As time went on the matter became more and more confused, and the Military Governor played fast-and-loose with Dady & Co., who stood by their claims and insisted upon recognition of them. Committees sat in consideration of them only to have their findings promptly rejected by the Engineering Department of the American Government. At last, about the first of April, 1901, General Wood, by an arbitrary, if not illegal proceeding, paid to Dady & Co. the sum of $250,000 for all their rights, in law and equity, in what were known as the Dady plans. In other words, with funds from the insular treasury, he bought a claim, not legally established, against the City of Havana, at a price agreed upon by himself and the claimant. By this act, military authority over-rode laws which military authority had declared to be established and in force. The same proceeding was repeated in another and only less disputed case in which one José de Armas was paid $47,500 for his claim under another inchoate contract, similarly obtained to that of Dady & Co., to float a loan for the City of Havana.

Dady & Co. were thus removed as a disturbing element, and plans for the sewering and paving of Havana, presumably acceptable to the Engineering Department, were the undisputed property of the city. Notwithstanding an existing law that no public contract shall be advertised for bids until due provision is made for the payment of the same, General Wood instructed a duly elected and presumably autonomous municipal government to advertise for bids for sewering and paving the city according to the plans and specifications provided. His attention was called to the "irregularity" of the advertisement, whereupon he suspended an important section of the law of the land, and brought the law into accordance with his individual purposes. An advertisement in the spring of 1901 brought no response

except a bid from Dady & Co., which the Engineering Department, a persistent opponent of that company, rejected as excessive. The department made further alterations, and the contract was again advertised. On Nov. 10, 1901, the Ayuntamiento voted to award the contract to Messrs. McGivney & Rokeby, who were the lowest bidders in response to the advertisement. Before the final approval of the acceptance, Mr. Dady appeared and entered a plea of misunderstanding. He reduced his bid by nearly $600,000 (the original bid being $11,485,896, as against that of $10,393, 015 by Messrs. McGivney & Rokeby). Upon this, the Ayuntamiento voted acceptance of the Dady bid. This act failed of endorsement by the higher authorities, and acceptance rested, for the time, with the bid of McGivney & Rokeby.

The entire proceedings were almost inextricably confused. Charges and counter-charges of irregularity of all kinds marked their course, and the affair presents little that is creditable to either the American or the Cuban authorities. The sum of the matter is that after three and a half years of absolute control of the affairs of the Island, the American authorities failed to consummate, or even to begin, or to make it possible to begin, a work which had been so often declared of supreme importance to the United States as well as to the Island of Cuba. It is hardly to be denied that the whole proceeding was a distinct violation of the pledge to exercise "neither sovereignty, jurisdiction, nor control" over the Island “except for the pacification thereof." Moreover, there stands the fact that those processes to which, for the sake of convenience, we give the name of sanitation, were not sanitation, and that the only work properly deserving that title was effectively prohibited by the acts of American officials.

CHAPTER X

THE SECOND YEAR OF OCCUPATION. —Continued

THE year 1900 saw many changes in the establishment of the courts, in legal processes, and even in the codes themselves While such proceedings were foreign to the declared purposes of the United States, and have been held by some to be a usurpation of governmental power, the idea developed among the authorities that, the United States being in responsible control of the Island, they were justified in correcting that in all governmental processes which was deemed inadequate or unsuited to the new institution. The warrant for this assumption of "sovereignty, jurisdiction, and control" has been called in question by many in both countries. Supporters of these changes and so-called "reforms" in Cuban law and law-processes rested their justification in the mere fact that they were effected by the authority, and presumably by the wisdom, of the United States.

The first year of occupation saw numerous changes in the laws and in legal processes, but none which was not demanded by the exigencies of the situation. The second year, however, saw the development of a distinct intention to effect reforms, as such, along the general lines of American institutions. Some of these were of advantage and benefit, and received popular approval. Others were an unwarranted interference, with no justification save that which lay in the supreme power of military control.

During the preceding year, General Ludlow, as Military

Governor of the City of Havana, established a Police Court. The step, without endorsement by an official order from the Governor of the Island, was of doubtful legality, but the institution served a desirable purpose and it was allowed to stand. This became popularly known as the Court of "Ten dollars or ten days." Official orders of February and April, 1900, gave this court a definite legal status. On July 1, similar courts were established in other cities of the Island. Later orders extended the powers of these Correctional, or Police Courts, and regulated their proceedings. Various changes were also made in the Courts of First Instance and in the Municipal Courts. During the year, full or partial pardon was granted to more than two hundred prisoners, and action was declared ended in some four hundred other cases. This was done under the provisions of an order issued on January 16 which declared as follows:

"1. Total pardon is hereby granted to all persons convicted of crimes committed before Feb. 24, 1895, and from Aug. 12, 1898, to May 19, 1899, who may show conclusive proof that they belonged to the Cuban Army and that their conduct has been good since they were mustered out therefrom.

"2. Total pardon is also granted to all such persons convicted of crimes (whether as perpetrators, accomplices, or accessories) who were pardoned by the Decrees of Dec. 16 and 27, 1898.

"3. Total pardon is also granted to all such persons convicted of crimes punishable with prisión correccional in its minimum degree, as may have served six months of their sentence; and also all persons convicted of crimes punishable with arresto mayor y menor in all their degrees, as well as all persons undergoing terms of 'subsidiary punishment' for pecuniary liabilities.

"4. All persons who may have been committed for a period of time equal to or longer than corresponds to the punishment for the crime of which they stood accused, shall be at once set at liberty."

Other clauses provided for the liberation of other classes. The special object of so general a jail delivery is not clearly apparent, though in many cases it was no more than an act of justice. But it also released a considerable number for whom a penal institution was a perfectly proper residence. The step was, in fact, less an act of justice than an evidence of weakness. The court system was one of the glaring iniquities of Spanish government in Cuba. Inasmuch as it was assumed that a notable feature of our mission in Cuba was the correction of flagrant abuses, it would have been better for us and for Cuba had we cleared her jails in some more regular fashion. We assumed the right to establish a Supreme Court and a system of police courts. We revoked

and amended civil and criminal laws. We created laws and incorporated them into the established codes. If those steps were justifiable, there was certainly warrant for any measures, however drastic, which would have corrected the many abuses and delays of Cuban legal procedure. As it is, we left Cuba's so-called Department of Justice little if any better than we found it.

The fundamental problem in this department was generally disregarded, notably in the domain of the civil courts. That was, to establish in the Island a system under which contentions would find at least a reasonably prompt determination in accordance with the provisions of the established code. The excuse given for the failure to do this was that it was impossible because of the lack of suitable material in other words, that the whole Cuban legal institution was so steeped in the methods and the practices of former days that reform was out of the question. It is true that any attempt in this direction was seriously hampered by the established methods. Spanish laws, as a legal system, were admirable. Spanish court systems and practices were