Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1897-09-05
THE BIGGEST AND STRONGEST LOCOMOTIVE EVER
 Is FULLY TWIGE AS F4H % AS TIE cEBfATE egg TIT WILL

would be arrested and thrown into Morro castle as flibusterers in disguise. They succeeded, however, in demon strating their peaceful intentions, and forthwith proceeded to scatter over the island, looking for the owners of the engines, boilers, blows, tobacco rais= ing plants, and sugar plantation imple- ments that the Gubans had left to the care of anyone who happened to take a fancy to them. The work of buying up these abandoned relics of Cuban in- dustry proved easier than was antici- pated. Where owners could be found they were only too willing to sell the machinery for any sum that the pur- chasers offered. Where no owner could be discovered, for the reason that Span ish bullets had left the property owner less, the Spanish officials were only too glad to proclaim themselves the right fuI possessors of the property and allow the agents of the smelling works to carry off the rusting machinery at their own price.
 As fast as it could be bought up the machinery was shipped to New York, chiefly as old metal, and to-day in the shops and yards of the. smelling works can be seen the remnants of what was once, in the piping times of peace, the plant with which the industries of Cuba brought wealth to the coffers of the planters and manufacturers. It is a curious-looking sight to see the wreck of Cuban industries in the yards of New York smelting firm. There is iron in every stage of demoralization and rustiness; fly wheels broken and bent; blows that look as though the shells of the Spaniards or the dynamite guns of the Cubans had got up a filtration with them; boilers through whose bat tered sides daylight peeps inquisitiyely; engines that once buzzed and hummed in prosperous factories, but which are now fit only for the metal pots; piston rods without connecting wheels and wheels without connecting rods; farm implements that have fairly lost their identity, and nameless remnants of en- zines in the last stages of collapse. If there is any vesige left in Cuba of it's former industries, it is certainly not the fault of the 75 men who are engaged in buying up as old metal the machinery of the war-torn island.
 ''We have no competitors in the busi- ness of buying up Cuban machinery" said the manager after he had exhibit- ed the melancholy-lool1ing collection Our men have secured the island and have sent on ship loads of the stuff Most of it is fit only to be melted down and used again as crude metal, but some of the copper machinery, of which the Cubans possessed good deal. we have been able to furbish up and sell in it's original shape at secondhand prices Our men will pursue their search until the last pound of Cuban machinery has found it's way into our yards. When the war is ended, if it ever does end, the Cubans will have to begin all over again and buy entirely new plants throughout the length and breadth of the land before the wheels of industry will be able to hum once more Then Uncle Sam will score again, for the new machinery will probably be bought from us. It will be grim joke if the Cubans, when the white winged dove of peace returns once more, should purchase machinery made from the very material that our men are now en- gagged in collecting. But all's fair in love and war, and this is certainly war"