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wealth of flaxen hair streams from her head, which is slightly bowed in grief.

"It is a study," said Mr. Watts, "of penitent woman, which is probably the highest form of womanhood; and yet they are often penitent, poor things," he said, "when they have little reason for remorse. They suffer much at the hands of others."

THE GENEROSITY OF GENIUS.

Mr. Watts has been singularly reckless and prodigal with the gifts of his genius. Now and then he sells a picture merely to supply the wants of every day; but most of his work he has done without other fee or reward than the consciousness of artistic creation and the joy of his art. From the time he was sixteen, that is to say, for three score years and ten,-Mr. Watts has maintained himself by his brush. He might have been a very wealthy man, but he is one of the children of light whom the skill of the children of the world in amassing worldly gear repels rather than attracts. In the course of an artistic career extending over the life of two generations, Mr. Watts has been brought in contact with men in all sorts of positions, from the

King on the throne to the Hooligan in the street. I asked him whether he had ever kept a journal. He said, no; he did not care for personal gossip.

THE PARADISE OF LIMNERSLEASE.

After lunch, while Mr. Watts rested, Mrs. Watts took me round the little domain, which was beginning to glow with the early glory of spring. It was difficult to realize that all this wealth of shrubbery and wood was the growth of only eleven years. Everywhere the touch of the master and the grace of the mistress had together made Limnerslease itself a beautiful picture, the idyllic peace of which imprinted itself upon all its denizens. Mr. Rhodes was deeply impressed with the sweet serenity and calm of the artist's retreat. The servant who opened the door, the man who drove him to the station, seemed to share in the restful ease which soothed and tran

quillized the eager Colossus. "And do you know," said he, in his odd way, "I believe if I had gone down to the kitchen, I am sure I should have found the same sweet serenity on the face of the cook."

A little way to the south of the house, in the valley, lies the art pottery works originally es

tablished as a kind of recreation school for the use of the village, and now carried on as a serious business under the personal supervision of Mrs. Watts. It is a very interesting experiment, and one which, I am very glad to know, is succeeding well. Mrs. Watts, like her husband, is a great believer in the latent artistic capacity of the English child.

"Train him early, let him taste the joy of creative work, and you can achieve much greater things with him than have yet ventured to hope."

The pottery naturally suggested itself as one of the most obvious and simple means by which to teach children to make things. Near Limnerslease lies a long deep narrow stratum of clay, the product of the attrition of granite boulders in ages long gone by, which have left behind them this clay as part of the inheritance of the human race. From this stratum the clay is brought out, disintegrated by winter's frost, then caked together, and passed through a mill whose revolving knives chop it up. It is then taken to a well, where it is mixed with water, and in the consistency of a muddy liquid it passes through a fine sieve into the vats, where it remains until sufficient moisture is removed to render it available for the potter's wheel. The one great staple

of the pottery manufacture is the great globular vase which is usually brought from Italy, but which can now be supplied from the Compton pottery. Another important department of the output consists in the manufacture of window. boxes in what appears to be terra cotta, with beautifully modeled bas-reliefs and fronts. These are supplied at 10s. and 12s. 6d. each. The cost

of the vase is 20s.

THE WORK OF THE VILLAGE ARTISTS.

They also produce sundials in clay at various prices, everything being done with the hand, and nothing by machine or by mould. Endless varieties of pattern can be obtained. All the productions are stamped with a special seal. I saw some of these, on the bases of which the heraldic bearings of the purchaser had been carefully modeled, and then affixed to the side of the globe. All manner of charming, quaint, and symbolic work can be seen at the pottery; but to see what can be done when good clay is moulded by nimble fingers under the direction of an artistic brain, a visit should be paid to the mortuary chapel in the little graveyard, close to Limnerslease. It is all the work of the Compton people, and the ironwork at the door was done by the village blacksmith.

A LIST OF SOME OF MR. WATTS' MOST IMPORTANT WORKS.

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"The Wounded Heroes" and two portraits of women, first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1837; "Isabella Finding Lorenzo Dead," from Boccaccio (1840); "Caractacus Led in Triumph Through the Streets of Rome" (1842); "Alfred Inciting the Saxons to Prevent the Landing of the Danes by Meeting Them at Sea"— a cartoon (1847), for which he won a prize of £500, purchased with his "Echo" by the Commissioner, and now at Westminster;. "Justice," or "School of Legislation (1859), a fresco, in dining hall of Lincolns Inn; "Orlando Pursuing the Fata Morgana" (1848); "The Good Samaritan" (1850), painted in honor of Thomas Wright, of Manchester, and presented to the Town Hall of Manchester by the artist; "Life's Illusions" (1849); "St. George and the Dragon," a fresco, in the upper waiting room at Westminster, begun in 1848, and completed in 1853; "The Window-Seat," "Sir Galahad" (1862), "Virginia" and "Ariadne" (1863), "Esau" (1865), "Love and Death" (1877), presented by the artist to Whitworth Institute at Manchester; "Paolo and Francesca" and 'Orpheus and Eurydice" (1879), both in possession of the artist; "Psyche" (1880), "Rider on the Pale Horse" and "Rider on the White Horse" (1881). "Rider on the Black Horse" and "Rider on the Red Horse" (1883), "Love and Life" (1884), "Death of Cain," "The Soul's Prism" and "Hope" (1886), in possession of William R. Moss; "Love Steering the Boat of Humanity," exhibited this year at the New Gallery.

Among his sculptured works are "Clytie," "Statue of Hugh Lupus," "The Huntsman" (at the Duke of

Westminster's country seat, near Chester), "Physical Energy," and the recumbent figure of Bishop Lonsdale in Litchfield Cathedral.

He has painted portraits of Guizot (1848), Tennyson (1859), also one early unfinished study and a painting finished from the study in May, 1890, another in possession of the Dowager Lady Bowman, another in red robes at Trinity College, Cambridge, and another in a peer's robes in possession of the artist; Browning, Swinburne (1865), William Morris, Carlyle, J. Stuart Mill (1874), Matthew Arnold, Dean Stanley, W. E. Lecky, Gladstone (1865), the Duke of Argyll, Leslie Stephen, Holman Hunt, Burne-Jones, Millais, Leighton, Lord Lyndhurst, presented to the National Gallery by the artist, with portraits of Lord John Russell and Lord Lyons; John Lothrop Motley (1882), Cardinal Manning (1882), Lord Lytton (1882), Sir Alexander Cockburn, Viscount Sherbrooke, Mrs. Frederick Meyers, Marquis of Salisbury (1884), Earl Lytton (1884), Rt. Hon. Gerald Balfour (1899), Livingstone, Joachim (1867), Dr. Martineau, Calderon, Max Müller, Lady Mount-Temple, Walter Crane (1893), Sir Andrew Clark, the Hon. Mrs. Percy Wyndham, Major-General Baden-Powell, exhibited at this year's Academy, and several portraits of himself, one in possession of the Dowager Lady Bowman, and one in the Uffizzi at Florence. Mr. Watts has painted five generations of the Ionides family. Many of the portraits first in the list were seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the winter of 1884-85. A number of these portraits will go to the nation.

INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL CONDITIONS

IN CUBA.

BY ALBERT G. ROBINSON.

UBA'S present is dark with the gloom of in

dustrial disaster and commercial stagnation. Her future is bright with the promise of peace and abundant prosperity. Given a land of immeasurable fertility, readily accessible to the markets of the great world outside it, a land receiving in due measure the kiss of the sun and the benediction of the rain, and, if that land be not unduly and artificially barred from the world's markets, prosperity is inevitable. That is Cuba's future. The days which lie immediately before her are filled with an uncertainty which renders prediction concerning them little else than folly. But, sooner or later, the clouds and the doubts which overshadow the Cuba of to-day will pass, and the island will take its place in the world as a land of peace and plenty.

SPANISH TRADE RESTRICTIONS.

Cuba's present distress is but the crisis of an economic disease of many years' standing. The original provoking cause was the unjust and unwise colonial policy adopted and maintained by the mother country. It began as far back as the year 1503, when a royal ordinance established the Casa de la Contratacion, or House of Commerce, at Seville. This body was empowered to grant licenses, to dispatch fleets, and to regulate and control Spanish colonial trade as an exclusive monopoly. In 1717, the institution was transferred to the port of Cadiz. The colonial trade was thus restricted to a single Spanish port. Further restrictions prohibited both intercolonial trade and trade with any country other than Spain. For a period during the seventeenth century such trade was made an offence punishable by the death of the trader and the confiscation of the property involved. In the first fifty years of Cuba's history, Santiago was the only port of the island through which merchandise could be either imported or exported without violation of the law. With the establishment of Havana as the capital, in 1552, that city became the only port officially recognized. With the exception of the brief term of British occupation, 1762-63, this condition obtained until the close of the eighteenth century. A royal order, issued in 1801, opened the other ports of the island to foreign trade. This was annulled

by another order in 1809. A few years later a new policy was adopted. The ports were opened, but the same results were accomplished by a system of discriminating tariffs which gave Spain a practical monopoly of Cuban trade. This continued, subject to sundry minor modifications, until the execution, in 1891, of the reciprocity treaty with the United States. With the termination of that treaty, in 1894, there came a reversion to the old system of discriminating, pref. erential, and special tariffs in favor of Spain and against all other countries.

This restriction of the fullest development of the resources of the island was one of the prominent fundamental causes of all the numerous revolts, large and small, which have occurred in Cuba since her first really notable revolt, in 1823. The Ten Years' War (1868-78) made no serious inroads upon Cuba's production. The abolition of slavery, finally effected in 1886, made a material difference in the cost price of her products. This was one of the direct results of the Ten Years' War. Coincident with the war and this enhanced cost of sugar production, there came the vigorous competition of Europe's bountied beet sugar, which forced the f. o. b. prices of Cuba's raw sugar down from 5 to 5 cents per pound, which it obtained from 187080, to 2 to 3 cents per pound twenty years later. To meet this competition, Cuban planters borrowed heavily for the construction of grinding mills equipped with modern machinery. In spite of the benefits of the years of reciprocity between Spain and the United States (189194), the outbreak of the revolution of 1895 found many Cuban planters burdened with overwhelming mortgages, and facing a further downward tendency in sugar prices. The three years

of devastating war destroyed scores of mills and plantations, but it did not destroy the mortgages and the financial obligations of the planters.

ECONOMIC CONDITIONS AFTER THE SPANISH-
AMERICAN WAR.

American intervention, in 1898, terminated a war which left Cuba an industrial wreck, with her finances in a state of chaos. Unfortunately for Cuba, and for the United States as well, her real condition was neither realized nor under

stood by those who essayed her political redemp. tion. There was a distinct failure in the diagnosis. Of those who were sent to administer the affairs of the island, only one man, Gen. James H. Wilson, correctly diagnosed the disease, and prescribed, in general terms, the proper remedy. In the report submitted by that officer, under date of June 20, 1899, there occurs the following:

I am so convinced of the futility of approaching the problem of reconstruction from any other direction that I must again urge the necessity of some action to relieve the wants of the agricultural population, and to put agriculture on a sound basis with the least possible delay.

In his report, dated December 31, 1900, Señor Perfecto Lacoste, the Cuban Secretary of Agriculture, Commerce, and Industry, states:

No order of general nature has been issued during the period to which this report refers, nor during the six preceding months, which comprise those of the occupation of the island by the intervening government, relating to our agriculture.

In a later report, dated March 15, 1901, Señor Lacoste makes the same statement for a second time, and it might with equal accuracy have been included in a report dated May 19, 1902. Cuba's present economic distress is no surprise to those who have watched the Cuban situation during the term of American intervention. For two years the Cuban press has sounded a warning; for two years bankers and merchants throughout the island have noted the coming storm.

Those

in whose hands lay the power of relief, and upon whom there rested the responsibility for relief, were blind to the danger signals and deaf to both protest and warning. As nearly all of these were printed in the Spanish language, they did. not come to the general American reading public, and such translations as were submitted were brushed aside as the querulous complaints of the disgruntled or the pessimistic. For their bearing upon the subject, I quote the following translations from editorials which appeared during the winter of 1900-01:

Over a year ago it was clearly seen and predicted by those who took the trouble of looking into the matter, that unless some general measures were taken to assist the agricultural interests and other industries of the island, its productive capacities would be so crippled that the economic and commercial life of the country would dwindle to almost nothing. That is now taking place, and at so rapid a rate that, if immediate remedy is not applied to the evil, it will soon reach appalling proportions, and misery and destitution will become a sad reality.-(El Avisador Comercial, Havana.)

What has the intervention done during the two years which have passed? Nothing has been done for our permanent interests; nothing to encourage our production; nothing for our extinct credit; nothing to revive our paralyzed industries; in one word, nothing by

which we could be assured of life, or which would give us confidence that the result of our energies would be the provision for our necessities. (El Nuevo Pais, Havana.)

It was to be presumed that the intervening power, on taking charge, would attend more to giving an impulse to our agriculture and our few industries than to the production of that Niagara of unnecessary ordinances with which it has augmented the existing laws of our country. But it appears that the necessities of politics -which ought to be laid aside when it is a question of economical existence-overshadowed all other considerations.-(La Independencia, Santiago.)

I take these from such clippings as lie immediately at hand. They are sufficiently representative of a large amount of similar matter which has appeared within the last two years. Any thoughtful investigation of the past three years in Cuba will disclose ample evidence to show that America's responsibility for Cuba's present industrial distress antedates, by several years, the failure of Congress to agree upon a plan for a reciprocity treaty with the island. Cuba's normal position as a commercial country, in time of peace, is that of a creditor nation to the extent of $30,000,000 to $40,000,000 a year. After three and a half years of American government, her merchants are indebted to foreign creditors to the amount of nearly $50,000,000, and are relying upon those creditors to see them through an almost inevitable period of utter stagnation in commercial lines.

OUR RESPONSIBILITY FOR CUBA'S ECONOMIC
WELFARE.

This is not a pleasant picture, but it is, unfortunately, only too accurate. The fundamental purpose of the United States in her intervention in Cuban affairs was not the establishment of Cuban independence. It was the establishment in the island of conditions which would put an end to disturbances which were a "menace to American interests" and "intolerable" to the American people. A peaceful Cuba might be an independent nation or a colonial possession of any country. Our primary object was the establishment of that peace and order and governmental stability which rest upon the contentment. of a reasonably prosperous people. Cuba's longstanding disorder was rooted in oppressive economic conditions. Spain failed to remedy the evil which existed in her colony. She was in large measure directly responsible for its existence. The United States interfered, and, blindly or otherwise, sought to remedy an economic evil by the application of political plasters. It is the testimony of competent observers,-Cuban, Spanish, American, and European, -that Cuba is today worse off, economically, than she was at any

INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL CONDITIONS IN CUBA.

time under Spanish domination.

The proper

remedy and the power to apply it have been in American hands for more than three years. Cuba's streets may be the cleanest in the world, and there might be a schoolhouse to every one of her 28,000,000 of fertile acres; but if her industries are wrecked,-her planters, the source of her wealth, bankrupt; and her laboring class without employment and destitute,-clean streets and schoolhouses will be an inadequate substitute for national prosperity. No parallel lies between the Cuba of to day and our own Northern capital went into the South in 1865. South to develop its resources, and the South had free access to the market for her products, -her cotton, her tobacco, her rice, and all the Give Cuba that rest of her boundless resources.

market, even now, and her government is assured, and her people will knock at no man's door for alms or aid.

It is a frequent comment that the future of
Cuba depends absolutely upon her commercial
That is true,
relations with the United States.

as a broad proposition. Cuba's highest and most
rapid development hangs chiefly upon the utiliza-
tion of her resources by American capital, and
upon an open doorway to the markets of her
northern neighbor. Cuba is distinctly an agri-
cultural country, dependent for her wealth upon
the products of her soil. There is little or no
probability that her manufactures will ever be
more than a comparatively insignificant item in
Her trade and her commerce are
her economy.
almost entirely in the hands of the Spaniards. The
He is a man of
Cuban does not take to trade.
the soil; or, if he be not a planter, he takes to
some profession,-law, medicine, engineering, or
politics. It is entirely safe to say that, to-day,
no more than a small percentage of the total
wealth of the island is represented by the posses-
sions of those who are distinctly Cubans. Taking
the figures given in Sanger's Census of 1899, it
appears that the total real-estate valuation of the
island is, in round figures, $325,000,000. This
is mortgaged to the amount of about $250,-
000,000.

NEED OF AMERICAN CAPITAL.

An unfortunate mistake has been made in the presentation of the Cuban case during the past winter. She has been put, and to some extent has put herself, into the attitude of a petitioner if not a beggar. The truth is, that Cuba can offer an ample quid pro quo for any concessions which might be made in our tariff. Out of her long list of customers, the United States can show only five foreign nations whose annual purchases exceed $75,000,000. A reasonably pros

197

perous Cuba can offer us a trade which would
give her the fourth if not the third place on our
list, while a highly developed Cuba might well
become a purchaser of some $200,000,000 worth
of food and manufactured products per year.
This highly developed Cuba is a ready possi-
bility. But it is quite within bounds to say that
the development must and will come through
the investment of American capital. Spanish
More or less of it is available for loans and for
capital is not inclined to industrial exploitation.
investment in fairly stable enterprises after they
are established, but it is rarely available for the
initiation of such enterprises. The Cubans have
no money for either investment or development.
Few of them now have enough for even the
proper up-keep of their mills and plantations.
Some European capital is already in Cuba, not-
ably the English investment in Cuban railways
But it is to American capi-
and cigar factories.
tal that Cuba will look for its widest development.

PRESENT AMERICAN INVESTMENTS.

In 1894, the year preceding that of the insurrection, it was estimated that some $50,000,000 of American money were invested in various properties and enterprises in the island of Cuba. During the war period there was little or no inThe estimates for the crease of that amount.

present time are in the vicinity of $80,000,000.
It is impossible, under existing conditions, to
obtain exact figures, but this sum may be ac-
A part
cepted as a fair approximation of American in-
vestments in Cuba at the present time.
of this sum is represented by the holdings of
non-resident investors; a part by the property
of native-born Cubans who have become Amer-
ican citizens by naturalization, though their
property and their homes are in the island; and
a part shows as the possessions, generally small
in amount, of Americans who have gone to
Cuba for permanent residence and business.

For various reasons, chiefly because of political
uncertainty and the unavoidable conditions of a
period of transition, American investment in the
island, during the last three years, has come
short of the optimistic predictions which found
circulation during the opening days of the Amer-
ican occupation. Notwithstanding the unfor-
tunate conditions of to-day, there has been a
notable rehabilitation of the industries of the
Credit for this is due, almost entirely,
to the efforts of the Cubans themselves. Although
island.
woefully destitute of resources, they have strug
gled manfully to pick up the threads of the old
life, to establish homes where there were but
ruins, and, by a most commendable method of
mutual helpfulness, to provide for themselves

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