One desirable outcome of the aspiration toward social equality on the part of Cubans is their aversion to tips. Employes, who had made some money sacrifice by leaving piece-work to act as guides about a factory, refused, evidently with considerable embarrassment, the offer of gratuity. A poor countryman who had left his field labor for several hours to show a trail through a tract of forest would only accept compensation under protest—and when it was turned into a gift for the children. These same men would have made as shrewd a bargain as possible and would have haggled for hours over centavos in a matter of trade, but for a service of courtesy money was no compensation for their sense of wounded dignity in accepting a gratuity.
With reference to the personal honesty of the Cuban, no unqualified statement is likely to be just. All people possessing great love of approbation and an excessive desire to please are apt to be more or less insincere in social intercourse. Extend the ethics of an afternoon tea to all statements of fact in business relations, and one has an atmosphere of reliability or the reverse about equivalent to that in Cuba. Men tell you things they think you will like to hear. It appears to strike a Cuban as something akin to discourtesy to bring a painful fact to your attention, even though a knowledge of it be quite essential to your business welfare. To save himself the embarrassment of refusing a request, he will often make a promise that he can not keep, and to save you from being disquieted by uncertainty he will give you an assurance as unqualified that ought to be decidedly conditional. His business statements are like his currency, subject to fluctuating discount. As in case of money, this is undoubtedly an inconvenience in conducting a transaction. But, as there is sound money in Cuba, so there are men to be found whose word in business is as good as their bond.
The upper commercial classes of the Island preserve a conservative integrity in their dealings and their methods of conducting business as high as prevails in any country. There are few failures. The representatives of large American houses report that their losses from bad debts are less in Cuba in proportion to the amount of business done than in the United States. In purchasing at retail one has to guard against overcharging. But this is simply a feature of a very ancient and still very common way of doing business. There are no settled prices, and each individual sale is a separate transaction to be settled by independent agreement, and is not prejudiced in the least by the precedent of previous transactions of a similar character. Americans, with little experience outside their own country, frequently bring up this practice as a main argument to prove the universal dishonesty of the Cuban. But it is like many other ingenuous arguments of the same sort—“It is not our way, ergo, it is wrong”—that would result in making virtue a decidedly local thing in this world if they were universally applied.
It is sometimes stated that while the Cuban, especially of the middle or lower class, is often lax about keeping his word, he shows quite the opposite disposition with regard to trifles belonging to other persons. The experience of foreigners on the Island doubtless varies in this respect. It is hardly probable that the Cuban has abnormally high regard for the rights of property. But here is the result of a single personal experience covering nearly two years, and divided between Cuba and Porto Rico, where the general moral standards may be assumed to be about the same. Though the person in question travelled most of this time, stopping at boarding-houses and hotels, and a guest in native families where only native servants were employed, though he allowed small articles of personal property to lie about uncared for, with the same freedom as in the United States, and habitually left satchels and other hand-bags unlocked, during these two years not a single thing was stolen. In Cuba umbrellas and unlocked baggage were frequently left unchecked in baggage and waiting rooms at railway stations, wharves, at warehouses, and at hotel offices, and nothing was ever lost in this way. Articles accidentally left behind in travelling, or when making purchases, were returned when opportunity offered. At no time during the two years was any attempt made to pass bad money or incorrect change. He travelled sometimes all night over rough trails and in the remotest parts of the Island, with only native companions, with considerable sums of money upon his person and unarmed, and was never molested.
Large contractors in Cuba report no unusual loss of tools through the peculations of their workingmen. The owners of retail stores, where there is such a multitude of petty sales that no record of such transactions can be kept, entrust practically their whole business to their clerks. Judging from actual experience with people and their way of doing business, there is nothing to indicate but that a fair degree of private and commercial honesty prevails. As a rule, the Cuban has not a passion for acquisition for its own sake. The question of money is an ever present and insistent one with the middle and working classes in Cuba as elsewhere; but when current demands are met, and they are not excessive, the Cuban is usually satisfied. He is not ambitious to accumulate. Men in political life, with uncertain tenure of office, expensive ambitions, and the worst kind of precedents to influence them, are said not to be trustworthy, but Cuba should not be judged by its politicians. Considering only the industrial classes, there is no reason to reproach Cuba with a particularly low standard of commercial and personal integrity. One will not find there conditions equalling those in countries where greater intelligence and social discipline have long prevailed, and where reasonably good government has been habitual; but the moral standards of the people in the respects mentioned are not such as to present a serious bar to the industrial development of the country.
One of the most common and perhaps the most popular charge made against Cuban workmen by Americans is that they are indolent. Disinclination to hard physical labor is a widely disseminated peculiarity of the human race. That is perhaps the reason why it is so confidently brought up as a defect of one’s neighbors. Foreign immigrants to the United States say that the American likes to do all the bossing and none of the hard work. German and Swiss peasants along the Rhine consider the Frenchman’s great weakness his desire to have clean hands and fine clothes, and that the Italian is a “lazy beggar.” And the Italian borderer will assure you that the Germans and Swiss want to “eat and sleep all the time.” Therefore, in forming a judgment about the working people in Cuba, one has to allow for this national equation. The climate of the Island does not encourage long-continued physical labor apart from all question of race. The American, the Spaniard, the native, and the negro are all subjected to this influence. But a moderate amount of any kind of work can be done by any of these under the right conditions. The immigrant from the North brings with him a fund of physical stamina superior to that of the native, which runs for life and is not bequeathed to his successors born on the Island. No statement that can be made is less likely to be controverted than the oft repeated one that the Spaniard is superior to the Cuban, even of the first generation as a laborer. But the climate which withdraws physical vigor frequently compensates by giving mental alertness. The man of the second and third generation on the Island is often quicker to comprehend any complex matter than his Spanish ancestor. This gives him a penchant toward the professions or the higher mechanic arts. It is not indolence so much as a combination of qualities of temperament that turns him away from manual occupations. He does not lack industry in his new career.
This charge of indolence against the Cuban workman is sometimes justified by the slowness with which they perform their tasks. They are not nearly so expeditious as Americans. But this is due in part to the system of industrial administration. The Cuban bricklayer lays as many bricks as the Englishman in the same trade. Recently in building the new Westinghouse electric plant at Manchester, American supervision raised the average number of brick laid a day by the British bricklayers from less than 400 to 1,800, with a maximum of 2,500 for the plainest work. This illustrates how large a part organization and supervision play in creating industrial efficiency. Employing the same men, the English
STREET SCENE, HABANA.