Connecticut western news., 1881-04-27
HOW CUBA IS TAXED.
A Burdened People.

A Burdened People.
 Charles A. Dana, of the Sun, after a visit to the island of Cuba, gives us an interesting account of the taxes there.
 He says: The principal crop of the island is sugar, and of this crop Spain is able to take only about one- twentieth,
 while the rest of Europe produces its own sugar from beets at rates of cost which shut out the Cuban article from the European markets. There remains, then, for the Cuban planter only the market of the United States, and in this market he is obliged to dispose of nine- teen-twent1eths of his crop. But where he sells his crop, he naturally looks for his supplies; yet the Spanish colonial monopoly comes in to prevent his buy ing in this convenient and natural mar ket, or to compel him, when he buys there, to do so under the oppression of enormous and almost intolerable duties For instance-I give the figures from an official copy of the tariff of 1873; but the rates on many articles have since been made higher-while Spanish flour imported into Cuba in Spanish vessel pays $2.25 barrel import duty, Ameri- can flour in an American vessel pays $5.50. Spanish lard pays two cents and three-quarters kilogramme; American lard, fourteen cents and half. Span ish cheese pays three cents and seven- twentieths per kilogramme American cheese, eleven cents and four-fifths. From Spain, household furniture pays nine cents per kiogramme from the
 United States, thirty-two cents. Corned
 beef from Spain pays -tenths of cent; from America, eight cents and seven-tewntieths. Salt fish from Spain
 pays seven n-tenths of cent; from
 America, two cents and nine-twentieths.
 Window glass from Spain pays one cent
 and three .tenths from America, four
 cents and seven -twentieths. A carriage
 with four wheels and four seats from
 Spain pays SIP duty; from America,
 $256; and so on through tariff as
 minute and almost as extensive as
 human ingenuity is able to devise.
 Along with these discriminating duties
 on imports, @ severe schedule of inter-
 nal taxation is extended to every prac.
 ticable object. The Spanish treasury,
 bankrupt and suffering from continual
 deficit, which in the year 1880 amount
 ed to sixty millions of dollars, is
 obliged to lay its hand upon every
 article which can be made to yield Q
 tax. It is true, they say in Cuba that
 the aggregate of taxation there is less
 severe than it is in Spain; but how
 desperate the crisis is can be understood
 from the fact that in the month of Janu-
 ary last, the Government unexpectedly
 imposed upon all the railroads of Cuba permanent tax of fifteen per cent. a year upon their gross receipts. Let the
 reader imagine such an impost suddenly laid upon the railroads of the United f States by an irresponsible power having f its seat three thousand miles away, and , he can appreciate the feeling with which l the people of Cuba regard the Govern l ment of Spain. This feeling may, per- f haps, be even better understood when ] ! add that the amount of money extracted r by the Spanish Government from the 7. million and half of residents in Cuba f during the year 1880, for the support oi 6 officeholders and of the military an6 n naval establishment, was fifty millions l. of dollars, or more than thirty-three
 dollars for each man, woman and chile e in the island; and there is besides al l. undetermined amount of municipal taxa ,- tion, respecting which it is impos iblt n to obtain precise statistics. If tht q people of the United States were taxed l. at this rate, they would have to pay s over to the Federal Government, il t, addition to all municipal and Stat d taxes, the sum of seventeen hundred E, millions of dollars year
 ,f But when we remember that the onl, J. articles produced in Cuba, which brin, h money into the island, are sugar an, @ tobacco, and that the sugar crop yield e on the average no more than sixty mil e lions year, and the tobacco crop onl y from twelve to twenty, how can 1t b
 possible for the Cubans to pay fit millions year to support the colonis l. establishment? And yet this is far fro1 1t being the whole cost of it. The exat l, tions are not confined within the limit d prescribed by law, and corruption levie v its tolls upon what remains after th 8 avowed tax gatherer has departed. Fc Le instance, if 8 man is entitled to dra ly money from the treasury in Cuba, h h. has to pay at least ten per cent. of t. to the disbursing agents or else he
 always told, "We have no money Id pay you with. Come again at anothe g, time."
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