The History of Cuba, vol. 3

The Socrates of Cuban youth, as he has often been called, José Cipriano de la Luz y Caballero was born in Havana on July 11, 1799, and was educated at the Convent of San Francisco, the University of Havana, and the San Carlos Seminary where he was a pupil of his uncle, José Agustin Caballero, and of Felix Varela. Later he travelled and studied in the United States and Europe. In Germany he became intimately associated with Baron Humboldt. Returning to Cuba in 1831, he gave himself to the task of improving and promoting the educational interests of his country. In 1843 he revisited Europe, but was recalled the following year to answer an absurdly false charge of being implicated in the Negro Conspiracy. He then founded and until his death conducted his famous school of El Salvador, in which for a generation many of the foremost Cubans were educated, and in which manhood and patriotism were ever the foremost items of the curriculum. He was the author of a number of standard educational works. He died on June 22, 1862.
BY WILLIS FLETCHER JOHNSON A.M., L.H.D. Author of A Century of Expansion, Four Centuries of the Panama Canal, America's Foreign Relations Honorary Professor of the History of American Foreign Relations in New York University WITH ILLUSTRATIONS VOLUME THREE
NEW YORK B. F. BUCK & COMPANY, INC. 156 FIFTH AVENUE 1920
Copyright, 1920, By CENTURY HISTORY CO. ——— All rights reserved
Entered at Stationers Hall London, England. PRINTED IN U. S. A.

THE revolutionary era in Cuban history had its rise amid circumstances of both political and commercial dissatisfaction and protest, and it is by no means impossible nor even improbable that the latter form of discontent was the more potent of the two. The commercial and industrial development of the island, despite its almost incredibly opulent resources, had been very slow, because handicapped by selfish and sordid misgovernment. The typical attitude of the Peninsular government and its agents in Cuba had been to use and to exploit the island for the sole benefit of Spain, and not to permit other nations to enter in competition. Other countries, in fact, so great was the secrecy maintained with regard to Cuba, knew but little of the vast wealth contained in this small space of land. Consequently the island was developed in accordance with the wishes, needs, and potentialities of Spain and with one other point of view. Cuba was never exploited by Spain for all its worth, and indeed there seems to be doubt as to whether Spain ever grasped in full the future possibilities of the island. Certain it is that she never actually realized them. And the loss was in consequence as great to Spain as it was to Cuba. For had Spain allowed herself to lose sight of the richness of present extortions and aided Cuba to develop her resources for the future, the whole story would have been far different. But the people of the United States were beginning to recognize Cuba's possibilities. American merchants began to flock thither. American money and American resourcefulness opened new doors for Cuba's rich products. American trade and enterprise contributed a great deal which made for Cuban expansion and industrial development. In proof of this there is the fact that the island towns on the north side, which is nearest the United States, increased both in population and commercially, in striking contrast to the slow growth of the towns on the south side of the island. In 1850 these latter towns, with Santiago de Cuba as the chief city, did not maintain more than twenty-five per cent. of the trade of the island.