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The Cause of Cuba: Spanish

The corrupt Spanish custom-houses take toll both ways and that the opportunities to discriminate against honest men--those who would not give bribes--and for the bribe-givers, furnish the foundation of many fortunes, is a fact as familiar in Havana as Moro Castle.

It was never the policy of Spain that Havana should be a manufacturing city. She was expected to grow on trade exclusively--the export of sugar in bags and tobacco in bales--but, incidentally, there have been extensive tobacco manufactures, that would not have been permitted if the industry could have been transplanted to Spain, and even that is being taxed away to Key West. The Spanish policy of promoting exports of raw material, and confining plantation products for marketing to the articles that together were worth about one hundred millions a year, is a most simple system, but precisely how it works they did not seem to know very well.