of the soil, and the greater part of Cuba's requirements in the line of mill and factory products is imported. While little is done in the shipment of cattle or beef, Cuba is a natural cattle country. Water and nutritious grasses are abundant, and there are vast areas, now idle, that might well be utilized for stock-raising. There are, of course, just as there are elsewhere, various difficulties to be met, but they are met and overcome. There are insects and diseases, but these are controlled by properly applied scientific methods. There is open feeding throughout the entire year, so there is no need of barns or hay. The local cattle industry makes possible the shipment of some $2,500,000 worth of hides and skins annually. Other lines of industry worthy of mention, but not possible of detailed description here, include sponges, tortoise shell, honey, wax, molasses, and henequen or sisal. All these represent their individual thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars, and their employment of scores or hundreds of wageearners. Those who start for Cuba with a notion that the Cubans are an idle and lazy people, will do well to revise that notion. There is not the hustle that may be seen further north, but the results of Cuban activity, measured in dollars or in tons, fairly dispute the notion of any national indolence. When two and a half million people produce what is produced in Cuba, somebody has to work.

XIV

POLITICS, GOVERNMENT, AND COMMERCE

T

HE British colonists in America were in large

measure self-governing. This is notably true

in their local affairs. The Spanish colonists were governed almost absolutely by the mothercountry. A United States official publication reports that "all government control centred in the Council of the Indies and the King, and local self government, which was developed at an early stage in the English colonies, became practically impossible in the Spanish colonies, no matter to what extent it may have existed in theory. Special regulations, decrees, etc., modifying the application of the laws to the colonies or promulgating new laws were frequent, and their compilation in 1680 was published as Law of the Indies. This and the Siete Partidas, on which they were largely based, comprised the code under which the Spanish-American colonies were governed." There was a paper provision, during the greater part of the time, for a municipal electorate, the franchise being limited to a few of the largest tax-payers. In its practical operation, the system was nullified by the power vested in the appointed ruler. It was a highly effective centralized

organization in which no man held office, high or low, who was not a mere instrument in the hands of the Governor-General. Under such an institution the Cubans had, of course, absolutely no experience in self-government. The rulers made laws and the people obeyed them; they imposed taxes and spent the money as they saw fit; many of them enriched themselves and their personally appointed official household throughout the island, at the expense of the tax-payers.

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A competent observer has noted that such terms as 'meeting," "mass-meeting," "self-government," and "home-rule," had no equivalent in the Spanish language. The first of these terms, distorted into mitin," is now in common use, and its origin is obvious. Of theories, ideals, and intellectual conceptions, there was an abundance, but government based on beautiful dreams does not succeed in this practical world. Denied opportunity for free discussion of practical methods, the Cubans discussed theories in lyceums. Under the military government of the United States, from January 1, 1899, to May 20, 1902, there was freedom of speech and freedom of organization. The Cubans began to hold "mitins,” but visions and beautiful theories characterized the addresses. Prior to the Ten Years' War (1868-1878), there were organizations more or less political in their nature, but the authorities were alert in preventing discussions of too practical a character. In 1865, a number of influential Cubans organized what

has been somewhat inappropriately termed a "national party." It was not at all a party in our use of that term. Its purpose was to suggest and urge administrative and economic changes from the Cuban point of view. The suggestions were ignored and, a few years later, revolution was adopted as a means of emphasizing their importance. The result of the Ten Years' War was an assortment of pledges of greater political and economic freedom. Much was promised but little if anything was really granted. There was, however, a relaxation of the earlier absolutism, and under that there appeared a semblance of party organization, in the form of a Liberal party and a Union Constitutional party. There was no special difference in what might be called their platforms. Both focussed, in a somewhat general way, the political aspirations and the economic desires of the Cuban people, much the same aspirations and desires that had been manifested by complaint, protest, and occasional outbreak, for fifty years. National independence had no place in either. That came later, when an army in the field declared that if Spain would not grant independence, the island would be made so worthless a possession that Spain could not afford to hold it. A few years after their organization, the Liberals became the Cuban party, and so remained, and the Union Constitutionals became the Spanish party, the party of the immediate administration. Later on, the Liberal party became the Autonomist party, but Spain's concession

of the demands of that group came too late, forced, not by the Autonomists but by the party of the Revolution that swept the island with fire and sword from Oriente to Pinar del Rio. The Autonomists sought what their name indicates; the Revolutionists demanded and secured national independence.

Shortly before the final dispersion of the Army of the Revolution, there was organized a body with the imposing title of La Asamblea de Representantes del Ejercito Cubano, or the Assembly of Representatives of the Cuban Army. It was composed of leaders of the different military divisions of that army, and included, as I recall it, thirty-one members. This group made no little trouble in the early days. of the American occupation. It gathered in Havana, held meetings, declared itself the duly chosen and representative agent of the Cuban people, and demanded recognition as such by the American authorities. Some of its members even asserted that it constituted a de facto government, and held that the Americans should turn the whole affair over to them and promptly sail away. But their recognition was flatly refused by the authorities. At the time, I supported the authorities in this refusal, but afterward I felt less sure of the wisdom of the course. As a recognized body, it might have been useful; rejected, it made no little trouble. Transfer of control to its hands was quite out of the question, but recognition and co-operation might have proved helpful. That the body had a considerable repre