CHAPTER XIX

CORRUPTION AND REMONSTRANCE

1923-1924

WITH United States help, offered through the medium of General Crowder's services, Cuba had had a chance to become the model republic of Hispanic America, if the pace could have been maintained. Zayas gave the moralization program such a setback, however, that except as an example all of the work was lost. Indeed, the last two years of the Zayas rule were so utterly depraved that a beginning would have to be made from a point farther back than at the time he took office in 1921. To be sure, in some respects the situation was better in 1925. The country was not nearly in such a bad way financially, though the prospects of sugar were none too flattering. And there was a peaceful succession to the presidency. In neither case, however, was Zayas entitled to any particular credit. As has already been pointed out, Cuban prosperity is dependent on factors quite outside of government, which may hinder progress but cannot produce it. And Zayas gave up the presidency only when it was clear to him that he could not reëlect himself, not even with the employment of the methods of 1916 and 1920. The one merit accruing to him is that he recognized this fact, and yielded to the inevitable. It may be interesting at this point to give some opinions of Zayas, set forth in the light of his conduct down to the summer of 1924. The following are a few sample statements, includ

ing one that is ultra-favorable, but not altogether out of line with the others:

(1) "People do not understand Zayas, who is really a great man. To be sure, he has not been perfect. You can't defend the Santa Clara purchase or his nepotism. And everything they say about . . . !! . . . is true. All else about Zayas is good. He is an idealist, and admires Lincoln above any man in history, possessing an unusually rich library on his life. Everybody knows he is no fool, and, above all, he has remarkable patience. He has a perfect passion for freedom of speech, and in the face of insult he calmly bides his time. He has often been urged to suspend certain newspapers that attack him or to exile a vociferous opponent, but he refuses to do so, insisting that the way to get rid of license in expression is to let it run its course. He believes in Cuba for the Cubans, and in time to come will be regarded as the greatest man the country has produced."

(2) "If it is true that Zayas has made a study of the life of Lincoln it was only to learn how to do the opposite!"

(3) "Zayas has been Cuba's worst ruler since the separation from Spain. He has been the worst nepotist and the worst grafter. He has made many improvements on paper,-almost none at all in fact. He will get a bill put through for a road, have some engineer relative draw up a plan, pay him half a million, and nothing more will be done,except for the division of the spoil. The more than thirty millions he has accumulated in the treasury are all a false appearance. He has them, through not paying the floating debt, but he himself is far more likely to get a lot of this money than ever the creditors are to receive a cent."

(4) "Zayas is not ashamed to rake in pesetas if he can't get pesos.1 Worse than his own graft, however, is the way he lets his relatives ride. Worse yet is that his wife's relatives are feeding at the public crib, too."

(5) "Zayas's 'nationalism' is only a farce. Of course, it is a useful cry in practical politics, but at the very time that he was shouting loudest about 'Cuba for the Cubans' he was making deals with great corporations so as to give excessive privileges in Cuba to foreigners. Some people praise him for stepping down from the presidency, instead of reëlecting himself by force, but he knew perfectly well that there would be a real revolution if he intended to inflict himself on Cuba again and that the army would be on the other side. So he made the best arrangement he could, to keep himself and his relatives out of jail."

'The peseta has a normal value of dollar.

twenty cents, and the peso of a

It would be easy to accumulate thousands of Zayas items from newspapers and other Cuban sources, but they would not differ appreciably from the above. A few such statements are referred to later, in connection with the events of these years. It happens, too, that several carefully thought-out articles have appeared in United States periodicals dealing with Zayas. In September 1925 there was a series of articles by Albert Whiting Fox in the Washington Post about the evil conditions that were causing what seemed almost like a national uprising against Zayas at that time. In November 1923 Edward L. Conn had a similar series of articles in the Philadelphia Public Ledger, with an even more detailed survey of Zayas's conduct and other iniquities in Cuban political life. More recently other estimates of the Zayas government have appeared. The following recites one characteristic instance of the President's procedure:

"On taking over the presidency, Dr. Zayas found that in the budget he was allowed about three hundred thousand dollars annually for the Executive Department of the government. Repeatedly he appealed to Congress to increase this amount by $180,000, threatening, if his wishes were not respected, to close the palace and return to his home at Morro No. 3. Congress . . . turned a deaf ear to his distress. He then appealed for aid to his Cabinet, . . . and one of them, Capt. Castillo Pokorny, an honor graduate of West Point, . . . suggested that, if Dr. Zayas found himself unable to live within his allotment, it would be a fitting recognition of the straits in which the country found itself if the President were to close the palace and discharge the hordes of servants who were proving so costly. Current bills for supplies at the palace were unpaid, and eventually came before the debt commission, together with thousands of unpaid accounts left over from Menocal's administration. Among these bills were some for hundreds of dollars' worth of perfume, one for eight hundred dollars' worth of eggs, one month's consumption of the presidential family, others of ten and twenty thousand dollars for pheasants and roses. Balked by both Congress and the Cabinet, Dr. Zayas pondered deeply and shortly evolved a wonderful new scheme. With the help of Erasmos Regue

Feros, Secretary of Justice, he issued a decree ordering the payment to himself of the funds he so much coveted."

Various other instances of presidential misconduct are menThe following is another inter

tioned in the same article.

esting characterization of Zayas and his government:

"Proceeding cautiously at first, he obtained a loan of $50,000,000 in this country. This done, he threw off the 'vicious intermeddling of Washington,' placed fourteen members of his family in strategic positions in the administration, and, his forces thus distributed, laid siege to the public treasury. The loan offered the first chance . . . Not only the available portion of the loan but also the annual revenue, amounting to $81,000,000, was exhausted before public employees could be paid, before overdue coupons on the public debt could be taken up, before some $400,000 due the United States on postal money order account could be turned over. Public works appropriations were also closely scrutinized. Great interest was shown in the cleaning of streets and the repair of highways and bridges, and large appropriations were obtained for these purposes. The money was promptly withdrawn from the Treasury, but the cleaning and the repairs are still to be done. A foreign engineer, interested in comparative costs on bridge-repairing, took a list of seven bridges that the records showed had been recently repaired at a cost of $367,000. He found not only that the repairs had not been made, but that not one of the bridges had ever existed! The Cuban politicians did not overlook the more usual forms of graft. Gambling places and houses of prostitution paid heavily for exemption from police molestation. Contracts for food and supplies in the jails and other public institutions were fully exploited. A peculiarity of the Cuban fiscal system was also made to yield its due. Each municipality must submit its annual budget to the Department of the Interior for its approval. These budgets being largely false, it was worth money to approve them. And the money was forthcoming. Large sums were paid to the officials of the department for approval and included in the amounts for which the local public was mulcted."

'Cuba, an American ward again?, Norton, Henry Kittredge, Self-dein Independent, v. CXIII, pp. 35-38, termination in the West Indies, in at 36; July 19, 1924. Among other World's work, v. LI, pp. 77-84, at 81things, this article asserts that Zayas 82; Nov., 1925. This is the first of held his history-writing job for eight a series of three articles under this years, receiving "almost fifty thou- title. sand dollars." Cf. supra, pp. 416-418.

The orgy of graft alluded to in these statements was made possible by an era of prosperity that filled the treasury. For 1923-1924 government receipts were about ninetyone millions and a half, and about ninety-three and a half for 1924-1925,-this, of course, in addition to the sums that were misappropriated before ever they got into the record. Since the government was not paying off the floating debt, this left an ample amount for political rewards. Indeed, for a time it seemed as if there was almost more than Zayas and his cohorts could spend. Over a twelve-month, from the spring of 1923 to the spring of 1924, the so-called "surplus" in the treasury advanced from some three millions to about thirty-four. Meanwhile, the creditors, to whom much more than this sum was due, were obliged to wait. Late in 1924 Zayas issued a decree to the effect that twenty per cent of the back salary due government employes would now be paid to them; he tried to make capital out of it, as if it were a Christmas gift. There were hints, however, that even this belated and moderate regard for one group of the nation's creditors was being displayed because a few presidential favorites were to obtain special advantages from the measure. This was a mere bagatelle in the sum total of the floating debt, and caused no particular strain on the government's resources. For other reasons, however,presently to be discussed,-the surplus did turn downward in 1924, and people were alarmed lest the new President would

The money order account between the United States and Cuba is one sample of the way in which the latter allowed debts to run, while revenues were accumulating. As part of the postal agreement between the two countries, Cuba was required to keep four hundred thousand dollars on deposit in Washington, but, instead of doing so, actually permitted a deficit to develop. So, on money orders

drawn in Cuba and payable in the United States, the latter was paying out money without reimbursement, although the Cuban post-office had received the full amount. This was a mild theft inflicted on the American people.

'See, for example, A ridiculous twenty per cent, in Discusión, translated in Havana Post, Nov. 25, 1924.