Concerning the practical side of the timber and lumber industry in Cuba, Mr. Charles M. Pepper, journalist, writes as follows:
“I have heard a hint that some of the Pennsylvanians who know something of lumber have got ahead of the Michigan and Wisconsin lumbermen who were expecting to exploit the forests of the interior. It is of no consequence who does it so long as the industry is developed. A civil engineer came to me the other day to ask some points about reaching a certain part of the Island. He also wanted to know a good land-title lawyer. His plan was to take the lawyer along and close up purchases of timber lands at once. The men he represented must have had money or they would not have indulged in the luxury of a lawyer to accompany them to the wilds of the interior. But their idea was the right one. Their money is in Havana banks. When they find timber lands which suit their purpose they will buy the tracts instead of seeking options and going back to the United States to sell these rights. Options on land are hardly known in Cuba. Nobody is likely to make money by that means.
“As to how far the woods can be cleared by native labor I asked the opinion of Major Van Leer, the government engineer who is superintending the construction of Colonel Hecker’s little military railroad across the bay at Guanabacoa. He has had experience in South America, in Santo Domingo and in other parts of the West Indies. ‘Native labor,’ he said, ‘will do for most everything except to boss the job and run the sawmills. They don’t know much about sawmills in these tropical countries, but they quickly learn how to get out the timber. A few lumbermen from Michigan or Pennsylvania would be able to handle the work without trouble.’
“The Cubans have already learned how to get out the mahogany, though only the edges of the forests have been touched. They have also learned something of sawmills, for in Pinar del Rio I have seen the tracts which they cleared of pine and cedar.
“These remarks on lumber are a digression. They may be taken at sawdust value by real lumbermen who have been brought up in Wisconsin or Pennsylvania. They are made because some folks with money have come to Cuba to buy timber lands. As long as it was only promoters forming companies for the exploitation of an unknown timber country it was not worth mentioning. Other phases of investment are becoming live topics for the same reason.”
Next in value to the lumber trees in Cuba are fruit-bearing trees of an almost innumerable variety, some of which are universally known in the United States. With a climate and soil peculiarly adapted to the highest development of all kinds of tropical fruits little has as yet been done, and what has been accomplished has not been by the natives. It is said of too many of them that when they are too lazy to pick the fruit nature so lavishly bestows upon them, they simply lie down under the trees and wait for it to fall. Though all kinds of southern fruits grow luxuriantly, the most valuable commercially thus far developed are bananas, cocoanuts, lemons, oranges, limes, and pineapples, and the north-eastern uplands seem to be, by climate and soil, especially adapted to the highest development. While some degree of progress has been made in the raising of bananas and cocoanuts, very little has been done with the other fruits, and the possibilities are wonderful.
The banana, of which millions of bunches are shipped annually, easily leads its competitors, in point of value. It is scarcely necessary to comment upon a fruit so well known to every American. As usual with fruits shipped out of the latitude of their growth, the banana of commerce is not the banana of its native garden, although it suffers much less by the transition than other fruits, as it ripens almost as well off the tree as on. It is much more wholesome for the foreigner in his own home than in Cuba. The banana has three stages of usefulness: in the first, roasted or boiled, it is nourishing and a good substitute for bread; at three-fourths of its growth it is sweeter, but not so nourishing; and at last it takes on an acid, bitter taste, healthful and palatable. Bananas of various kinds grow wild in many parts of the Island, and the poorer people practically live upon them free of cost. The fig banana, which is much more delicate than the common kind, is used as a dessert everywhere, and is very fine, but it cannot be shipped. During the past eight years, shipments of bananas from the four ports handling the business were as follows:
| Baracoa | 7,570,547 | bunches |
| Gibara | 7,369,193 | “ |
| Banes | 4,751,000 | “ |
| Cabonico | 3,118,007 | “ |
The war wiped out the banana business at Baracoa. The shipments fell from 1,552,700 bunches in 1894, to 2000 in 1896; but at the other ports the effect was not so serious. Gibara sent away 1,305,000 bunches in 1896 to 1,671,000 in 1894; Banes, 755,000 in 1896, to 1,028,000 in 1894; and Cabonico, 550,000 in 1896, to 643,000 in 1894. The plantain, another variety, may be called the vegetable banana, and is of very general local use as a food.