serve public tranquillity. Indeed, without the roads the country might be tied up any time by a railway strike, a contingency that threatened the tobacco crop of 1907 for a time.

A great many difficulties had to be overcome through lack of proper equipment and personnel, but by August 1907 the work was started. A little over a year later, on September 30, 1908, Magoon was able to report that 570 kilometres of road had been completed (including 120 bridges), while 395 kilometres more were under construction, of which 195 would be finished, making a total of 765, by the end of the intervention and the remainder by the end of the fiscal year on June 30, 1909. Altogether, the provisional government had by September 30, 1908, expended $13,361,406.70 on roads and bridges, or 55.35 per cent of the entire amount devoted to public works, and another $1,109,282.38, or 4.63 per cent, on harbors, and $378,032.14, or 1.58 per cent, for lighthouses and buoys. Not to go into detail on other matters, Magoon increased the roads of Cuba 124.6 per cent above what they were when he took charge, or 158 per cent if those left to be completed in the first few months of the Gómez régime may be included. The value of his work may be illustrated by the case of a road which tapped the territory of seven sugar estates in Matanzas. The cost of getting sugar to port was reduced in this instance from ninety cents a bag to fifty. Among other expenditures under the heading of public works were $4,415,468.05 for sanitation, $2,033,724.81 for the construction, improvement, or repair of 156 government buildings, and $1,464,041.95 for water supply and drainage. In addition to smaller sums for other purposes expended by the Department of Public Works, some of the lesser matters were taken care of by other departments,-for example, work on hospitals, jails, and rural guard barracks in the Department

of Government. Much of the work was of the sort that would be done by local governments in the United States, but that was not possible on the existing basis of municipal revenues in Cuba. It is worthy of note, too, that most of the public works undertaken were in response to legislation by Congress in the time of Estrada Palma. For example, of the $22,958,659.36 expended in the Department of Public Works, no less than eighty-eight per cent was based on congressional appropriations or on authorizations for services for which inadequate sums were provided, leaving only $1,660,506.41 worth due wholly to the initiative of the provisional government.

Cuban writers admit the volume of Magoon's achievements in the realm of public works, but make numerous charges tending to detract from any credit to him on account of them. None of these are precise enough to merit attention, except that the works, more especially the roads, were extravagantly but poorly constructed, and did not last. In the absence of any better precise evidence concerning these charges the following statement made to the writer by an American who built one of the roads may be worth noting:

"The handling of road-building was in charge of Colonel W. M. Black, who was absolutely honest. The trouble with the roads was that too great an attempt was made to make a record for mileage. So, only certain portions of the roads were really very good. The rest was left for President Gómez to finish, but Gómez wished to make a record on his own account, with the result that Magoon's roads were allowed to go to rack and ruin. The newspapers charged vast corruption at that time in connection with these roads, but I know personally that the charges were untrue."

Magoon himself recognized that the roads would not last unless kept in repair, and he established what he intended to be a permanent force for attending to the work. In Cuba, however, "roads" is a word used like "patriotism" in many

countries as a purely political device. Unfortunately it is to the advantage of a politician for his predecessor's roads to be bad and for those built by himself to make a showing in mileage and at least temporary serviceability. Magoon's roads may have been good or they may have been poor, but in either case they were doomed. Politics, plus heavy rains and the narrow-tired, two-wheeled Cuban cart, were sure sooner or later to account for them.

Obviously, since the Magoon government began with a deficit it was necessary to pay for a large part of expenditures out of revenues. Fortunately, and contrary to expectation, receipts from the custom-house were greater than ever down to February 1908, when the current set in the other way. The large sugar crop of 1907 and the stimulus of the public works program (through import of equipment and the free spending of amounts earned in wages) were helpful factors, as also was the considerable amount of travel to the island in these years. The financial misfortunes of 1907, however, when coupled with the political deterrent of a formal announcement of the intended withdrawal by the United States not later than February 1909, at length overcame the prosperity of the custom-house. Nevertheless, by December 1, 1908, all works were paid for to November 1, 1908, and expenditures for the remaining months were ordered curtailed. In his message to Congress of April 5, 1909, President Gómez said that he found $2,809,479.08 in the treasury, with obligations amounting to $11,920,824.54, leaving a deficit of $9,111,345.46. Not all of this was chargeable to the provisional government. There was one item of $1,613,019 on credits granted by previous governments.20 Assuming that these figures are correct and that the other debts had been incurred by the Magoon régime, it would mean a debit of some "Mensajes presidenciales, I, 201.

seven millions and a half for which it was responsible, which is a long way from the vast amounts usually tossed off lightly by critics of Magoon as the deficit from his rule.21 Furthermore, it compared very favorably with the situation that confronted the provisional government at the outset. An expert accounting of the books of the Estrada Palma and the Magoon administrations might even show that the latter saved something, for the actual deficit with which it began may well have been greater than the one it left. In any event, the Magoon deficit meant little or nothing, for every barometer of business life pointed clearly to an era of prosperity under José Miguel. And in the background of that prosperity when it arrived were the achievements of the Magoon government, which overcame a series of financial ills that in consequence were spared to the next administration.22

"Barbarrosa says in one place that the deficit would perhaps be "seventytwo million" and in another "nearly seventy." Barbarrosa: 77; 84.

22

"For authorities on this chapter, see comment at the end of chapter XI

CHAPTER XI

THE RESTORATION OF CUBAN GOVERNMENT

THE criticisms of the Magoon government on financial matters have very little foundation in fact. Its handling of political questions may in some particulars be less worthy of approval, but in certain of them it deserves unstinted praise. Especially is this so in the field of legislation. The great body of Cuban law consisted of provisions enacted for the Spanish peninsula, subsequently extended to Cuba, and there modified by royal orders or by orders of the military government of the United States or laws of the Cuban Congress. Most of it was monarchical in type and directly contrary to the spirit of the excessively liberal Cuban Constitution. The Cuban Congress, however, was too little informed about legislative matters and too busy with political discussions to enact the supplementary laws that were needed to give the Constitution its full effect.1 This failure of Congress was one of the important causes in the background of the revolution of 1906, and it had to be remedied in certain particulars before the government could be turned back to the Cuban people. It was impossible to do the work through the medium of the Cuban Congress, as Taft and Bacon had gone on record to the effect that the rights of membership of those elected in 1905 had been vitiated by fraud, and had

1For a general discussion of this subject, see chapter XXI. An admirable statement of the legislative problem of the Magoon government is Crowder, Enoch Herbert, Report of

department of state and justice, in Republic of Cuba, Report of provisional administration from October 13th, 1906 to December 1st, 1907, pp. 119-139.