Walker Lake bulletin. (Hawthorne, Nev.) 1883-1926, 1896-05-27
THE UNHAPPY
ISLE OF CUBA.
Murat Halstead Analyses Its
Present Condition.
THINKS WE SHOULD ANNEX IT.

Fatal Errors which Have Thrust One Of
Earth's Richest Spots to Ruins Edge.
spain's Suicidal Policy-Clinging to an
Island Which Yields Less Than 1t Costs.
The Wrongs the Cubans Have Revoited
Against Reduced to Beg
eary-The End Not Yet In Sight.
After month of study Of Cuba in
Cuba, the first words written under the
stars and stripes, and sense of all that
flag means for freedom, are that the
peace and prosperity of the most fertile
and fairest, the largest and noblest of
the American islands, demand that it
shall, through pacific international proc
esses, yield to the drift of manifest
destiny, and the attraction OF gravlta-
ton of the great republic, and take its
place as an indestructible state of the
indissoluble American Union-one OF
the stars of our national constellation
the United States.
My contention is that this "consum-
nation devoutly to be wished" will be
led up to by the procession of events in
the course of few years, and the
achievement celebrated in our history
as ranking with the memorable expan-
sion of our domain, from the Mississip-
pi to the Pacific including Texas and
California, by the Louisiana purchase
and the war with Mexico.
The objection to the annexation OF
Cuba which has been most urged is the
character of the population, and that
which has been urged as especially OBJ
jectionable is the alleged majority OF
colored people. But there is not ma
jority of blacks in Cuba, although the
census of 1871 SO declared. The latest
report have been able to get that seems
thorough and to be relied upon is this:
Total population of Cuba, published
on Dec. 81, 1887, 1851, 687; whites,
LII, 303; negroes, 520,684.
A White Majority.
This shows that more than two-thirds
of the population of the island are white,
and there is white majority in each of
the six provinces Thus is eliminated at
stroke the negro bugaboo. The blacks
will no more rule Cuba politically or So
cially than they do Kentucky, and many
of them have in Cuba developed self re-
lance and capacity.
1t may be said the negroes are in some
respects in better position in Cuba than
in any of the states of the American ma
tion. The races in the island associate on
such terms of intimacy and good fellow
ship that Cuba as state firmly and
wisely governed would be an invaluable
object lesson to the people of the United
States, showing that it is not necessary
to degrade and despise and trample upon
the blacks to prevent them from becom-
ing too powerful in politics or too prom
inent in society.
Serious study of the whites of Cuba,
who would under our system be, of
course, the preponderant element and
give political character to the state, has
elevated estimation of the Spaniards and
the Cubans as possible iee and equal
citizens of the republic. The American
people have undervalued persistentlythe
capacity for self government of the peo-
pie who have not had their opportuni-
ties. 1t is fortunate Cuba did not fall
into our hands as slave state, for when
the slave power was so great in our gov
eminent, and greater peril than we
were aware, it must have increased our
difficulties, and our sovereign state idea
would at the same time have taken evil
shape. But that is all over. Our free
Union as it stands is lone and insepa
rable," and just as certain as that is
SO is the fact that the states are imper-
ishable quantities, never to be subtracted
from the sun. Our state method of self
government is that which Cuba wants
the style of autonomy she needs-and
the pressure of our mighty forces upon
Cuban ways in affairs political would
steady the state of Cuba to accept her
share of our destiny and ask for no more.
In our Union she would in five years
have 2,000, 900 inhabitants, and in ten
years 5000, 900, and riches beyond the
dreams of avarioe. I" The value of prop
erty in the island would be trebled to-
morrow if it were known she was COM
ing into our system.
We should not revile the Spaniard in
regard to his relations with Cuba His
fault is he has not been able to escape
from his own system. He is its slave as
Cuba is it's victim. Why should Spain
cling with grasp as Of despair to the
last of her great American dominions?
Her self respect, her pomp and vanity,
her pride and dignity, have survived the
loss of Florida and Texas and New
Mexico, part Of Colorado and Nevada
and California and Mexico, and of all
South America except Brazil-never
hers-and all the West Indies but the
few she holds. Why should Cuba be the
exception to all rules, the one spot
where the continuation of the logic of
the history of Spain must be forever re-
garded as a degradation-the land
where the same fulfillment of fate as in
the case of Mexico and Peru and all the
rest should be associated with dishonor?
Ask Spain to Reason.
We would not strike Spain stealthy
blow. We would not if we could infict
upon her humiliation, but we would
invite her to consent to reason with us,