in 1904, and forty thousand in 1905; the balance of trade in this period greatly favored Cuba; and the money put in circulation through the Speyer loan stimulated business. By October 31, 1904, there were nearly ten millions in the treasury, of which some $6,700,000 was surplus over and above the monies of the loan. In April 1906 the amount in the treasury had reached approximately twenty-five million, of which over nineteen either belonged to the loan or was affected by special laws, leaving five and three quarters millions clear. Certainly there seemed to have been an amazing advance from the small sums of early republican finance. Nevertheless, as already pointed out, the surplus was presently to disappear, and the accumulation, anyway, was of doubtful advisability. However that may be, the twentyfive millions were there and in good hands.

The national treasury was by no means the only institution to profit from the economic success of the Estrada Palma administration. Each new budget raised the amounts devoted to directly beneficial expenditures of the government. For example, the budget of 1902 gave less than three millions to public works, while that of 1905 called for nearly five millions and a half. Expenditures themselves were now larger, reaching some twenty-six millions a year, 19 but receipts were running above thirty millions. There was a quite general well-being in the country. Cubans began to indulge themselves in luxuries that heretofore had been denied them. In Havana, especially, new homes went up as if by magic, and lands in the Vedado district which had gone begging in 1902 at a dollar a meter were selling at seven "Estrada Palma spent nearly y sociales, in Cuba contemporánea, eighty-nine millions in his last two years, but thirty-five of it was the Speyer loan for the bonus to the soldiers. Guiral Moreno, Mario, Nuestros problemas políticos, económicos

v. V, pp. 401-424, at 416-417; Aug., 1914. Guiral Moreno does not make clear whether the $11,250,000 domestic loan was also included in his estimate of expenditures.

or eight in 1905. The provinces, too, had recovered from the war, and Camagüey and Oriente were for the first time becoming centres of colossal sugar enterprises. Interest rates had fallen to ordinary levels, as compared with the usury of earlier days. There had been no backsliding, either, in attention to problems of health. Incidentally, at least one item of government expenditure had been cut to the very bone. The monies allotted to the "presidency," including twenty-five thousand dollars as the salary of the President, were $85,700 in 1902, but this sum was reduced until it reached $62,390 in the budget of 1905,-an amount so small that certain latter-day Presidents of Cuba would have despised themselves for taking such a mere bagatelle, even under the heading of "gastos de representación," or expenses growing out of the social obligations of the office, an item, by the way, that rarely appeared, and then only for comparatively small amounts, during the rule of Estrada Palma.2

20

In fine, from the standpoint of honest government and good times there would seem to have been no more auspicious moment than that in which Cuba found herself in 1905. The future, too, held out much promise. Far from having the mere "avarice" of a miser in piling up a surplus, "Don Tomás" (as Estrada Palma is usually called) was on the point of embarking upon a much enlarged program of public works, together with improving the credit of the country through a reduction of the debt. He proposed to put in sanitary tunnels in Havana and provide that city with the paving it needed, paying the bill in cash obtained from surplus revenues, thus saving the country from a loan estimated at sixteen millions and a half. The extension and beautifying of the Malecón boulevard at Havana and engineering works to overcome the dangers from the floods of the Roque were *0 Cf. pp: 278; 464-465.

20

other projects of his. On one occasion he bought up a million dollars' worth of Cuban domestic bonds, a portion of an issue of $11,250,000 which had been brought out in supplement to the Speyer loan, to provide a further part payment of the debt to the army. Political opponents brought all manner of charges against him because he kept these bonds alive, though depositing them in the treasury,-but when the same people came into power under President Gómez the bonds were reissued to the public! 21 Not least among other favorable indications in 1905 was the decision of the United States to build the Panamá Canal, which would inevitably put Cuba along the course of a vast world trade. All was well,-except that the defects of Cuban character had not yet had time to cure themselves! Beneath the pleasing exterior of Cuban affairs there was an ominous current that boded ill for the republic. This found its principal opportunity for manifestation in the sphere of politics.

Economical as was Don Tomás, he could not avoid many evils to which all governments are subject and for which there was a particularly fertile field in Cuba. There were far more government employes than were necessary,22 and the old instinct for political plunder was very much alive. Frauds were discovered in the custom-house at Santiago. Some officials lived in an unbecoming luxury; one of them, it is said, managed to pay a debt of seventeen thousand dollars out of "savings" from a salary of seven thousand a year over a period of fifteen months, and that too without denying him"Tomás Estrada Palma: para la and four or five hundred thousand historia, in Cuba, Nov. 4, 1909, and ¡La "avaricia" de don Tomás!, in Discusión, Feb. 11, 1911. Both quoted (with amplifications in footnotes) in Velasco, respectively at 11-24 and 77

79.

"Barbarrosa says that there were seventy thousand job-holders in 1903,

other Cubans who wanted these positions. Fifteen thousand of the government posts were nothing but sinecures. In a later article he speaks of forty or fifty thousand employes as "so many useless wheels of the administrative machine." Barbarrosa: 32; 43; 53.

self or his family any of the good things of life. Provincial and municipal governments were notoriously inefficient and corrupt; the President was obliged to intervene to check some of their improper attempts to raise funds for themselves through absurd taxes. And congressional activities left much to be desired. It seemed to many that affairs were too reminiscent of colonial days. As one writer said, in making a comparison between revolutionary Cuba and the republic,

"Between the past and the present there is an immense difference. The former represented the sacrifice of everything on the altar of the ideal; the latter, the shame of the country at the mercy of egoism. The former, the love of Cuba; the latter, the philosophy of the stomach.""

By comparison with later times the evils were as a molehill to a mountain, but they were important as a symptom of Cuban political character and as a forerunner of darker days.

Congress early showed a disposition to protect members of the political coterie from punishment for crime. In 1903 Mariano Corona, a representative from Oriente, murdered an opponent, whereupon Congress passed an act to save him, on the basis of the constitutional paragraph concerning congressional immunity. Despite the President's veto the bill became a law.24 Shortly afterward, the President was again obliged to make use of the veto. Senator Morúa Delgado,a mulatto, by the way,-introduced an act for the reëstablishment of the lottery, discarded since Spanish days. The bill was rushed through on a surprise vote, but Estrada Palma had ready a surprise of his own, for he vetoed it in a notable message (prepared beforehand) on the very day he received it, January 6, 1904. In course of a long argument against the lottery as an institution, he cited a number of well

"Article of Joaquín Aramburu, "For further consideration of this quoted in Barbarrosa, 62-63. See also bill, see pp. 512-515. ibid: 32; 36; 46-51.

known men of different countries against it, and among others quoted Senator Morúa himself, who had referred to it in 1891 as "social gangrene." Concluding, he said:

"Last year, already, a law was on the point of being authorized for the creation of public pits for cock-fights, a cruel, semi-barbarous, and demoralizing spectacle. If the lottery should now become established as a speculation of the state, we might be able to say that an insurmountable wall has been raised to separate the nation of which we dreamed in the revolutionary epoch from that which really exists and which appears to be inclined to retrograde in the direction of the former metropolis."

This message raised up a furor in Congress. Naturally, Senator Morúa felt aggrieved. Senator Manuel Sanguily also turned against the President in all his eloquence.25 But the veto was sustained.

In February 1904 the first elections under the republic were held. The two principal parties reorganized themselves for this event, with the idea of winning at all costs. Under the leadership of Senator Ricardo Dolz of Havana and General José Miguel Gómez, governor of Santa Clara, the Republicans took on a somewhat conservative tendency under the name Conservative Republican party. The Nationals also appeared under a new name, that of the National Liberal party. There were no real issues in the campaign,-only difference of leadership,-though the terms "Conservative" and "Liberal" were supposed to represent the political tendencies of the two groups. The National Liberals had as their chief plank "the abrogation of the Platt Amendment!" This gave them good fuel for speeches. The word "Liberal" and the supposed favor of General Máximo Gómez were other advantages they possessed. Meanwhile, Estrada Palma inclined toward the Conservative Republicans, though without *Sanguily, II, 395-411.