Porto Rico: Its History, Products and Possibilities

by A. D. Hall

"It will thus be seen that, as yet, the island offers but a comparatively limited amount of business, either in buying or selling. Under wise laws, and a just and equitable system of taxation, with a suitable railway system and improved highways, and with the ports of the United States and of the islands open to the exchange of commodities, free of duty, a very material increase of the business of the island will inevitably follow. It is quite possible to double the trade within the next ten or fifteen years. There will be some wildcat speculation, some unwise investment and some loss to investors. The schemer and the promoter will find victims who will put their money into companies whose future is wholly hopeless. But along with that there may reasonably be expected a steady growth and improvement. But it will come by gradual increase and development, and not by a sudden bound."

According to Mr. William J. Morrisey, a prominent real estate dealer of Brooklyn, who spent some time in Porto Rico, the island is no place for an American to invest any money at present. He says that the place can be made to pay, provided the United States Government clears the entire island of Spaniards and fills the towns and cities with the American people.

Mr. Morrisey also states that the natives of the cities are desirous of becoming American citizens, but that out in the country, it is far different. These people are constantly in fear of the Americans, and their sole desire is to dispose of their property as soon as possible and return to Spain. The more enlightened of them are of the opinion that the United States Government will banish all the Spaniards from the island and thereby make it more agreeable for the residents.

A dispatch of the Evening Post says that in view of representations made to the War Department that the municipal councils in Porto Rico were making hay while the sun shines, and granting business franchises right and left under the Spanish law empowering them to do so, orders were recently issued to General Brooke to put a stop to the practice forthwith, and the announcement was given out that on the evacuation by the Spaniards, and our assumption of military authority in the island, no more of these loose grants would be made. Meanwhile American shippers were in a state of mind over a lack of ships with which to conduct the normal commerce of this country with Porto Rico. The change of status for the island, from being a foreign possession to a port of the United States coast, had made the rigid regulations of our coasting trade applicable to it, and the purchase of so many of our coasting vessels by the government for use as transports, coalers, and the like, had embarrassed the progress of coast commerce not a little. The regulations had to be suspended on two or three occasions to let in ships which seemed absolutely necessary, and now the question came up whether it would be best to suspend the regulations altogether or to have each separate vessel which needed American papers apply to Congress for special legislation.

There was another question, and a very important one, which came up, and that was how far Louisiana and other sugar-producing States would be affected by the annexation of Porto Rico.

In no State in the Union does a single interest play so important and so peculiar a part as the sugar industry in Louisiana. Fully two-fifths of the inhabitants of the State are more or less interested in sugar, and any great disaster to the crop would injure ninety per cent. of the population in southern Louisiana.

So far as Porto Rico goes, it is very doubtful if it will injure Louisiana in any way. As has been said before, the island is densely populated, small in area, and with little additional land available for sugar. It is by no means probable that it will increase materially in its sugar production. American laws will militate against the importation of contract labor, and will therefore prevent any undue competition. As the New York Sun very justly observes, the bugbear of the Louisiana sugar planter is not territorial expansion, but the war taxes and the possibility of their permanent adoption, bringing with it the reopening of the old tariff agitation, which they supposed was permanently closed.

Taking it all in all, territorial expansion has certainly no terrors for the Louisiana planters.

With the evidence we have given, it is easy to see what Porto Rico has to offer, or not to offer, to Americans.

With their usual manana, the Spaniards have been slow to evacuate the island, but a decisive stand has been taken by the President.