The Key West citizen. [volume] (Key West, Fla.) 1879-current, 1926-04-27

tive climate to American visitors.
1t. is easily reached by boat, six
hours from Key West, or direct by
steamship from the North. And
Mr.. Bowman of the Sevilla- Bit
more can make you as comfort
able, yes, more so, than at any of
his other thirteen hotels, for you
can get here every luxury and also
light French wines with Cuba's de-
licious seafoods.
Just as Brazil is coffee, the
Malay peninsula rubber, so Cuba
is sugar, and other sections of the
world have not yet been able to
match these countries in the quail
ties and low cost of their native
product.
Despite all that Mr.. Hoover may
tell you, you can put it down and
prove it from the United States
government reports that it is an
economic absurdity to attempt to
raise rubber from patches of land
in the Philippines with unskilled
and unframed labor at 40 cents a
day, as compared with vast rubber
plantations in the East where
skilled and trained labor is 20
cents a day-just as absurd as an
attempt to raise tea in South Caro-
lima in competition with China and
Japan, or grow coffee trees in
North America in competition with
Brazil.
Yet for ten years we drank cof-
fee at price that bankrupted
Brazil, and rode on tires 40 per
cent to so per cent rubber that,
in their production spelled bank
ruptcy to the English and Dutch.
We sweetened ourselves with
Cuban sugar, expanding our con-
sumption per capita by 40 per
cent, while the Cubans went broke
on two-eent sugar. And we hugg-
ed ourselves with delight over our
national prosperity and the great
ness of our country.
War ON Cooperation
Then when comes the inevitable
reaction and coffee is twenty cents
and not two cents, and rubber is
on the way from under twenty
cents to its former price Of So, and
the price of sugar is made inter-
nationally outside the United
States, we rise and assert our SUI
premacy over all creation. The
government stimulates beet sugar
production. And Mr.. Hoover
threatens Brazil and the English
and the Dutch in q way that
neither Brazil nor the English,
nor the Dutch, nor anybody else,
can understand, except that it
means international unfriendli-
ness.
What we must have is inter-
national cooperation. This cannot
come by American dictation. But
America has shown the way with
a real United States protectorate
over Cuba, slightly preferential
tariff on her sugar from Cuba, and
a gradually developed feeling of
mutual confidence and good will
inviting the development of Cuba's
great natural resources by Amer
lean capital and Cuban labor.
Cuba in Outline
Cuba is less than 100 miles
south Of Key West, with Havana
slightly to the west, and most of
the island running southeast by
east. It is easily remembered as
a little over 700 miles long, and a
little less than 20 miles for aver
age width, embracing its $4,000
square miles. It's population is set
down at 100000, about one
quarter black, except in the cane
cutting season when more of the
blacks come in. But the Cubans
are the best workers. They do
more of the so percent hand labor
on the island, and it is declared
that four Cubans can do the work
of six Haytians.
American investments in Cuban
sugar of one billion five hundred
millions outrank that of the Gu
bans themselves, with one billion
dollars in Cuban sugar. But, of
of course, Cuba gets the greater
benefit in labor, taxes and island
development, as compared with the
American dividend return.
The colone system
The salvation of Cuban sugar
production has been the division
with the "colono" or farmer, who
leases the sugar land at nominal
rental from the mill and land pro-
prietor, clears away the forest.
plants the land. builds the '.batey"
or smaller village, gathers the cut
tiers and hires the teamsters, adj
vancing them the money to buy
their oxen and carts. with which
they get their cane to the mill.
In brief, the farmer works the
fields with balanced farm or
ganization, and delivers the sugar
cane in four-foot lengths to the
company at its railroad station on
the plantation, whence the COM
pany hauls it to its grinding mill,
converts it into raw sugar, and ex-
ports it to the refineries in the
United States.