insurgents, send them to their homes, and, as far as possible, furnish them with work, at the same time taking into the public service such of their officers as were fitted by character and education to fill places of responsibility and trust. Some of the soldiers objected strenuously, at first, to the surrender of their weapons, and a few discontented officers, who had failed to get positions, took to the hills and became bandits; but, as a rule, both officers and men went to their homes quietly and peaceably; and when I left Santiago, in the latter part of January, the Cuban army in that part of the island had virtually ceased to exist. Many of its officers, including such men as General Perez, Colonel Galano, and Colonel Valiente, had entered the service of the new Government, while a still larger number of its soldiers had enlisted in the gendarmerie, or rural police, organized by General Wood to protect from marauders and incendiaries the country farmers and planters.

Another important measure adopted by the Commanding General, in the interest of good government and good morals, was the prohibition of bull-fighting and gambling. To these amusements the SpanishAmerican peoples are particularly addicted, but the Cubans in Santiago gave them up with very little complaint, and I did not see or hear of open gambling in any part of the province that I visited, although there is plenty of it on the Spanish steamers plying between Santiago and Havana.

A third step taken by General Wood in the direction of peace and good order was the promulgation of a decree requiring all owners of live stock-horses, cattle, and mules-to register their animals and provide themselves with duly authenticated certificates of ownership. After the war there was a great deal of horse and cattle stealing, and disputes were constantly arising with regard to the ownership of domestic animals. In the settlement of these disputes the district commanders wasted many hours of time, and it was thought best to put a stop to them by compelling owners to provide themselves with documentary evidence of their title to the live stock of which they were in possession. The scheme, in practice, worked well, and a source of much ill feeling and quarreling was thus removed.

In many parts of the province--par

ticularly in Santiago and GuantanamoGeneral Wood and the district commanders were put to a great deal of trouble as a result of the dishonesty or cupidity. of bakers, grocerymen, marketmen, and priests. I have referred in an earlier article to the stealing by the bakers of Guantanamo of a part of the flour sent them to be made into bread for the starving inhabitants of the city. The lesson given them by Lieutenant Fraser at that time was soon forgotten, and some months later Colonel Ray found it necessary to fix the rate per pound-loaf at which bread should be sold, in order to prevent what amounted, practically, to robbery of their customers. The bakers then proceeded to reduce, gradually, the weight of their loaves-at first to fourteen ounces, then to twelve, and finally to nine. When a stop was put to this, they resorted to an expedient which seems to have been common in Cuba under the Spanish régime, viz., the falsification of weights and scales. Upon complaint of a consumer, Colonel Ray finally ordered an examination to be made of balances and scales in all the bakeries, groceries, and meat-markets of the city. More than forty of them were found to be fraudulent, and were forthwith confiscated and destroyed. Even in the ranks of the Roman Catholic clergy there was so little honor, sympathy, or public spirit that the bodies of the dead often lay unburied for several days because the priest refused to read the burial service or permit the interment of the corpse in consecrated ground until he had received his fee of four dollars and a half. When, on one occasion, Colonel Ray returned to Guantanamo after a week's absence, he found a yellow-fever corpse which had lain unburied four days. Learning that the neglect was due to the attitude of the priest, he sent for the latter and inquired why he had refused to allow the body to be buried. The priest coolly explained that he no longer received a salary from the Spanish Government, and that he must collect his fees in order to get bread to eat. "I'll give you something to eat!" exclaimed Colonel Ray, indignantly, "but I'll make you work for it in the streets. Here I am trying to stamp out yellow fever in this district, and you keep a yellow-fever corpse above ground until it rots, rather than lose your miserable fee of four dollars and a half,

You're a scoundrel, if you are a priest! Go and have that body buried, and don't let me hear again of your refusing to bury the dead, fees or no fees."

When General Wood had drawn up and promulgated a "constitution," organized and put into operation a simple but effective system of government, and corrected some of the evils and abuses that had grown up under the corrupt rule of the Spaniards, he turned his attention to questions of finance. There was no money, of course, in the treasuries of the municipalities, and a large sum would be needed at once, not only to meet the current expenses of the government, but to carry on sanitary and other public work. The customs duties on imports were already yielding a very considerable revenue at Santiago, Manzanillo, Guantanamo, and Gibara; but it was thought best to supplement this by levying a direct tax upon. the people. Under the Spanish régime the revenues of the Cuban municipalities were derived chiefly from the meat tax, from taxes on real estate, and from trade licenses. As real estate in the province of Santiago, immediately after the war, was unproductive, and as the meat tax was regarded as burdensome and oppressive, General Wood and his advisers decided to raise money for municipal purposes by means of trade licenses-that is, by a direct tax upon all gainful occupations. A License Commission, consisting of two Cubans and two American officers, was appointed at Santiago to draft a scheme, and upon their report, which was approved by the Chamber of Commerce and the Mayor, a schedule or graduated list of trade licenses was adopted for the city. By this schedule all persons pursuing gainful occupations were taxed according to their estimated profits or their assumed ability to pay. For the privilege of carrying on their business, banks, bankers, and pawnbrokers, for example, were required to pay $1,000 per annum; electric light companies, $800; general commission merchants, $700; distillers, $600; importers of coal, $400; cable, telegraph, and telephone companies, $300; wholesale or retail dealers in liquors, $300; match manufacturers, $250; and so on down to $6 for permission to maintain a bread-stand, a fruit and vegetable stand, or a confectionery-shop. The tax might

66

be paid in monthly, tri-monthly, or semiannual installments, at the option of the payer. In addition to this tax, a small import duty, known to Cuban merchants as arbitrio voluntario de descarga," was imposed for municipal purposes in Santiago on all articles of commerce there discharged. In Guantanamo and Baracoa the general scheme of taxation was the same, but the rates were somewhat different, and, at the time of my visit, there was no municipal import duty at either of these places.

All things considered, this scheme of taxation was probably as good as any that could have been devised, and it was far less burdensome to the people, as well as less vexatious to the merchants, than the Spanish scheme which it superseded. It was fairly equitable, easily collected, and not readily evaded; and, with the customs duties, it produced revenue enough to meet all the needs of the municipalities and the province. In January last General Wood had in his treasury about $250,000, and was employing thousands of men in paving, street-cleaning, road-making, harbor-dredging, and public work generally. I did not hear any complaints either of his taxes or his expenditures. All the people of Santiago seemed to realize that the money collected in taxes was being spent honestly and judiciously in the promotion of the public welfare, and their only fear was that the centralization of all authority in Havana, which followed the appointment of General Brooke as Governor-General of the island, would result in a reduction of the revenue of Santiago province, and a corresponding limitation of General Wood's power to carry out his beneficent plans. Recent advices seem to indicate that their apprehension was well founded.

In no department of Spanish administration in Cuba were the changes and reforms made by General Wood more important and beneficial than in the judiciary and in the Spanish method of legal procedure. Justice was administered in the province of Santiago under the Spanish régime by means of courts of three different kinds; namely, municipal courts and courts of first instance in the provincial towns, and an “ audiencia," or superior court, in the city of Santiago. The municipal courts had jurisdiction in all civil cases

involving sums not greater than $200, and in all criminal cases where the offense alleged was not greater than a "faulta," or misdemeanor. In actions involving personal violence, as, for example, in cases of assault and battery, the question whether the offense was a misdemeanor or a crime depended upon the length of time that the victim of the violence was laid up as the result of his injuries. If he was not confined to his bed for more than a week, the assault was only a misdemeanor, and was within the jurisdiction of the municipal court; but if he was disabled for a longer period, the offense was a crime and went to the court of first instance for investigation. The court of first instance had original jurisdiction in all civil cases involving sums greater than $200, and it also heard and decided criminal cases brought before it from the municipal court by appeal. In all other criminal cases it acted merely as a court of inquest, whose duty it was to investigate the alleged crime, examine witnesses, collect evidence, and transmit a certified record of its proceedings to the Audiencia. It had power to interrogate an accused person, commit him to prison, or admit him to bail; but it could not try him. The highest court in the province was the Audiencia, or superior court, in the city of Santiago. This tribunal, which was composed of six judges, had original jurisdiction in all criminal cases involving offenses above the grade of misdemeanors, and appellate jurisdiction in civil cases. brought up from the courts of first instance. It could inflict the death penalty in criminal cases, and its decision in all civil cases was final.

In the organization and procedure of these courts there were many objectionable features. An accused person had no right to demand trial by a jury of his peers; he might be arrested, examined, and imprisoned by the court of first instance without knowledge, on his part, of the nature of the charge made against him; he had no right to a writ of habeas corpus, and he might be held "incommunicado," pending trial, for an indefinite length of time. Procedure in all the courts was very slow; persons accused of crime in Baracoa or Guantanamo could be tried only in the city of Santiago; witnesses had to be brought there from the most remote

parts of the province; bribery and perjury were common; and persons accused of crime were always held in prison for months, and often for years, before their cases came to the Audiencia for final adjudication. Colonel Ray told me that when he took command at Guantanamo he found in prison three men who had been held without trial more than seven years.

General Wood was not the man to allow such evils and abuses as these to go un checked, even under a provisional and temporary system of government; and in his general order of October 20 he gave notice that thenceforth "just remedy should be given for every injury to person or property; that right and justice should be administered without sale, denial, or delay; that an accused person should be informed of the nature of the charge made against him; that he should not be forced to give evidence against himself; that he should be admitted to bail in all except capital cases; and that he should be entitled to a writ of habeas corpus."

Besides making these changes in the laws, General Wood reorganized the courts by appointing a new set of judges, selected solely with a view to character and fitness, from the ablest lawyers and jurists in the province, and created a new force of municipal and rural police by enrolling in that service the best officers and men of the disbanded Cuban army. When I left Santiago, late in January, the new courts were working smoothly, and life and property were fairly safe in all parts of the province. In the city, and particularly in the vicinity of the Anglo-American Club at night, there was a good deal of disorder, caused by drunken American soldiers whom the Cuban police were afraid to arrest; and around Guantanamo there were a few robbers and tramps who occasionally stole a horse or set fire to a field of sugar-cane; but, generally speaking, the province was in a state of perfect order and tranquillity. It seemed to me that in the city of Santiago and the larger provincial towns there should be a police court of the American type to deal promptly with petty offenders, clearing its docket every day; and that there would be a great saving of time and expense if the courts of first instance at Manzanillo, Guantanamo, Baracoa, and Holguin could

try cases involving crime instead of merely investigating them and sending them for trial to the superior court at Santiago; but I presume that General Wood thought it best not to change Spanish methods of procedure more than was absolutely necessary in order to make them conform to American ideas of liberty and justice and adequately to protect the rights of the individual citizen.

The last field entered by General Wood in his campaign of reorganization and reform was the field of popular education. At the time when he took command of the department of Santiago there was not a single public-school building in the province that is, a building erected expressly for educational purposes. There wereor had been-both in the city and the larger provincial towns, a few free schools intended for the children of the poorer class of people; but they were all in buildings that had been originally designed and erected for private dwellings, and their equipment was as limited as their capacity. Such a thing as a public-school system, in our sense of the words, did not exist, and never had existed. Just as soon, however, as the more urgent and important needs of the department had been met, General Wood and his district commanders took steps to reopen the old schools and establish new ones in all parts of the province. A board of education, consisting of the Mayor, two members of the City Council, and six representative citizens, was appointed on the 15th of December to superintend the work of public instruction in the city of Santiago, and about a month later it was empowered and directed to act as a Board of Education for the whole province. Seventeen free schools were at once opened in the city-nine for boys and eight for girls and all were immediately filled to their utmost capacity. When I left Santiago, they were attended regularly by 1,774 pupils, and the Mayor had just recommended to the Board of Education the establishment of thirty more mixed schools to meet the rapidly increasing demand for better and more extended educational facilities. In Guantanamo and Baracoa a similar work was in progress.

In Santiago I visited a number of the elementary free schools, and found them packed with neatly dressed children, but

wretchedly furnished with educational appliances. At No. 49 Sagarra Street, for example, I visited with Major Barbour a private dwelling where, in two rooms that corresponded roughly to the front and back parlor of an American house, there were crowded one hundred and four boys, from six to twelve years of age, without desks, text-books, or slates, and almost without blackboards or suitable maps. The principal of this school was an intelligent young Cuban, named Ramon Martinez, a graduate of the University of Havana, who had in his scanty library such books as Wickersham's "Methods of Instruction," Sully's "Psychology of Teaching," Froebel's "Education of Man," nearly all of Herbert Spencer's works, and the educational books of Currie, Sheldon, and Fitch; but whose whole teaching outfit, or plant, if I may so call it, consisted of two small blackboards; a map of half the world on a globular projection, issued as an advertisement by the Canadian Pacific Railway Company; one worn, tattered copy of Ollendorff's "New Method of Learning English;" a few local butterflies, minerals, and shells of his own collection; half a dozen kindergarten cubes, pyramids, spheres, etc., of glass, which he had bought with his own money; and a small assortment of secondhand carpenter's tools. With the single copy of Ollendorff he was teaching one hundred and four boys English, and by means of the Canadian Pacific advertising chart he was endeavoring to make them acquainted with the world in which they lived. lived. It was pitiful and touching to see a capable and intelligent man trying to teach with such meager aids; but I must say that, notwithstanding the wretched inadequacy of his equipment, he was doing good work. The boys answered intelligently all sorts of questions about the geography of the world in general, and that of Cuba and the United States in particular; gave accurately and without hesitation the English equivalents of simple Spanish sentences, and seemed to be attentive, respectful, and eager to learn. When Major Barbour inquired, "How many of you boys want to be good Americanos?" every hand went up, and as we left the house the whole school rose spontaneously and shouted after us in a childish treble, "Goo' by Goo' by !" !

I

T is now a little more than fifteen

years since Professor Ely's small volume of lectures on "French and German Socialism in Modern Times" brought the substance of the Socialistic programme clearly before the American reading public. Something had been known, in a general way, about Socialism, but up to this time it was little more than the shadow of a name. Professor Ely's popular exposition was followed by the more elaborate criticisms of Émile de Laveleye and John Rae, by translations of Schaeffle's works, by Grönlund's Co-operative Commonwealth," and by a great many other popular discussions, most of them adverse to the Socialistic theories. One of the most succinct and philosophic statements of the nature of Socialism, as contrasted with the prevailing social system, is that of Mr. Thomas Kirkup, published in 1887, entitled "An Inquiry into Socialism." Mr. Kirkup is also the author of the article under the title "Socialism" in the last edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. In his "Inquiry " Mr. Kirkup considers the "Prospects of Socialism," which to him, at that day, were promising, and this was one of the clearest signs:

"The most notable examples of the enormous scale on which business is now carried on must be found in the great industrial corporations of America. These companies control the production and exchange of a continent, and they show a capacity for the combination of interests and for fighting each other which we have not attained in this country. Combination in order to ruin their competitors, so as to secure an effective monopoly of the market-this is the aim and tendency of the great industrial struggle, carried on with an energy and on a scale elsewhere unexampled. The result is to put economic power into the hands of the combined corporations, to place at their mercy the source and means of subsistence of the people, and from this point of vantage to gain control of American society generally to establish an industrial feudalism such as the world has never seen. "Hitherto we have witnessed the strug

gle of the democracy with the territorial aristocracy; in America, as elsewhere, we now see the opening stages of a greater struggle, of the democracy against the industrial corporations, against the industrial feudal power, the fully developed capitalism. Either it must control the American people or the American people must control it. The issue must either be a new industrial feudalism served by wage-laborers, or the control of American industry for the good of the people.

"At any rate, Socialists regard these colossal corporations and the wealthy bosses that direct them as the greatest pioneers of their cause. By concentrating the economic functions of the country into large masses they are simply helping forward the Socialistic movement. Their mission is to displace the smaller capitalists, but they will thereby eventually undermine capitalism altogether. In proportion as the centralization of industry is pushed forward, the easier it will be for the democratic people to displace its capitalistic chiefs and assume the control of it for the general good. They are only hastening the time when a vast educated and organized democracy, subsisting on precarious wage-labor, will find itself face to face with a limited number of mammoth capitalists. Such a crisis can have only one result. The swifter, the more complete the success of the more powerful bosses, the quicker will be their overthrow by a democratic society. Such is the belief of Socialists." 1

At

Whether or not Mr. Kirkup is alive today I do not know; if he is, the rapidity with which the movement so clearly outlined by him has been advancing to its issue must be observed by him with curious interest. The process of concentration is going forward, at the present moment, with a velocity which is simply bewildering. the end of 1898 the newspapers figured up the amount of capital which had been consolidated in trusts during the year as something like a billion and a quarter of dollars, and we held our breath in amazement; now they are telling us that the "Inquiry into Socialism," pp. 168-179.