"I was never away from the island at all," was the reply, "never even on a steamboat until I came to the United States last autumn; I came to show the people in your Congress that the coffee growers of Porto Rico need help."
"Why?"
"Porto Rican coffee is the finest in the world," the editor answered with a graphic gesture, "and when Porto Rico was Spanish we could sell in Europe at high prices, but now the European tariff against the United States includes us, and our coffee is taxed so that we cannot sell it. And the American market is satisfied with Brazilian coffee, which is of a cheaper grade."
"Is coffee the principal crop down there?" queried the boy. "I notice that nearly half these papers and books deal with coffee plantations."
"It is still, but not as it once was," the Porto Rican answered. "Sugar and tobacco are the other big crops."
"Coffee is easy to grow, isn't it?" asked the boy. "It doesn't want all the attention that cotton does?"
"After a grove is well-established, no, though we prune a great deal; but sugar, yes. That's not such an obstacle though. There is plenty of labor on the island."
"Isn't the bulk of the island colored?"
"No, no, no," answered the Porto Rican, shaking his finger in emphatic denial, "more than three-fifths are pure white, a much smaller proportion of negroes than in some of your Southern States. The negroes were slaves, but Spain freed them in 1873. There was no war." He smiled. "We are a most peaceful people."
