Birmingham state herald. (Birmingham, Ala.) 1895-1897, 1897-01-16
WORSE THAN PEST|LENCE
Has Proven WeyIer's Infamous
Bayate Edict. 4
FORCED FROM THEIR HOMES
People Are Driven Into Already 0Vercrowded
Towns and Villages.
THEIR MISERY NOW BEING AUGMENTED
By the Privations They Are Obliged to Un
dergo-The Situation Depicted-Unit-
ed States Army Officer Will
Fight For Cuba.
FORCED FROM THEIR HOMES
THEIR MISERY NOW BEING AUGMENTED

Key West, Fla, Jan. 15.-Advices from
Havana state that the effort of Weylers
famous Bayate edict of the 1st instant, Is,
being felt with more intensity in the
provinces of Havana and Matanzas than,
in that of Pinar del Rio, since these
provinces are more thickly populated and
with more farms and estates than the
former. The wholesale abandonment of
the properties and the concentration of
the people in the towns will not only aug
ment the misery already prevailing, but
also present the serious inconvenience of
lodging SO many people in towns already
full to overlooking.
Without discussing Weylers barbarous
and inhuman measures in thus depriving
peaceful and unoffending citizens of their
rightful means of existence, and hud-
ding them in already crowded places,
exposed to all the rigors of hunger and
disease, simply for the sake of clearing
the country of so-called rebel sympathiz-
ers, legal point has been sprung by the
foreign property owners, especially the
Americans, who own large properties in
the provinces Of Havana and Matanzas,
which will surely lead to complicatio
and claims on the Spanish government.
Weyler distinctly states in his decree
that those who wish to remain on their
properties must exhibit the last tax bill
paid. Now, 1t Is recognized law that
taxes are only levied on productive indus
tries, and these planters have not been
able to work on account of the abnormal
conditions in the provinces since Gomezs
invasion in December, 1885, No taxes
have been collected since that time, the
government tacitly admitting such un-
usual circumstances, or being powerless
to collect them because the rebels were in
possession of the country, did not press
their collection, consequently no taxes
have been paid in the country since the
date mentioned. Besides that Weyler
has unofficially ordered that no sugar
crop should be made and now he wants
the sugar planters to pay taxes on an
industry which they have not been able
to produce. The legal absurdity can
readily be seen. -
The result has been that the manager of
the sugar estate "San Antonio" near
Madruga, Havana, owned by Mr.. Antonio
Terry, an American, residing in Paris,
presented himself to Consul Lee, demand
ing protection, because the military COM
mander of Madruga ordered him to aban-
don the place (Which, by the way, is one
of the most valuable estates in the prov
ince, worth al least half a million dollars),
because he did not present the required
tax bill. Consul Lee at once took the case
In hand and simultaneously presented the
same to the captain-general and the state
department at Washington. No replies
have been received yet, either from Wey-
Ter or from Olney.
To depict the situation in Pinar del
Rio, nothing can be better said than to
translate the report of a trip made to the
city of that name by correspondent of
La Lucha:
''Ali the way traversed by the railroad
from Artemisa to Consolation del Sur, Is,
without exaggeration, the most chastised
and undoubtedly has suffered most from
the rigors of war.
t'The fields waste and abandoned the
bushes and trees burnt, and the yellow
and decayed leaves strewn by the wind,
as tears drawn from the mother earth,
panied and anguished at the folly of men;
the huts destroyed; the stone houses, in
other times happy homes converted by
the hands of rebels and Spanish alike into
heaps of ruins, the black and fallen walls
of which, covered with Hchen only serve
as a refuge for the lizards and owls, the
can fields dried up, and covered with
bushes by the ravages of the fire; the
townsville authorities of which are maxi
ing great efforts TO remedy the necessi-
ties of the residents--full of people, of
poor families who daily troop down from
the hills, extenuated by hunger and
emaciated by the fevers, in such a way
that they resemble skeletons risen out of
their tombs to appear before the final
Judgment; to the right and felt of the
road, as much as the train winds its rapid
march, the traveller observes with pain
full anguish the desolation and ruin with
in the inextinguishable poetry of these
exuberant fields, always green with the
eternal yerdure Of spring, as If God with
His eloauence, would point us that the
only thing we can do Is to destroy the
beauties which surged from His bounte-
oiIs will"