Lyon County times. [volume] (Silver City, Nev.) 1874-1907, 1902-01-04
our RELATIONS WIN cUsA.
What Secretary Of War, Root, Has to Say
Akoat Them.

AN SAAASa Rk'eA SA'N OcS"ASAN ~ >~~~
future prosperity OF the island is to
be found in its commercial relations
with the United States, and the ne
cessity of securing some reciprocal
arrangement under which conces-
sion shall be made from the tariff
duties now imposed by the United
States upon the principal Cuban
products.
1.-The prosperity of Cuba depends
upon finding market for her prir-
cipal products-sugar and tobacco
at a reasonable profit. Under exist
ing conditions, or any conditions
which are to be anticipated, she can
find such a market for her sugar, and
to great degree for her tobacco,
only in the United States. Under
the existing provisions of the United
States Tariff law, the prices which
can be realized for Cuban sugar and
large part of Cuban tobacco in this
market are not sufficient to pay the
duties, cost of transportation and
production, and yield living profit
to the producer.
"I beg to refer to discussion of
this subject in my annual report OF
1899, and to confirm, in the light of
the two years which have elapsed,
the conclusion therein stated in the
following words:
"As the United States is the great
market for Cuban sugar, and the
prosperity of Cuba depends upon
that market, it is highly probable
that, however competent and efficient
may be the government of Cuba, in
to whose hands we surrender the
control OF the island, the first meas
ure OF fself-preservation which that
government will be compelled to con-
slider will be to undertake to secure
from the United States some tariff
arrangement under which Cuba can
sell her sugar at profit. The un-
certainty whether that arrangement
can be made now stands in the way
of the revival OF the sugar industry
| in Cuba. 1t cannot be doubted that,
when the question of future relations
between this country and Cuba
comes to be considered by the repre-
sentatives of the two countries, the
United States will deal generously
in all respects with the people for
whom she has made such great sac
rifces.
An reliance upon fair and gener-
Gus treatment by the United States,
the Cuban planters have made stren-
uous efforts to revive their great in
dustry, and have raised their pro-
duct of sugar from 3o8,ooo tons in
1899 to 61S, 900 tons in 1900, while the
output for the present year is es-
timated at something over 100000
tons. Incited by our precept and
trusting to our friendship, they have
struggled to retrieve the disasters
under which their country has suf-
fered. All the capital they had or
the rebuilding of their mills and the
replanting of their land. More than
half Of the people of the island are
depending directly or indirectly up
on the success OF that industry. If
it succeeds, we may expect peace,
plenty, domestic order. and the hap
piness of "a free and content people to
reward the sacrifice of American
lives and treasure through which
Cuba was set free. II it fails, we
may expect that the fields will be-
come waste, the mills will become
dismantled, the great body of labor
crs will be thrown out OF employ
ment, and that poverty and starva-
ton, disorder and anarchy will en-
sue; that the churches and schools
which we have been building up
will find no money for their support,
and will be discontinued that the
sanitary precautions which have
made Cuba no longer a dreaded
source of pestilence, but one of the
most healthy islands in the world,
will of necessity be abandoned, and
our Atlantic seaboard must again
suffer from the injury to commerce
and the maintenance OF quarantines
at an annual cost of many millions.
"Cuba has acquiesced in our right
to say that she shall not put herself
III the hands of any other power,
whatever her necessities, and in our
right to insist upon the maintenance
of free and orderly government
throughout her limits, however i'm
poverished and desperate may be
her reople. Correlativt. TO this rivht