The Supreme Court's Decision: Cuban
"Nothing of this kind was done. The opposition of a few of our tobacco and sugar men seems to have prevented reciprocity. Cuba's tariff and other laws are still Spainsh. She still levies a tax on our products, and pays to us taxes on her imports.
"In addition, as a result of our military occupation, capital finds the island in a state of transition; the laws in a state of uncertainty. The ordinary opportunities for investment are absent. And so the plantations remain grass-grown, the sugar-mills silent, the wharves rotting and deserted, and the people, poor creatures, with haggard faces, still starving, still asking, `How long, O Lord, how long?' And, worst of all, we who control the destinies of the unhappy island cannot answer them. The administration waits for the action of Congress. But it is doubtful if Congress will be more merciful than the administration.
"What was our pledge?
"The United States hereby disclaims any disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction or control over said island, except for the pacification thereof, and asserts its determination, when that is accomplished, to leave the government and the control of the island to its people.
"This is our solemn pledge. It matters not that it may have been unwise to make it. It matters not if all the nations of the earth should urge us to break it. We must keep it. We have, what few nations have, a national conscience. We must keep our pledges or else our word will be forever valueless, our professions of right doing forever disqualified, our pride in our integrity forever wounded. Cuba is not worth such a price.
"There can be no doubt that the `pacification' of the island is now accomplished. City for city, the towns of Cuba are more peaceful and orderly than those of the United States. There never was a more docile, quiet people."
There are observers, familiar with the island and its people, who are hopeful of the development of the self-governing spirit and methods. One writes:
"That the Cubans will form an ideal government I do not say; but that the island will be better governed than other Spanish-American republics is a foregone conclusion. The negro problem is not a difficult one. The proportion of the colored element is much less than in the Southern States, and the Cuban negroes, for the most part, are an ignorant, indolent, happy-go-lucky race, not eleven years freed from slavery and still greatly influenced by their former owners. The white Cuban of the small farming class is entirely uneducated, but hospitable, honest, and frugal. In the scattered districts of the interior education has been beyond his reach. But it is in the planter class, the once wealthy sugar and tobacco growers, that the hope of Cuba lies. Lacking educational facilities in the island for many years past, all who could afford it sent their children to the United States schools and colleges. Here they have drunk in Anglo-Saxon ideas, and though bred at home in luxury and indolence, the war has taught them lessons that will be invaluable in the future. The Cuban is no longer a Spaniard. Reared under entirely different conditions and its blood recruited by refugees from the French Revolution, by Americans, and by sons of Jamaica planters, chiefly of Scotch descent, who have settled and intermarried with the colonials, a new race has arisen, more refined and cultured, and perhaps more effeminate, than the swarthy bull-fighting sons of Spain, who swarm to Cuba for a season and retire to the peninsula after a few years' toil."