"But with Porto Rico fully ours, and the discriminations enforced by past laws in favor of Spanish trade wiped out, there must be a change in the currents of her commerce. We shall expect to furnish the chief markets for her products, and on the other hand to send to the island more food products than ever, more machinery, textile fabrics, iron and steel. Her capabilities will be developed, perhaps notably in coffee cultivation. Her peaceful and industrious people will welcome American enterprise and capital, American progressive methods, and free institutions. Indeed one of the most striking events of this year was the extraordinary enthusiasm with which American troops were greeted all along the southern shores of the island. It was as if the people could already forecast the great future in store for them, under American laws and the American flag."
A correspondent of the New York Evening Post, who signs himself by the initials A. G. R., speaks with authority as follows:
"The prominence given to the island by the events of recent months has led many of our people to think it of vastly greater importance, commercially, than it really is. Consul Hanna, who is back in his old quarters in San Juan, has a small wheelbarrow load of letters from all parts of the United States, asking detailed information upon all conceivable lines of trade, manufacture and profession. To answer them according to the terms of their requests would be the work of a short lifetime. But they indicate the widespread interest of American business men in Porto Rican mercantile affairs. Every steamer arriving here brings its group of American passengers. Some are visitors who make the trip only through curiosity. The majority come with an idea of some form of business, either in the shape of a speculative flyer, permanent investment, or a commercial or industrial establishment.
"A large percentage of those who come are young men, who have just about enough money to get them here, to keep them here for a week or two, and then get them home again. These come in the hope of finding immediate employment, of catching on to something which will maintain them. They invariably go home again. The island is no place for such. None but the capitalist, the investor, or the business man with money for his business, should come to Porto Rico with anything more in view than an outing or a vacation. As things are at present, there is little enough to interest the capitalist or the investor. The man who is looking for a job should look for it at home; his chances are infinitely better than they are here. There is absolutely nothing for the position hunter, for the clerk, or for the workman. In time there may be something, but it will be, at the least, many months before such opportunities are open, and even then they will be few. Until then the case is hopeless, and those who come will but do as their predecessors have done—go home again, poorer and wiser men. If a young man can afford to spend a couple of hundred dollars in the purchase of that particular form of wisdom, the opportunity is open to him here on this island. If he cannot afford it, he will do better not to risk it.
"Merchants will find nothing to do here, except to glean a certain amount of information of rather doubtful accuracy, until the question of tariff rates shall have been definitely settled. There is now nothing on which to base any plans or calculations for business operations. The native merchants are complaining seriously. They are waiting to place orders for hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of goods to replenish stocks which have been depleted through many mouths of uncertain trade conditions, and are losing business which they have been led to expect would be open to them almost immediately after the American occupation of the different cities in which they are located. Nor is it at all easy for an American to obtain any definite information or accurate details regarding any particular line of business and its possibilities. Local commercial methods are not reduced to the system which prevails among American business men. The Porto Rican merchant buys and sells, but I fail to find evidence of that close study of business and business methods by which the American merchant increases his trade and his profits.
"The entire trade of the island is of no very great magnitude. The local trade in local products is chiefly confined to the morning market for table supplies, which is held in all the cities and larger towns. The total imports and exports hardly reach a gross amount of thirty millions of dollars a year, and the imports exceed the exports by a couple of millions. I have been unable to find any statistics which I was willing to accept as wholly reliable. So far as I can learn, no complete report has been submitted by the United States Consul, and there are discrepancies which I cannot reconcile in the published reports of the English Consul and those of the Dutch Consul. I can, therefore, only give figures which are approximate, though they are sufficiently close for general purposes.
"Cotton goods appear to be the largest item among the imports, and they represent a trade of two or three millions of dollars, varying from year to year, according to the prices and the success or failure of the crop products of the island. Rice is imported to the value of one and a half to two millions of dollars. Flour, chiefly from the United States, approximates three-quarters of a million dollars. Dried, salt and pickled fish, of which Canada seems to obtain the lion's share of the trade, represents a million to a million and a quarter. The United States has the major portion of a trade in pork and pork products which about equals the fish business.
"Woollen goods are, naturally, of but limited consumption in so warm a climate, and the trade is probably less than $150,000 in amount. Agricultural implements represent a business of three to four hundred thousand dollars. Boots and shoes, almost exclusively from Spain, represent some five or six hundred thousand. Chinaware, glassware, lumber, coal, soap, furniture and other articles of general use and consumption represent amounts varying from one to three or four hundred thousand dollars.
"The most astonishing thing in the whole list of importations is the item of vegetable and garden products. These are imported into this country, which is in itself but a natural garden in which can and should be raised every form of vegetable necessary or desirable for consumption, and the annual value of the imports approximates $400,000 and the weight 7,000 tons. The island uses $150,000 worth of imported candles and $50,000 worth of imported butter yearly. It uses two to three hundred thousand dollars' worth of cheese, of which the Netherlands have, for the last few years, furnished much the greater part. Uruguay and the Argentine supply it with one to three thousand tons of jerked beef annually. Wines, beers, and liquors take something more than a half a million a year out of the country.
"Among Porto Rican exports coffee is the heaviest item. This reaches an average valuation of some $10,000,000 a year. Sugar ranks next, and approximates three to four million dollars. Tobacco goes to the extent of some half a million, and molasses touches about the same figure. Hides, cattle, timber and fruit are represented in the list, but their value is comparatively inconsiderable. Guano to the extent of half a million a year appears in the reports for some years, but I am unable to account for either the article or the amount. Some corn has been sent to Cuba, some native rum to Spain, and some bay rum to France and to the United States.