The Career of Leonard Wood

by Joseph Hamblen Sears

Then, turning to the alderman, he charged him to see that his order was carried out to the letter, unless he wanted to be expelled from office.

Thenceforward meat was sold in the markets at 25 cents. The same simple plan was evolved for all other kinds of supplies. Naturally such high-handed methods caused a great hue and cry {116} amongst certain of the citizens and no such method could have been carried out by any one but a military commander with absolute authority. Some of the newspapers, all of which had been given a free hand by Wood and were allowed for the first time to say what they liked, started a campaign against the new administration and its busy head. But hand in hand with this autocratic procedure went the organization of native courts, the appointment of native officials for carrying on the government, native police to catch Cuban bandits and native judges to give decisions and impose sentences. Furthermore, in these same days of autocratic action, the people gradually discovered that although everybody was forced to work all those who did got paid--something new to the Santiago-Cuban consciousness--that the invading American army was not arresting natives in the streets and thrusting them into jail, but that their own native police were doing this work. Gradually, as the city became clean, as prices fell, as payment for work came in, as illness decreased, as law became fairly administered by the Cuban officials themselves, a certain awe {117} and veneration grew for the invaders and their big, hardworking head. It was a revelation, unbelievable yet true, unknown yet a fact, which opened up to the minds of these long-suffering, incompetent people the first vision of an existence which has since through the same agency of General Wood become a fact throughout the whole island, so that Cuba is to-day a busy, healthy, self-governing state.

Parallel with the feeding and sanitation work General Wood put into effect a certain system of road building where it was necessary in order to keep the people at work and allow them to make money and at the same time to produce necessary transportation facilities. Five miles of asphalt pavement, fifteen miles of country pike, six miles of macadam were built and 200 miles of country road made usable out of funds collected from the regular taxes which had heretofore gone into the pockets of the Spanish government officials. The costs varied somewhat from the old days, as may well be guessed. A quarter of a mile of macadam pavement built by the Spaniards the year before along the water-front had cost $180,000. Wood's {118} engineers built five miles of asphalt pavement at a cost of $175,000.

At the same time a reorganization of the Custom House service was instituted which increased receipts; jails and hospitals were reorganized under the system existing in the United States; and perhaps in the end the greatest work of all was the establishment of an entirely new school system based on an adaptation of the American form. Teachers had disappeared. There were none, since nobody paid them. School houses were empty, open to any tramp for a night's lodging. In a few months this was changed so that kindergartens and schools were opened and running.

In fact the work was the making of a new community, the building of a new life--the repairing of the tottering wing of the old, old house.

All this, as may be supposed, did not take place without friction, obstruction, and without at first a great deal of bad blood.

Wood's methods in dealing with disturbances were his own and can only be suggested here by isolated anecdotes and incidents. When an official who had the Spanish methods in his blood {119} did not appear after three invitations he was carried into the commanding officer's presence by a squad of soldiers in his pajamas. The next time he was invited he came at once.

"One night about eight o'clock, General Wood was writing in his office in the palace. At the outer door stood a solitary sentinel, armed with a rifle. Suddenly there burst across the plaza, from the San Carlos Club, a mob of Cubans--probably 600. Within a few minutes a shower of stones, bricks, bottles and other missiles struck the Spanish Club, smashing windows and doors. A man, hatless and out of breath, rushed up to the sentry at the palace entrance and shouted, 'Where's the General? Quick! The Cubans are trying to kill the officers and men in the Spanish Club!'

"General Wood was leisurely folding up his papers when the sentry reached him. 'I know it,' he said, before the man had time to speak. 'I have heard the row. We will go over and stop it.'

"He picked up his riding-whip, the only weapon he ever carries, and, accompanied by the one American soldier, strolled across to the scene of {120} the trouble. The people in the Spanish Club had got it pretty well closed up, but the excited Cubans were still before it, throwing things and shouting imprecations, and even trying to force a way in by the main entrance.