiento" (board of aldermen) of Havana. In 1891 the Spaniards predominated in thirty-one out of thirty-seven "Ayuntamientos" in the province of Havana. In that of Güines, with a population of 12,500 Cuban inhabitants, not a single one of the latter was found among its councilors. In the same epoch there were only three Cuban deputies in the provincial deputation of Havana; two in that of Matanzas, and three in that of Santa Clara. And these are the most populous regions in the Island of Cuba.

As, on the other hand, the government of the metropolis appoints the officials of the colony, all the lucrative, influential, and representative offices are secured to the Spaniards from Europe. The Governor-General, the regional and provincial governors, the "intendentes," comptrollers, auditors, treasurers, chiefs of communica tions, chiefs of the custom-houses, chiefs of administration, presidents and vicepresidents of the Spanish bank, secretaries of the Government, presiding judges of the "audiencia," presidents of tribunal, magistrates, attorneys-general, archbishops, bishops, canons, pastors of rich parishes-all, with very rare exceptions, are Spaniards from Spain. The Cubans are found only as minor clerks in the Government offices, doing all the work and receiving the smallest salaries.

From 1878 to this date there have been twenty governors in the province of Matanzas. Eighteen were Spaniards and two Cubans. But one of these, Brigadier-General Acosta, was an army officer in the service of Spain, who had fought against his countrymen; and the other, Señor Gonzàlez Muñoz, is a bureaucrat. During the same period there has been only one native Cuban acting as governor in the province of Havana, Señor Rodriguez Batista, who spent all his life in Spain, where he made his administrative career. In the other provinces there has never, probably, been a single governor born in the country.

In 1887 there was created a council, or board of ultramar, under the minister of the colonies. Not a single Cuban has ever been found among its members. On the other hand, such men as Generals Armiñan and Pando have held positions in it.

The predominance of the Government goes further still. It weighs with all its might upon the local corporations. There are deputations in the provinces, and not only are their powers restricted and their resources scanty, but the Governor-General appoints their presidents and all the members of the permanent commissions. There are "ayuntamientos" elected in accordance with the reactionary law of 1877, restricted and curtailed as applied to Cuba by Señor Canovas. But the Governor-General appoints the mayors, who may not belong to the corporation, and the governor of the province appoints the secretaries. The Government reserves, moreover, the right to remove the mayors, of replacing them, and of suspending the councillors and the "ayuntamientos," partly or in a body. It has frequently made use of this right for electoral purposes, to the detriment always of the Cubans.

As may be seen, the crafty policy of Spain has closed every avenue through which redress might be obtained. All the powers are centered in the Government of Madrid and its delegates in the colony; and in order to give her despotism a slight varnish of a representative régime she has contrived with her laws to secure complaisant majorities in the pseudoelective bodies. To accomplish this purpose she has relied upon the European immigrants, who have always supported the Government of the metropolis in exchange for lasting privileges. The existence of a Spanish party, as that of an English party at one time in Canada, has been the foundation of

Spanish rule in Cuba. Thus, through the instrumentality of the laws and the Government, a régime of castes has been enthroned there, with its outcome of monopolies, corruption, immorality, and hatred. The political contest there, far from being the fruitful clash of opposite ideas, or the opposition of men representing different tendencies, but all seeking a social improvement, has been only a struggle between hostile factions-the conflict between infuriated foes which precedes an open war. The Spanish resident has always seen a threat in the most timid protest of the Cubanan attack upon the privileged position on which his fortune, his influence, and his power are grounded, and he is always willing to stifle it with insult and persecution.

II.

What use the Spanish Government has made of this power is apparent in the threefold spoliation to which it has submitted the Island of Cuba. Spain has not, in fact, a colonial policy. In the distant lands she has subdued by force Spain has sought nothing but immediate riches, and these it has wrung by might from the compulsory labor of the natives. For this reason Spain to-day in Cuba is only a parasite. Spain exploits the Island of Cuba through its fiscal régime, through its commercial régime, and through its bureaucratic régime. These are the three forms of official spoliation, but they are not the only forms of spoliation.

When the war of 1878 came to an end two-thirds of the island were completely ruined. The other third, the population of which had remained peaceful, was abundantly productive; but it had to face the great economical change involved in the impending abolition of slavery. Slavery had received its deathblow at the hands of the insurrection, and Cuban insurrectionists succeeded at the close of the war in securing its eventual abolition. Evidently it would have been a wholesome and provident policy to lighten the fiscal burdens of a country in such a condition. Spain was only bent on making Cuba pay the cost of the war. The metropolis overwhelmed the colony with enormous budgets, reaching as high a figure as $46,000,000, and this only to cover the obligations of the state, or rather to fill the unfathomable gulf left by the wastefulness and plunder of the civil and military administration during the years of war, and to meet the expenses of the military occupation of the country. Here follow a few figures: The budget for the fiscal year of 1878 to 1879 amounted to $46,594,000; that of 1879 to 1880 to an equal sum; that of 1882 to 1883 to $35,860,000; that of 1883 to 1884 to $34,180,000; that of 1884 to 1885 to the same sum; that of 1885 to 1886 to $34,169,000. For the remaining years, to the present time, the amount of the budget has been about $26,000,000, this being the figure for 1893 to 1894, and to be the same by prorogation for the current fiscal year.

The gradual reduction that may be noted was not the result of a desire to reduce the overwhelming burdens that weigh upon the country. It was imposed by necessity. Cuba was not able by far to meet such a monstrous exaction. It was a continuous and threatening deficit that imposed these reductions. In the first of the above-named years the revenue was $8,000,000 short of the budget or appropriations. In the second year the deficit reached the sum of $20,000,000. In 1883 it was nearly $10,000,000. In the following years the deficits averaged nearly $4,500,000. At present the accumulated amount of all these deficits reaches the sum of $100,000,000. As a consequence of such a reckless and senseless financial course, the debt of Cuba has been increased to a fabulous sum. In 1868 we owed $25,000,000. When the present war broke out our debt, it was calculated, reached the net sum of $190,000,000. On the 31st of July of the current year the Island of Cuba was reckoned to owe $295,707,264 in bulk. Considering its population, the debt of Cuba exceeds that of all the other American countries, including the United States. The interest on this debt imposes a burden of $9.79 on each inhabitant. The French people, the most overburdened in this respect, owe only $6.30 per inhabitant.

This enormous debt, contracted and saddled upon the country without its knowledge; this heavy load that grinds it and does not permit its people to capitalize their income, to foster its improvements, or even to entertain its industries, constitutes one of the most iniquitous forms of spoliation the island has to bear. In it are ncluded a debt of Spain to the United States; the expenses incurred by Spainen she occupied Santo Domingo; those for the invasion of Mexico in alliance with France and England; the expenditures for her hostilities against Pern; the money advanced to the Spanish treasury during its recent Carlist wars; and all that Spain has spent to uphold its domination in Cuba and to cover the lavish expenditures of its administration since 1868. Not a cent of this enormous sum has been spent in Cuba to advance the work of improvement and civilization. It has not contributed to build a single kilometer of highway or of railroad, nor to erect a single light-house or deepen a single port; it has not built one asylum or opened one public school. Such a heavy burden has been left to the future generations without a single compensation or benefit.

But the naked figures of the Cuban budgets and of the Cuban debt tell very little in regard to their true importance and signification as machines to squeeze out the

substance of a people's labor. It is necessary to examine closer the details of these accounts and expenditures.

Those of Cuba, according to the last budgets or appropriations, amount to $26,411,314, distributed as follows:

General obligations...

Department of justice (courts, etc.)

Department of war

Department of the treasury

Department of the navy.

Government, administration...

Interior improvements (fomento)

$12, 884, 549. 55 1,006, 308.51 5,918, 598. 16 727, 892.45 1,091, 969. 65 4, 035, 071.43 746, 925. 15

There are in Cuba 1,631,687 inhabitants according to the last census, that of 1887. That is to say, that this budget burdens them in the proportion of $16.18 for each inhabitant. The Spaniards in Spain pay only -42.06 pesetas per head. Reducing the Cuban dollars to pesetas at the exchange rate of $95 for 500 pesetas, there results that the Cubans have to pay a tribute of 85.16 pesetas for each inhabitant; more than double the amount a Spaniard has to pay in his European country.

As shown above, most of this excessive burden is to cover entirely unproductive expenditures. The debt consumes 40.89 per cent of the total amount. The defense of the country against its own native inhabitants, the only enemies who threaten Spain, including the cost of the army, the navy, the civil guard, and the guardians of public order, takes 36.59 per cent. There remains for all the other expenditures required by civilized life 22.52 per cent.

And of this percentage the State reserves to us, what a liberality! 2.75 per cent to prepare for the future and develop the resources of the country!

Let us see now what Spain has done to permit at least the development of natural wealth and the industry of a country impoverished by this fiscal régime, the work of cupidity, incompetency, and immorality. Let us see whether that nation has left at least some vitality to Cuba, in order to continue exploiting it with some profit. The economical organization of Cuba is of the simplest kind. It produces to export, and imports almost everything it consumes. In view of this, it is evident that all that Cuba required from the State was that it should not hamper its work with excessive burdens, nor hinder its commercial relations; so that it could buy cheap where it suited her and sell her products with profit. Spain has done all the contrary. She has treated the tobacco as an enemy; she has loaded the sugar with excessive imposts; she has shackled with excessive and abusive excise duties the cattle-raising industry; and with her legislative doings and undoings she has thrown obstacles in the way of the mining industry. And to cap the climax, she has tightly bound Cuba in the network of a monstrous tariff and a commercial legislation which subjects the colony, at the end of the nineteenth century, to the ruinous monopoly of the producers and merchants of certain regions of Spain, as in the halcyon days of the colonial compact.

The district which produces the best tobacco in the world, the famous Vuelta Abajo, lacks every means of transportation afforded by civilization to foster and increase the value of its products. No roads, no bridges, or even ports, are found there. The state in Cuba collects the taxes, but does not invest them for the benefit of any industry. On the other hand, those foreign countries desirous of acquiring the rich tobacco-raising industry have closed their markets to our privileged product by imposing upon it excessive import duties, while the Spanish Government burdens its exportation from our ports with a duty of $1.80 on every thousand cigars. Is this not a stroke of actual insanity?

Everybody is aware of the tremendous crisis through which the sugar industry has been passing for some years, owing to the rapid development of the production of this article everywhere. Every Government has hastened to protect its own by more or less empirical measures. This is not the place to judge them. What is important is to recall the fact that they have endeavored to place the threatened industry in the best condition to withstand the competition. What has Spain done in order, if not to maintain the strong position held before by Cuba, at least to enable the colony to carry on the competition with its every day more formidable rivals? Spain pays bounties to the sugar produced within its own territory, and closes its markets to the Cuban sugar by imposing upon it an import duty of $6.20 per hundred kilograms. It has been calculated that a hundredweight of Cuban sugar is overburdened when reaching the Barcelona market with 143 per cent of its value. The Spanish Government oppresses the Cuban producer with every kind of exactions; taxes the introduction of the machinery that is indispensable for the production of sugar, obstructs its transportation by imposing heavy taxes on the railroads, and winds up the work by exacting another contribution called "industrial duty," and still another for loading or shipping, which is equivalent to an export duty.

As a last stroke, Spain has reenforced the commercial laws of June 30 and July 20, 1882, virtually closing the ports of Cuba to foreign commerce, and establishing the