"Much American capital will be put into sugar, tobacco and fruits. Many of these men are inquiring about estates in the interior that can be purchased or leased, and about facilities for transportation to the sea-board. This means the building of railroads. Banks are also to be opened in Ponce under our national banking law, and I fancy there will be the liveliest sort of race between rival capitalists as to who shall get the electric railway franchise for the city of Ponce.
"The leading citizens of the island are as wideawake to American enterprise as are these eager gentlemen of the pocketbook who came on the Sylvia."
Colonel Hill of General Wilson's staff was appointed Collector of the Port of Ponce, and he went very carefully into the subject of the probable resources of the island and what the new tariff should be.
In an interview with the Herald, he said:
"Most of my statistics are still incomplete, but I can give you a few facts, which will unquestionably be of great interest to the business men of the States. In Porto Rico everything is taxed, and most articles are taxed in several different ways. There is an impost duty on flour of $4 a barrel. I think that will be knocked off at once. As you know, this island paid no direct money to the former government of Spain. Everything in the way of salaries, pensions, etc., is paid directly out of the Custom House. The commander of the military forces on the island is a lieutenant-general, sent here from Spain. He gets an enormous salary. Many Spanish pensioners of prominence and rank have been sent to the island, and these pensions are paid by the island. Dignitaries of the church and priests are sent here in large numbers. They are paid out of the Custom House.
"Only yesterday I had an application from the widow of a Spanish general, who is pensioned, for the payment of her usual stipend. I had to take that matter under advisement. The priests here in Ponce applied for their usual salary for July. This, under the Spanish law, is a fixed charge. The matter came before me in my capacity of judge-advocate on General Wilson's staff. I had to report that inasmuch as we were operating under the Spanish civil law, which made the salaries of the padres a proper payment from the customs funds, the money was due and should be paid or else the Spanish civil law in that respect should be annulled or suspended.
"General Wilson refused to authorize the payment of the priests' salaries, and the matter went to General Miles, who sustained General Wilson. Now here is a very interesting and unprecedented question. As a matter of policy it might be well to pay these salaries for the present. The padres, of course, the next time they address the congregation will say: 'Here is this new American Government which you welcomed with such pleasure refusing to pay your priests. You thought you were going to be relieved of taxation. We must ask you to go into your pockets and pay us yourselves. Thus you have an additional tax placed upon you.'"
But still the clergy, as a rule, were in favor of the United States.
Father Janices, a well-known and most intelligent priest, had this to say in regard to the attitude of the Catholic Church in Porto Rico toward the United States:
"We are neither cowards nor liars. We do not deny that we have always been loyal Spanish subjects, but it is the duty of the Church to save souls and not to mingle in international quarrels.