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The Cause of Cuba: Spain

It is, for example, held by the leading representatives of Spain in this country, that the prevention of the grinding of cane to make sugar did not cut down the revenues of Spain, because the export tax was small compared with other taxes, and did not yield the bulk of the money in the treasury--but it is not a far cry to the fact that the customs duties on the imports, and the imports too, have to be paid out of the produce, and that something has to be exported to get the money to pay with.

If there is no sugar and no tobacco to sell--as there will be none after this until the war is over--there is a lack of one hundred millions of dollars annually to buy things with, and the revenue of Cuba for Spain must fall off a million dollars a month. It will be seen, as this situation is studied, that it is the selfish policy of Spain that has prepared the way for this depletion of her resources. If Cuban industry had been cared for instead of strangled--if the country had been in a greater degree self-sustaining--the work of destruction by revolution would have been far more difficult. If the tyrants' wish that the people had but one neck, that he might cut it through at a single stroke with his sword, had been realized so far as the neck was concerned, he might have realized that some enemy could have struck the blow, and he would have found it inconvenient to have lost at once the race that he ruled, for he should irretrievably have lost his occupation. Spain has a tobacco monopoly--the state is the purchaser, manufacturer, and salesman of tobacco, and the unsophisticated supposition is, of course, the Spaniards help their tobacco plantations in Cuba by making purchases there; but they do not; they prefer the less restricted market of Virginia; and the Spaniards at home use a great deal and produce little sugar. Of course, they patronize always their beautiful colony, Cuba, for sugar! Oh, no!--they buy largely German beet sugar. It is not so good as the Cuban, but when money is spent by Spain for Cuban products she does not care to face the results of her own crooked regulations.

Fancy the ruling class of a country composed, age after age, of foreign born men, without any stake except office in the land governed--with no purpose but that of working places for money to go home with. When we say the revenues of Cuba are not sent direct to Spain, there should be an annotation in mind that three-fourths of the office-holders in Cuba are Spaniards, and that it is their policy to get away with savings, and that this is an impoverishment of Cuba for Spain's advantage. The one-fourth of the holders of office who are Cubans have, as a rule, small salaries, and pay commissions in Madrid to get them.