Fisherman & farmer. [volume] (Edenton, N.C.) 1887-19??, 1898-01-14
Distress
In Cuba.
A True Story of The Suffering
On The Island.
WOMEN AND CHILDREN
ARE STARVING
How Charles w. Russell Says
Some Two Hundred Thousand
Cubans ere Daily Suffering
And Dying From Diseases
Produced by a Lack of Nour
iShment.

lSI1 SnC.
Hon. Charles w. Russell
Assistant United States Attorney
in the Department of Justice
returned from Cuba, where he
has spent two weeks Investigate
ing the conditions prevailing On
the island.
To the Associated Press, Mr..
Russell said:
IL ain very glad to be inter-
viewed on the subject of Cuba,
because | feel it solemn duty
to humanity to endeavor to
make the American people real
ize the terrible distress which
exists there. Much HIS been
written on the subject, but
judging others by myself, l feel
quite sure that because we do
not commit, and have not in our
history committed such atrocities
as Spain is committing on that
island, the American reading
public regards the reports as
biased by the preconceived
opinions of newspapers or gross
ly exaggerated.
II spent just two weeks in
Cuba, visited Havana, went
south to Jaruco, southeast to
Guines, northeast to Matanzas,
eastwardly about two hundred
miles through the middle of the
country to San Domingo, Santa
Clara and Sagua La Grande. l
visited Marianao, a short dis
tance west of Havana, and saw
along the railroads 80 or 40
towns or stations. In Havana |
visited the Fossos, the Hospital
Prison Aldecos, where | talked
with the father of Evangelina
Cosio Y. Cisneros, and a place
called the JaCaba. I found re-
concen radoes at ell three places,
and begging everywhere about
the streets of Havana. The spec
tacle, at the Fossos and Jacoba
house, Of women and children
emaciated to skeletons and suf>
ferings from diseases produced
by starvation, was sickening. In
Sagua | saw some sick and e1n-
aciated little girls in a children's
hospital, started three days be-
fore by charitable Cubans, and
saw a crowd of miserable look>
ing reconcentradoes with tin
buckets and other receptacles
getting a small allowance of
food doled out to them III a yard.
In the same city, IN an old sugar
warehouse saw stationed around
the inside walls the remnants of
twenty of thirty Cuban families.
In one case the remnant consist
ed of two little children ofseven
or eight. In another case where
l talked to the people in broken
Spanish, there were four individ>
uals, mother, a girl Of ii and
two small girls. The smallest
was then suffering from malarial
fever. The next had the signs
on her hands. with which | had
become familiar, Of having had
the beri ,beri. These four were
all that the order of concentra>
ion had left alive of eleven. At
San Domingo, where two rail
roads join, the depot was crowd
ed with women and children,
one of the latter, as I remem Der,
being swollen up with the beri
beri, begging in the most earnest
way from the few passengers. -
"San Domingo is little more
than a railroad station in times
of peace, but at present it has a
considerable population living
in cabins thatched with the tops
of royal palm trees, composed of
the survivors of the reconcentra
does. The huts are arranged
close together in a little clump
and the concentration order re,
quired and apparently still