The copper country evening news. [volume] (Calumet, Mich.) 18??-1907, 1898-03-25
PEARL OF THE ANTILLES.
THE STORY OF CUBA, HER PEOPl>
AND HER RESOURCES.

ton at Madrid, and thus. from years of
weakness, strength grew, so that insur
rectlon came to mean revolution, and
there dawned upon the sight of the
striving patriot the splendid vision of a
blood bought but free republic.
But people know more of the strug-
giles OF Cuba than they do of Cuba itself.
Every civilized inhabitant of the globe
has followed with feelings of indigna-
ton and pity the story of Cuba's suffer-
ing. All the instructions, the Sep
aratist wars" and the other vain but
valiant efforts of the Cubans to throw
off the Spanish yoke have appealed to
his chivalry and wrung his heart with
grief and rage; but, as O rule, he is AS
ignorant Of the scene of these struggles
as if they had occurred in the viewless
air. And yet, in the comparatively
small compass of its watery bounda
ries, there is concentrated greater va
riety of natural resources than are to be
found in any other island, state, prov
ince or country beneath the sun.
This may sound extravaganza, but the
statement is verified by all reliable sta
tistics and unprejudiced witnesses. And
when those who cavil come to reckon
up its advantages-its millions of acres
of soil, richer than any in the United
States, that will grow anything from a
potato to pineapple; its abundant
yields of sugar and tobacco its ire
mendous forests of mahogany and other
precious woods; it's uplands, upon which
is grown every product of the temper
ate zone, and it's fertile valleys, from
which luxuriantly spring the most lus-
cious fruits of the tropics; its mines OF
iron and copper and manganese; its
hundreds of beautiful and excellent
harbors, and the soft, healthful atmos-
phere of perpetual summer that forms
the setting for this peerless "Pearl -
their doubts will be swallowed up in
conviction.
Complex study.
A study of this wonderful island is
complex from any standpoint The geog-
rapher, with the best map in his pos
session, will find new inlets, the natu-
ralist will add to his collection. and the
mineralogist will revel in novelties, and
even the blase cosmopolitan will recover
in Cuba the zest which had gone out of
his life. And all this is merely to say
that a great deal Of the accepted data
with reference to Cuba is either ineXact
or wholly faulty. This, OF course, like
everything else that works injury to the
island as to it's relation to the rest of
the world. is due to the autocratic and
ignorant methods of the Spanish author
tiles. the tendency of whose "disci-
pline" is toward handicapping every
public spirited enterprise and retarding
everything that is not done directly IN
the interest of the honor and glory and
revenue of the power across the sea, for
whom this poor. downcast people have
been working out what has heretofore
appeared to be life subsidy.
Notwithstanding all these difficulties
the enterprise of Americans and others
foreign to the soil has led native indus
try in the right direction, and its COM
MERGE has grown in the teeth OF riot and
insurrection. The normal population,
1. 700. 600, composed Of something near
1000, 600 persons of Spanish descent
10. 600 foreign whites, 900 Chinese
and 500, 600 negroes and colored people,
is not busy throng. The lettering Gu
ban of today can hardly be recognized as
the descendant of those sturdy pioneers
of the sixteenth century who fashioned
the gigantic bastions Of Ell Castillo de
In Fuerza-the Castle of Strength-but
still he can be brought to bestir himself
IL a sufficient financial inducement is
offered. To be entirely just, it should be
said that enterprise is not wholly want
ing. even among the laboring classes
And so capital, which was at first large
ly American, was put to work, and as
n result cities have sprung up, large
plantations have been put under cultiva-
tiop. mines have been opened up, and
sugar. tobacco and the hundreds OF 9TH
er valuable products of the island have
been made TO enrich it, AS is we'll
known, large and usurious part OF the
annual revenues of planters, miners and
has been taken for taxes,
and at length it has found its way into
the ever depleted Golfers OF the home
government at Madrid. And still traffic
Increased until the beginning OF the rev.