but its development is due entirely to the fact of the cultivation having been taken in hand by foreign capital and conducted under foreign direction. The demand for bananas might have continued until Doomsday without the Cubans having taken advantage of the obvious opportunity afforded by it. The United States takes one million dollars' worth or more of bananas from Cuba every year.

Commercial fruit culture in Cuba was only commenced in late years and, if the banana business be left out of consideration, is still in a backward state of development. The several colony enterprises of American and Canadian land companies have had for their principal objects the sale and cultivation of fruit lands. On the whole these projects have been unsuccessful viewed from the standpoint of the settler. This has been due to a variety of causes which will be considered in the following chapter. Although various marketable fruits have grown wild in Cuba for centuries the natives made little or no effort to turn them to commercial account.

In the past few years pineapples have been systematically raised with profit. The Cuban product is particularly hardy and of an excel

lent quality. The piña blanca is the sweetest variety, but it does not keep well and is therefore not adapted to exportation. The piña morada is smaller, more scaly, and less juicy than the former. It has, however, greater resisting qualities and represents almost the entire export of this fruit, whilst the piña blanca meets the domestic demand. The United States market takes several hundred thousand dollars' worth of pineapples annually from Cuba.

When the industry was first started, the fruit fetched one dollar per dozen in Habana, for export. The price has now fallen to about onefourth of that figure on account of the increase in production of several countries, but even at present rates the pineapple can be raised in Cuba at a very fair profit. Little labor is involved in the cultivation, preparation for shipment is simple, and the yield is very great. One caballeria of land devoted to pineapples will cost about $4,000 to keep up during the five years that the plant bears. In that period it will give five crops of 18,000 dozen pineapples each. The last crop, however, will be too small for use except in the manufacture of preserves, and the full market price can only be counted on for the yield of the first three

years. But, even at that, if 54,000 dozens of the fruit are marketed at twenty-five cents per dozen, there is a balance of $9,800, after paying expenses, in addition to the profit to be secured from the last two crops.

From this it would seem that pineapple culture is well worth while to the man of comparatively small capital, especially as the necessary ground can be bought in hundreds of places at less than ten dollars an acre.

It must be admitted, however, that practical growers scout these statements of profits, which are derived from official sources. The owners of pineapple plantations, Americans and Spaniards for the most part, declare that they are actually shipping at a loss. But for some inscrutable reason they continue to raise the fruit with a constantly increasing output.

One of the chief difficulties experienced by the investigator in Cuba lies in the proneness of all classes of planters to deny that there is any money in their business. They declare that the transportation companies and commission merchants are absorbing all the profits. On the other hand, a railroad manager will take paper and pencil and demonstrate convincingly that