Text of the Treaty of Peace: Porto Rico and Queen Regent

Article XVI.-Be it understood that whatever obligation is accepted under this treaty by the United States with respect to Cuba is limited to the period their occupation of the island shall continue, but at the end of said occupation they will advise the Government that may be established in the island that it should accept the same obligations.

Article XVII.-The present treaty shall be ratified by the Queen Regent of Spain and the President of the United States, in agreement and with the approval of the Senate, and ratifications shall be exchanged in Washington within a period of six months from this date or earlier if possible.

In faith whereof we, the respective plenipotentiaries, have signed this treaty and have hereunto affixed our seals.

Done in duplicate at Paris, the tenth day of December, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight.

WILLIAM R. DAY.

CUSHMAN K. DAVIS.

WILLIAM P. FRYE.

GEORGE GRAY.

WHITELAW REID.

EUGENIO MONTERO RIOS.

B. DE ABARZUZA.

J. DE GARNICA.

W. R. DE VILLA URRUTIA.

RAFAEL CERERO.

The treaty was signed in Paris December 10, 1898, and President McKinley transmitted it to the Senate January 4, 1899, where it was read in executive session and referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations. The committee reported it favorably January II, and after long and exhaustive discussion it was ratified (February 6) by a vote of sixty-one to twenty-nine.

The Queen Regent attached her signature March 17, 1899.

The island of Porto Rico, over which the flag of the United States was raised in token of formal possession on October 18, 1898, is the most eastern of the Greater Antilles in the West Indies and is separated on the east from the Danish islands of St. Thomas by a distance of about fifty miles, and from Hayti on the west by the Mona passage, seventy miles wide. The island is 108 miles from the east to the west, and from 37 to 43 miles across from north to south, the area being about 3,600 square miles. The population in 1887 was 798,656, of whom 474,933 were whites, 246,647 mulattoes and 76,905 negroes. An enumeration taken by the United States Government in 1900 showed a population of 953,243. Porto Rico is unusually fertile, and its dominant industries are agriculture and lumbering. In elevated regions the vegetation of the temperate zone is not unknown. There are more than 500 varieties of trees found in the forests, and the plains are full of palm, orange and other trees. The principal crops are sugar, coffee, tobacco, cotton, and maize, but bananas, rice, pineapples, and many other fruits are important products. The largest article of export from Porto Rico is coffee, which is over 63 per cent. of the whole. The next largest is sugar, 28 per cent. The other exports in order of amount are tobacco, honey, molasses, cattle, timber, and hides. The principal minerals found in Porto Rico are gold, carbonates and sulphides of copper and magnetic oxide of iron in large quantities. Lignite is found at Utuado and Moca, and also yellow amber. A large variety of marble, limestone, and other building stones are found on the island, but these resources are very undeveloped. There are salt works at Guanica and Salinac on the south coast, and at Cape Bojo on the west, and these constitute the principal mineral industry in Porto Rico. There are 137 miles of railway, with 170 miles under construction, and 470 miles of telegraph lines. These connect the capital with the principal ports south and west. Submarine cables run from San Juan to St. Thomas and Jamaica. The principal cities are Ponce, 27,952 inhabitants; Arecibo, with 30,000, and San Juan, the capital, with 32,048.

A writer in the Forum thus describes the condition of the people:

"The school system in Porto Rico has been utterly worthless. With few schools and no schoolhouses, and with the Roman Catholic catechism as the principal text-book, it is not strange that not exceeding 10 per cent. of the population can read or write. Other disadvantages of living in Porto Rico can also be enumerated. The tax for making and recording deeds is so high as to be well-nigh prohibitive; while the charge for recording wills is not definitely fixed by law, but is in proportion to the value of the estate. It not infrequently happens that excellent properties are entirely dissipated in fees, leaving nothing for the widow or other heirs. Most remarkable of all, however, is the fact that over one-half of the children of Porto Rico are illegitimate-not because of the wanton immorality of their parents, but because the expense connected with a marriage in a church made the formal ceremony impossible among the poorer classes. While thus placing the barrier of money at the church door, the priests discouraged any form of civil marriage; so that the poor, and some of the rich, cut the Gordian knot by simply living together in the marital state. There was not, in this mode of living, a deliberate desire to offend against recognized custom; nor were the relations thus informally assumed regarded as lacking force. On the contrary, both men and women, compelled by poverty to live together without legal or religious sanction, remained true to each other."