In the same year the principal exports from the United States to Cuba, aggregating $15,448,981, were distributed as follows:
| Wheat flour | $2,821,557 |
| Corn | 582,050 |
| Carriages and street cars | 316,045 |
| Freight and passenger cars (steam railroad) | 271,571 |
| Coal | 931,371 |
| Builders’ hardware | 395,964 |
| Railroad rails | 326,654 |
| Saws and tools | 243,544 |
| Locomotives | 418,776 |
| Stationary engines | 130,652 |
| Boilers and engine parts | 322,284 |
| Wire | 321,120 |
| Manufactures of leather | 191,394 |
| Mineral oil | 514,808 |
| Hog products | 5,401,022 |
| Beans and peas | 392,962 |
| Potatoes | 554,153 |
| Planks, joists, etc. | 1,095,928 |
| Household furniture | 217,126 |
| Total | $15,448,981 |
These tables show the extent of Cuban commerce with but one country, the United States; and though, naturally and logically, that is the country with which Cuba must always do the vast bulk of her business, the other countries of the world have not been shut out; the average annual amount of exports from the Island to foreign countries other than the United States fell between $13,000,000 and $15,000,000, and the imports were upward of $40,000,000, the most of which, of course, was compulsory commerce with Spain.
A casual inspection of the above table of imports to Cuba, covering only a portion of the articles taken from us by the Cubans, shows at once what the demands of the Island are for even the simplest necessities beyond bare existence. The million and a half people of the Island want our flour, our lard and pork, our oil, our barbed wire—our soldiers found samples of it strung around San Juan hill,—our manufactures of leather, our household furniture of all kinds, our locomotives and cars and steel rails, our saws and mechanics’ tools, our stationary engines and boilers, our lumber in its various shapes for framing and building, our locks and hinges and nails, our corn and beans and potatoes; our coal, our street cars and carriages, and any and every kind of the manifold things we produce in this country for the comfort and convenience and economy of mankind. In part exchange for these things, we get from Cuba sugar and tobacco, and control the markets of the world in these products; mahogany and all manner of beautiful hard woods; bananas and cocoanuts and fruits, pleasing to the palate and wholesome to the health; honey from the flowers; glycerine, no less sweet, from the fats of cattle; manganese and molasses; cigars and coffee; beeswax and birds, and the vast fields of tropical wealth and luxuries for the millions of our colder clime scarcely yet touched.
The golden dream of Columbus and his followers, when they beheld for the first time the purple peaks of the strange land rising out of the sea before them, are as poverty and nightmare in comparison with what is actual and real, for the more material age of the twentieth century.
The greatest obstacle in the way of Cuban commerce, and the peculiar disadvantage under which the Island laboured was in a large measure attributable to the fact that Spain compelled Cuba to purchase merchandise in Spain which could have been bought in other markets at prices far below the figures which Cuba was forced by these discriminating duties to pay to Spanish merchants and manufacturers. The most glaring illustration of this may be seen by reference to the following table of Spanish imports into Cuba in 1896, which the author has prepared from the report of the Bureau of Statistics in relation to Spanish trade with Cuba and the West Indies:
The most casual observer and the person of the most superficial knowledge in trade matters must be well aware that Spain is by no means as good a market in which to purchase such commodities as are noted above as is the United States, or as is any other country, for that matter; yet Cuba, by reason of iniquitous discriminating duties, was forced to buy these commodities of the mother country, and to pay a higher price for them than that at which they could have been bought elsewhere. And not only was the price exorbitant, but the articles were of inferior quality, and, especially in the line of all machinery and the appliances of modern industrial progress, the types were primitive and the models were as old and ineffective as the workmanship and material were poor. To any Government seeking the best interests of the governed, these discrepancies would have suggested themselves; and in the logic of location and the invincible combination of first-class goods, low prices, cheap freights, and quick delivery, the trade of Cuba would have been turned to the United States. The Spanish Government would have been the gainer by the greatly increased prosperity, progress, and wealth of her Island dependency. But Spain pursued a different policy, and by the overwhelming force of natural laws, regulating the relation of the governing to the governed, she has lost not only the trade of Cuba, but also the Island itself, and by trade laws not less immutable than those of civil government, the compulsory commerce she exacted from Cuba goes freely, naturally, and logically, to the United States. It is scarcely necessary to say what the Great Republic will do in the premises. The youngest of nations, it stands to-day to the fore with the oldest and the greatest of the powers of the earth in every field of human intelligence, industry, and endeavour, and it will scarcely leave the great work it has undertaken in Cuba to others for that final accomplishment which it is best qualified to carry to perfect completion. Cuba looks to the United States for encouragement, for strength, for education, for development, for business—for union, shall we say?—and, as her nearest neighbour, the United States will pledge itself that the Queen of the Antilles shall not look in vain.
In strong and hopeful contrast with this compulsory commerce is the amended American tariff of Cuba, which makes no discrimination whatever against the Cuban purchaser; and now and hereafter, so long as the United States Government controls the affairs of Cuba, the Cuban producer may sell his sugar, tobacco, fruit, iron ore, hard woods, and all that he produces to whomsoever he will; and he may buy what he wants from whomsoever he thinks sells cheapest and best. He is in no way bound to the United States and its markets, but is perfectly free to buy his goods in England, or France, or Germany, or Kamschatka, or even in Spain herself, if he can there find the best return for his money. We of the United States shall not so much as expect that the Cuban may, from a sense of gratitude to us for services we have rendered, give his trade to us; but we shall teach him, by the invincible example of the very best goods at the very lowest prices, that the markets of the United States present to the buyer attractions possessed by no other markets of the world, and he will learn early that having been his benefactor in war, we are not less so in peace; and as we have made him free, we have no fear that he will use that freedom to his own disadvantage.