The lovely climate and beautiful land are rendered gloomy by the state of oppression under which they suffer. The exuberant soil groans with the burdens which are heaped upon it. The people are not safe from prying inquiry at bed or board. Their every action is watched, their slightest words noted and perhaps distorted. They can sing no song of liberty, and even to hum an air wedded to republican verse is to provoke suspicion. The press is muzzled by the iron hand of power. Two hours before a daily paper is distributed on the streets of Havana, a copy must be sent to the government censor. When it is returned with his indorsement it may be issued to the public. The censorship of the telegraph is also as rigorously enforced. Nor do private letters through the mails escape espionage. No passenger agent in Havana dares to sell a ticket for the departure of a stranger or citizen without first seeing that the individual's passport is indorsed by the police. Foreign soldiers fatten upon the people, or at least they eat out their substance, and every town near the coast is a garrison, every interior village a military depot.
Upon landing, if well advised, one is liberal to the petty officials. Chalk is cheap. A five-dollar gold-piece smooths the way wonderfully, and causes the inspector to cross one's baggage with his chalk and no questions asked. No gold, no chalk! Every article must be scrupulously examined. It is cheapest to pay, humiliating as it is, and thus purchase immunity.
As a specimen of the manner in which justice is dispensed in Havana to-day, a case is presented which occurred during our stay at the Telegrafo Hotel. A native citizen was waylaid by three men and robbed of his pocket-book and watch, about fifty rods from the hotel, at eight o'clock in the evening. The rascal who secured the booty, threatening his victim all the while with a knife at his throat, instantly ran away, but the citizen succeeded in holding on to the other two men until his outcries brought the police to the spot. The two accomplices were at once imprisoned. Three days later they were brought before an authorized court, and tried for the robbery. Being taken red-handed, as it were, one would suppose their case was clear enough, and that they would be held until they gave up their accomplice. Not so, however. The victim of the robbery, who had lost a hundred and sixty dollars in money and a valuable gold watch, was coolly rebuked for carrying so much property about his person, and the case was dismissed! Had the sufferer been a home Spaniard possibly the result would have been different. The inference is plain and doubtless correct, that the official received half the stolen property, provided he would liberate the culprits. Sometimes, as we were assured, the victim outbids the rogues, and exemplary punishment follows!
Flour of a good commercial quality sells at present in Boston for six dollars per barrel. Why should it cost fourteen dollars in Havana and other ports of Cuba? Because Spain demands a tax of one hundred per cent. to be paid into the royal treasury upon this prime necessity of life. This one example is sufficient to illustrate her policy, which is to extort from the Cubans every possible cent that can be obtained. The extraordinary taxation imposed upon their subjects by the German and Austrian governments is carried to the very limit, it would seem, of endurance, but taxation in Cuba goes far beyond anything of the sort in Europe. Spain now asks us to execute with her a "favorable" reciprocity treaty. Such a treaty as she proposes would be of very great benefit to Spain, no doubt, but of none, or comparatively none, to us. Whatever we seemingly do for Cuba in the matter of such a treaty we should do indirectly for Spain. She it is who will reap all the benefit. She has still upon her hands some fifty to sixty thousand civil and military individuals, who are supported by a miserable system of exaction as high and petty officials in this misgoverned island.
It is for the interest of this army of locusts in possession to keep up the present state of affairs,—it is bread and butter to them, though it be death to the Cubans. Relieved of the enormous taxation and oppression generally which her people labor under in every department of life, Cuba would gradually assume a condition of thrift and plenty. But while she is so trodden upon, so robbed in order to support in luxury a host of rapacious Spaniards, and forbidden any voice in the control of her own affairs, all the treaty concessions which we could make to Spain would only serve to keep up and perpetuate the great farce. Such a treaty as is proposed would be in reality granting to Spain a subsidy of about thirty million dollars per annum! This conclusion was arrived at after consultation with three of the principal United States consuls on the island. Cuba purchases very little from us; she has not a consuming population of over three hundred thousand. The common people, negroes, and Chinese do not each expend five dollars a year for clothing. Rice, codfish, and dried beef, with the abundant fruits, form their support. Little or none of these come from the United States. The few consumers wear goods which we cannot, or at least do not produce. A reciprocity treaty with such a people means, therefore, giving them a splendid annual subsidy.
Taxed by the government to the very last extreme, the landlords, shopkeepers, and all others who work for hire have also learned the trick of it, and practice a similar game on every possible victim. Seeing a small desirable text book in a shop on the Calle de Obrapia, we asked the price.
"Two dollars, gold, señor," was the answer.
"Why do you charge just double the price one would pay for it in Madrid, Paris, or New York?" we asked.
"Because we are so heavily taxed," was the reply, and the shopman went on to illustrate.
Each small retail store is taxed three hundred dollars for the right to do business. As the store increases in size and importance the tax is increased. A new tax of six per cent. on the amount of all other taxation has just been added, to cover the cost of collecting the whole! A war tax of twenty-five per cent. upon incomes was laid in 1868, and though the war has been ended ten years it is still collected. Every citizen or resident in Havana is obliged to supply himself with a document which is called a cedula, or paper of identification, at an annual cost of five dollars in gold. Every merchant who places a sign outside of his door is taxed so much per letter annually. Clerks in private establishments have to pay two and one half per cent. of their quarterly salaries to government. Railroads pay a tax of ten per cent. upon all passage money received, and the same on all freight money. Petty officials invent and impose fines upon the citizens for the most trifling things, and strangers are mulcted in various sums of money whenever a chance occurs, generally liquidating the demand rather than to be at the cost of time and money to contest their rights. The very beggars in the streets, blind, lame, or diseased, if found in possession of money, are forced to share it with officials on some outrageous pretext. All these things taken into consideration show us why the shopkeeper of Havana must charge double price for his merchandise. We have only named a few items of taxation which happen to occur to us, and which only form a commencement of the long list.