BoletiÌn mercantil de Puerto Rico. (San Juan, P.R.) 18??-1918, 1904-06-07
Five years
of experiences

attitude on the question OF whether or
no our agricultural industries are 20
be allowed to continue indefinitely in
their present fallen condition. Our
REPRESENTATIVES have won for them
selves the appreciation and applause Of
all our people by their determination
that the proposed loan, if ever mater
ializes, shall be primarily for the be-
nefit of our planters. Secondary con-
siderations will be entitled to hear
ing after our one great want is filled.
Our roads can wait until we are pro-
ducing sufficient quantity o. agri-
cultural products to make use OF them.
If our planters are in a prosperous
condition roads will become neces-
sity, but until we are producing to an
extent sufficient to utilize the propos-
ed public highways it would be folly
to construct them.
When a country is overdowing with
prosperity it can then afford to consi-
der loans for public Improvements
aside from that great, everlasting i'm
provement brought about tgrough in
dustrial prosperity and plenty. If
our country was in prosperous agri-
cultural condition it would be unneces-
sary for us to even dream of a loan,
since we could derive sufficient from
internal taxation to more than supply
the demand made upon our now de-
pleted trea sury. We could build our
own, roads, construct our own school
houses, loan money to our municipa
lities, in case it should be come neces-
sary, and we could always provide for
a day when, owing to some unexpect
ed condition, our products might, for
a time, become drug on the market,
or be psrcluded therefrom through
prohibitive exactions,
We regret to chronicle that our
Executive Council cannot be made to
see the advisability of . loan as we see
it. We regret that it has opposed it
self to the members of our legislature
amp to our people at large, since both
ouI representatives and our people as
a unit are working for what they con
cieve to be the best interests of our
island. Our loan, when it does come,
mus be for the sole benefit of our agri-
culture and although the Executive
Council can evade the bond issue for
a time it must in the end concede that
fer which our people clamor so per
sistently and with such fervor. Of
course we realize that the members of
the Council are thoroughly convinced
that we do not appreciate or realize
fully what the loan means in the way
of additional appropriations, but if
our taxpayers, who we the most high
1y interested demand it why should
the council oppose it, since the people
must bear the burden of the same7
We feel assured that when our re-
preSentatives we're called together for
a special session of the Legislature
they were of the belief that the gov
crnment had at last been convinced of
the necessity of an agricultural loan
and had decided that this was the
only remedy which would in any man
ner restore our coffee industry and
that it had determined to allow US the
privilege of issuing bonds for the
purpose of obtaining the necessary
amount to once more place us upon
our feet. They did not conceive that
it was possible for the government to
to have adopted the stand of our Com
missioner of the Interior. Mr.. Elliot
who says that an agricultural loan is
not necessity for our island. If an
agricultural loan is not a necessity
then why should loan for public i'm
provements be SO necessary. since it
is only question of very short time
until we are so completely ruined that
il will be impossible for our laboring
classes to find employment, and they
will be obliged to eniigrate to some
land where the government is more
favorable to industrial activity and
less inclined to build roads for tourists |
80 travel over and school houses in
which the mud swallow and the been
will eventually hold undisputed sway
Had we been thoroughly convinced
that the government always intended |
that we should stand as we are, with |
out loan, our representatives might |
have taken the bull by the horns and |
assumed such an attitude that it would |
have been impossible for the wheels |
of government to have revolved with |
ont making them this concession. In
the past this lack of knowledge has
~.ada Il ;haroccif,la for 11S to have