The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-06-15
1000 DEATHS A DAY.
Heavy Mortality in the Island of Cuba
Horrors at Madruga

NEW YORK, June 1.-THE Heralds copy
right cable dispatch from Havana says:
More than thousand persons die every
day in Cuba as a result of the famine and
disease due to General Weyer's enforced
recommendation of pacifcos General Wey-
Ter is reaping his crop and the result will
horrify the world. This fertile land is
weary beyond measure of Weyler and war.
Next month there can but be another jump
in the death rate. In May it was more
than twice as great as it was in March.
Now come the rains, and with them an
increase in yellow fever typhus which is
already in the field, and the enterc disor-
ders to which concentrates are particularly
liable. 1t was said weeks ago that the
logical end of General Weylers policy was
determination, and to-day 1 send proof that
it is true Even were war stopped now
there would be $4,000 or $4,000 deaths before
bettered condition of the stricken popu-
lation could check the march of the de-
stroyer. say this without regard to Span
ish or rebel. The proof that it is true is
here.
Not in a center of Asiatic cholera nor
even in one of bubonic plague" says an
American physician here after reviewing
my Facts, has there been any death rate
greater than that now reached in the town
OF Madruga, near Matanza, in the
plague-Sm1tten east is there a village which
may more justly challenge the sympathy of
civilization than this same Madruga, and it
Is one of many" There the reconcentra-
llon, with Its accompanying hunger and
disease has killed off one-thlrd of the pop
uIatlon since January. Including the re-
concentrates, Madruga had about 5, 600 per-
sons. The deaths registered for each of the
last hVe months are as follows January
40; February III; March, 260; April 45S;
May, 5S5; total, l,465. Add to this record
< Et Annf he. fTl,
tered and the real death record is !, 525.
There is no doubt about the accuracy of
these figures. An American physician to
whom l submitted them told me that such
a record was simply frightful and beyond
precedent, and 1t was he who added that
the Asiatic cholera or the plague would not
the rate holds out the population will have
disappeared in a few months at most ONLY
the most awful conditions can explain such
decimation.' He tells the truth, so l must
Withhold his name, for truth is bitter here
In little Madruga, with its 5000 population,
the deaths in May alone exceeded by 250
the total number of deaths in one year in
Savannah Ga, the population of which is
10000 and Madruga before General Weyler
sowed the crop which is ripening to-day
was famous as health resort because of
Its mineral springs.
General Weylers policy is resulting in the
wholesale removal of pacificos and women
and children who cannot escape while the
insurgents the men against whom Spain
sends him, are not being conquered. On
free from disease, are taking courage be-
cause his active military operations are
few, and busy themselves with planting
their potatoes and rounding up cattle to
prolong the struggle which they believe
Spain must soon relinquish. Of course, in
Madruga more than one-half those who die
could be saved if there were physicians
supplies and improved conditions, but these
at present are all out of the question A
family falls i'll and all die one after an
other. 1t does not even excite comment
There are twenty-one cases of typhus fever
in Madruga to-day, yet the soldiers have
just dug a deep trench about the place
which rains will fill with stagnant
miasma- breeding water
And in the meantime around Madruga
which is in Havana province, rebels are
well fed and ride sleek horses. The columns
which go out against them accomplish
nothing. In this province alone there are
now 400 well-armed insurgents, and all but
400 are mounted. While. these men are in
arms in Havana province and their chiefs
have just placed themselves on record again
as refusing to accept any terms short of
independence, the pacifcos in Haruco
Artemisa and Guines are being wiped out of
existence as rapidly as in Madruga In
brief the insurgents killed in battle in
Havana during the last month are by no
means equal in number to the helpless
wretches who died like stricken animals in
Madruga during May