The age-herald., 1900-04-09
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA.

having a hard time of it. an reports to the contrary notwithstanding, said one of the passengers on the Arkansas, which was the last boat up from the island. "I am con- fident that no one of them is making a cent, and the ma jority of them have un- doubtedly lost heavily. I am speaking now of the people who have opened shops and other places of business. For few weeks after the occupation they did pretty we'll, but as soon as the novelty wore off they began to lose trade and it has been getting worse and worse ever since. At present the patronage of the American stores is confn- ed almost entirely to the American colony, which is insufficient to keep them up. They are practically boycotted by the Cubans and Spaniards. both of whom hate us with an intensity that the people in the United States simply do not dream of.
 Let me cite an illustration: One Of my friends, gentleman from Augusta, Ga., opened a notion store in Havana about year ago. He took down a stock which had been purchased at a judgment sale at actually less than half the net cost to man. ufacture. In included little of every thing, from gloves to fancy stationery, and, un- der the circumstances, he was able to offer some astonishing bargains. Near by was an old established Spanish bazaar, at whicf, the ruling prices were from two to three times higher. Yet 1t prospers, while my friends has never been able to do enough business to pay rent and clerk hire. I have seen Cuban women look at window full of twenty-cent stockings at his place, and then walk deliberately into the other shop and pay fifty cents a pair for identically the same article. When a Cuban woman can control her mania for economy to such an extent as that she really hates
 'Instead of diminishing, as some of the papers would have believe" continued the speaker "this feeling against the hnan steadily hp i'm crease. The Spaniards are bitter because we licked them, and the CCioanS are furi- ously indignant because they haven't been allowed to loot the public treasury. There you have the casetin nutshell, and the consequence is that the American Is partah. I was in a Spanish grocery store only a few weeks ago, when a servant came in with a basketful of things which had been purchased there and had been returned because in the lot there was a can of American condensed milk. The brand, mark you, was a standard one and the price only IS cents can, as against 25 cents for a greatly inferior German prod uct, yet the purchaser was so indignant that anything American should have been Sent him that he rturned all his groceries in a lump. And whom do you think I found this fastidious gentleman to be? Cuban invoice clerk at the Havana GUS tom house, drawing his pay from Uncle Sam.
 T was told by an American music dealer recently that he had lost $400O since last April-about' ten months. A hardware mer- chant said that he was out S11,0OO for the time he had been on the island I think he came there shortly after the occupation. Most of them are simply hanging on by their eyebrows, waiting a settlement of the vexed annexation problem. A few Amer jeans who opened saloons near the army posts in the Havana district made money for a while, but they were crowded out by the canteen system. I know of one post at which three canteens are in full blast and they have certainly knocked the outside liquor traffic higher than a kite. When more settled conditions prevail, I think Cuba will be a good field for progress sive America-but not now This may not be popular view of the situation, but I am stating cold facts"