black and mulatto to call themselves “cubanos” could hardly be disputed in a country which owes its freedom in so great a degree to their efforts.
The lowest Cuban of the country will welcome you with dignified self-possession to the hut in which his naked children are tumbling about among the pigs and the chickens. You will have no difficulty in realizing that you may not pity nor patronize him, however miserable his condition may appear to be. He will be glad to do you a service for pay, and will overcharge you if you permit, but you can not offer him a gratuity without risk of offence. His air of independence is not without a basis of fact for its justification. His simple needs are supplied with little labor. He works when he wants to, and loafs when he pleases.
The guajiro, or white peasant of Cuba, is first cousin to the gibaro of Puerto Rico, whom I have described in a former volume.[2] They are much alike in character and in manner of living, but the former is the better man. He has not had to contend against the hookworm, which has played havoc with the Puerto Rican campesino, and he has gained something in fibre and backbone from his hard experience as combatant or reconcentrado in the rebellions of late years.
The ancestors of the guajiro came mainly from Catalonia and Andalusia, and were a good, hardy stock. Time was when he occasionally owned slaves and a fair extent of land, but nowadays he is more often than not a squatter in a little corner of that no-man’s-land which seems to be so extensive in the central and eastern portions of the Island. In comparatively few instances he has title to a few acres, lives in a passably comfortable cabana, possesses a yoke of oxen, a good horse, half a dozen pigs, and plenty of poultry. Much more often he lives in a ramshackle bohio, the one apartment of which affords indifferent shelter to a large family and is fairly shared by a lean hog and a few scrawny chickens. There is nothing deserving the name of furniture in the house, and the clothing of the family is of the scantiest. A nag of some sort, usually a sorry specimen of its kind, is almost always owned by the guajiro, who loves a horse and rides like the gaucho of the Argentine pampas.
The guajiros are handsome, manly fellows. While they have frequently become tinged with African blood, a majority probably have maintained the purity of their origin, and this is conspicuously the case with the peasantry about Cienfuegos. They speak a patois which is a mixture of Spanish and negro dialect, picked up from the blacks, with whom their intercourse has always been more or less close, and with whom they live on the best of terms.
The guajiro is totally lacking ambition and his chief desire is to be left alone to live his life in his own way. If he is frugal, it is from necessity. Of thrift he has no understanding. What he earns to-day he carelessly spends to-morrow. Indeed he knows no reason for earning except to spend. It would be strange if his characteristics were otherwise. He has never had any opportunity to improve his condition, nor any incentive to accumulate property. He has become accustomed to living from hand to mouth with indifferent regard to the future. He works when he must and ceases as soon as he may. In that respect he is merely giving full play to an inclination that is strong in all of us.
The guajiro lives chiefly on bananas and other fruit. Aside from an occasional iguana, or jutea, pork is the only meat he eats. This, contrary to our idea of the fitness of things in the tropics, is a frequent and favorite dish with all classes of Cubans. He sometimes varies his bill of fare with a fish or a bull-frog.
The one trait of his Spanish forefathers which the guajiro retains in undiminished strength, is love of gambling. He is supported through a week of loathsome labor by the prospect of wagering his wages at the cock-pit or bull-ring on Sunday. He enjoys music and dancing with the whole-hearted delight of a child. As most of the observances of the Church have something of a gala character they attract him, and he finds a pious excuse for attending them. Weddings, christenings, funerals, are so many holidays in which it is a religious duty to take part. Of course all the fiestas are holy days and if he worked on all the days which are in no manner signalized by the Church, he would hardly labor half the time.
The guajira does all the chores about the place, except for looking after the cattle. If these and the cooking leave any surplus time it is occupied in attending to the numerous brood of guajiritos, who are to be seen tumbling
about every cabin of the Island in a state of unhampered nature. The guajira is the working member of the family, but she gets her full share of the holidays, for her husband usually takes all his dependents with him when he goes to town to attend mass and patronize the cockfight. Females are debarred from that delectable entertainment and while it is in progress the guajira will foregather with others of her kind outside the village fonda and gossip over a glass of tamarind water.
There used to be more saints’ days than Sundays in the calendar, but the number is not so generally observed as formerly. In fact, the country population seems to be beginning to take a more serious view of life and to regard work as a somewhat essential part of it, rather than a necessary evil of intermittent character. As he has come into closer touch with civilization in latter days, the guajiro has become sensibly discontented with his simple lot and desirous of many things of which he formerly knew nothing or toward which he was indifferent.
CHAPTER VI
THE PEOPLE OF THE COUNTRY (CONTINUED)
Among those best acquainted with Cuba and the Cubans, opinion differs widely as to the negroes. There are those who go so far as to believe that they will be a retarding factor in the development of the country, while others consider them the most promising element of the laboring population. Both these views are extreme, and, as a matter of fact, any prediction as to the future of the Cuban negro must include a great degree of pure surmise. What he has been is not a safe basis for inference of what he will be under entirely different conditions.
Mr. Charles M. Pepper, who has had exceptional opportunities for judging, declares that “the negro of Cuba is not an idler, nor a clog on the industrial progress. He will do his part toward rebuilding the industries of the Island, and no capitalist need fear to engage in enterprises because of an indefinite fear regarding negro labor. In the country, for a time, the black laborers may be in a majority. On its political side the black population of Cuba has its definite status. Social equality does not exist, but there is no color line. Social tolerance prevails.... The part taken in the insurrection by the blacks has undoubtedly strengthened their future influence.... The race has far more than its proportion of criminals. Some tendencies toward retrogression have to be watched.... With common-school education the negro will do better. At present he is doing very well.”
As to this dictum, the Cuban negro may eventually do his fair share toward the industrial development of the Island, but it can only be as a result of a considerable change in his habits and a greatly increased degree of efficiency. At present, extensive employers of labor pronounce him inefficient, unreliable, and difficult of control. It is not to his credit that they should import labor at great trouble and expense in preference to employing him. If capitalists have ceased to be apprehensive regarding the negro of Cuba, which is by no means certain,—it is not because he has suddenly ceased to have a desire for disturbance, with its attendant opportunities for loot, but because they have greater confidence in the ability and inclination of the authorities to suppress outbreaks with promptness, born of the ever-present fear of American intervention, or a demand on the part of foreign property interests for some share in the administration of affairs.
Though individuality is not one of the negro characteristics, the perpetuation of racial traits and temperament are pronouncedly characteristic wherever they may be found and under whatever conditions. The negro may be three centuries removed from his transplanted ancestor, he may have more than one strain of white blood in his composition, he may have adopted the most approved customs of the country in which he lives, and may be to all outward appearances the most highly civilized of beings, but for all that African nature is strong in him. Moreover its promptings are not repressed from principle, but from motives of self-interest. Given the opportunity to indulge them without fear of consequences, and he will follow his inclinations unrestrainedly. For that reason one-third of Cuba’s population must be as great a source of anxiety as is the colored element of our southern States. This is not to say that there are any good grounds for the sometimes expressed fear that Cuba may become a second Haiti, controlled by the blacks, but is intended to convey the belief, that in the negroes of the Island there is a constantly present source of possible trouble.
The majority of Cuban negroes are descendants of slaves imported during the past century, but a large number, like the maroons of Jamaica, come from a stock which accompanied the earliest Spanish adventurers and shared their hardships and dangers in a companionship that often approached a condition of friendship and equality. Such a one was Estavan, the negro who, with Cabeza de Vaca, crossed the continent of North America, from the Gulf of Mexico to California, in the years between 1528 and 1536. From this stock sprang the free mulattoes of the Antonio Maceo type, a class superior to any that our colored population contains.
Although emancipated at a later date, the Cuban negroes are in general more manly and independent than those of the United States. This is due to the social and the political recognition accorded them, but also to the previous conditions of their servitude. Before the abolition of slavery they were granted freedom of marriage, the right of acquiring property, the privilege of purchasing their release by labor, and license to seek a new master at their option.
The negro of Cuba is much more happy and content than his brother in America. The burdens of life do not press so heavily on him. He has greater opportunity of enjoyment of the three conditions most desirable to the man of African descent, warmth, indolence, and a full stomach. The climate and the physical nature of the country are entirely to his liking. He thrives in Cuba and is more robust than the white native, as well as more prolific, which is saying a great deal. He and his women and children withstood the stress and strain of the reconcentration better than did the guajiro class.
I am fully aware that these statements seem to be contradicted by the census returns, which show a marked diminution of the colored population during the past half century. In the last United States report this is accounted for by “the inability of the colored race to hold its own in competition with the whites.” This does not seem to be sufficient explanation, especially as there has been no competition to speak of between the whites and the blacks in Cuba. Without pretending to any precise knowledge on the subject, I will hazard the suggestion that the apparent discrepancy may be due to the defects in the censuses under Spain, which were notoriously inaccurate, to the latter day tendency of mulattoes to return themselves as “whites,” and to the fact that the colored portion of the population has borne more than its proportional share of the brunt of the later revolutions. Be that as it may, it will be difficult for any one who is familiar with the lives and conditions of the natives of Cuba to believe that “the man of color” is in any but a favorable and congenial environment.
The dance is the favorite amusement of the rural population. As the whites practise it, it is a monotonous movement to monotonous music, entirely lacking the grace and variety of the Spanish dances. The negroes merely writhe and wriggle to the slow beat of a drum. There is always a suggestion of obscenity present, and sometimes religious frenzy transforms the performance from the ludicrous to the weird. On such occasions the dancers and the onlookers chant invocations to the saints in an African dialect.
Certain religio-social societies, called cabildos, appear to have no other purpose than the conduct of these ceremonies. The cabildos are supposed to be the only survival of the nañigo clans, which the authorities claim to have suppressed, although it is very doubtful whether the organizations have been broken up. The nañigos practised all manner of sinister mysteries, witchcraft, voodooism, and the rest, besides active participation in underground politics. No longer ago than the time of the Provisional Administration some of their members were convicted of killing and cutting up two white children in the performance of their secret rites. Roman Catholicism and African demon-worship have become grotesquely mixed in the ceremonies of the negro secret societies. Goats and fowls are sacrificed to the saints of the Church; the Holy Mother is invoked in barbaric terms, accompanied by a symbolism that originated in the wilds of Africa.
Until comparatively recently the sixth of January was observed as “All King’s Day,” when the negroes held high carnival all over the Island. They took possession of Habana
and thronged the streets, dancing, gesticulating, shouting, and beating drums, dressed in fantastic costumes made up of the gaudiest colors, and carrying a variety of transparencies on long poles. The shops were closed, and the whites remained within doors, for not infrequently rival clans came to blows and serious conflicts occurred in the public streets.
After the War most of the Spaniards left Cuba, filled with resentment against Americans. When order and liberal government had been established they began to come back, still filled with resentment against the people who had interfered with their ruinous exploitation of the Island. This feeling has rapidly died down. The Spaniard, who has as keen and critical appreciation as any man of commercial conditions, soon realized that he and his government were distinct gainers by the loss of the Philippines and Cuba. He was no longer called upon to support costly armies in those countries, nor to do his share of service in them. But what impressed him most was that Cuba had become a much more desirable place, on every account, in which to do business than it had ever been before. As a consequence, natives of Spain have been immigrating to the Island in constantly increasing numbers during recent years, and making more money, whether as merchants, shop-keepers or laborers, than they possibly could make at home in the same employments. They are good citizens and capable in their several callings, but most of them are what the Cubans call intransigentes—transients. The bodeguero and the field-hand alike view the country as a field for money-making solely and have no thought of permanently settling in it, much less of becoming naturalized. The shop-keeper looks forward to retiring as soon as he shall have accumulated enough to enable him to live comfortably in some rural district in Spain, and the laborer often goes back between harvests, with his season’s earnings, to his native province, where he has left his family. Of course the proper remedy for this condition is the occupation by Cubans of the positions filled by the Spaniards, but so far the former have displayed neither inclination nor capacity to compete with the foreigners. Under such circumstances the Spanish immigration may be looked upon as a desirable factor in the development of the Island.
The commercial instinct and the qualities that make for success in business are unusually strong in the Spaniard. This fact is not generally realized in America. There must be two hundred thousand Spaniards in Cuba, practically all of whom are steadily engaged in profitable pursuits. It is doubtful if an equal number of native whites are earning money day in and day out through the year, or any definite period of it. Spaniards own large interests in the sugar and tobacco businesses. Throughout the country they control the mercantile lines, wholesale and retail. They are money-lenders in the small districts and furnish the farmers, at exorbitant rates of interest, with the means of raising and marketing their crops.
It is not at all surprising that the Cuban can not compete with his cousin from the mother-country. I am very doubtful whether Americans would be successful in the attempt. The Spanish business man is as keen and shrewd a trader as you may find anywhere, and, moreover, he is as precise in discharging his obligations as a Chinaman. He possesses tremendous energy and pertinacity of purpose. Americans cherish a threadbare and somewhat senseless joke which hinges on the word mañana. It is entirely misapplied when aimed at the Spaniard in Cuba. If he leaves anything of importance until to-morrow it is because to-day is too full of performance to admit of addition. He is the first to rise and the last to close his shutters in the community. Meanwhile he keeps as closely on the trail of the elusive dollar as any New Yorker. But there is this difference; he does his business without needless fuss and friction.
In the city stores, the old-time system of apprenticeship is maintained. The proprietors probably started in the position of the little office boy, with the bloom of Catalonia fresh upon his cheeks, who sweeps out the place when most folks are turning over for a final nap, and spends an hour or more in straightening up after every one else has knocked off for the day. He is a strong, cheerful little chap, content with his lot, and doubtless encouraged by dreams of directing the establishment at some future day. And this is no idle fantasy but a matter well within the bounds of calculable attainment. The system is one of regular advancement. When a partner retires, which he is apt to do at a comparatively early age, the senior clerk takes his place and each of the others moves up a step. As soon as an employe is in a position to save something from his salary, he is permitted to invest it in the business.
A sort of family relationship is maintained in the establishment. The heads of it take the greatest interest in the business education and general welfare of their employes, who are generally sons of friends at home. All eat at the same table and all sleep under the same roof. The juniors have to account for their time even after closing hours. Only with permission may they leave the premises. Then they will probably spend their evenings at one or other of the numerous societies which have their headquarters in Habana and branches in other large cities.
These societies are social and beneficial in their functions. They maintain night-schools, pay sick benefits, and provide burial expenses. Some of them have a very large membership and extremely handsome clubhouses. Every Spaniard on landing at Habana joins the society which is composed of natives of his province.
At every cross-roads in Cuba and on every corner in the country towns there is a bodega. It is always a grocery, often a general store. Nine times in ten the proprietor is a Spaniard. His place may be a dingy, dilapidated shack. His stock may consist of little more than a barrel of the inevitable bacalao,—salt cod,—a few strings of onions, and a dozen bottles of aguadiente. But it is safe to wager that he is making money at a handsome rate of interest on his little investment.
Why is the Chinaman, who is the most inoffensive of beings, disliked more universally than any other? It may be because he is such an unsociable, self-contained, enigmatical fellow. In Cuba, as in the States, he lives in the midst of the community and far apart from it, restricting his intercourse with the natives to the necessities of business. He may have been born in the country, and intend to die in it, but, unless his mother was a native, he will never be anything else than a Chinaman, even though he adopt a frock coat and a silk hat. He works hard, lives frugally, and accumulates money by fair and square methods. His sole indulgences are fan tan and the opium pipe. He figures but seldom in the police records, and then, as likely as not, through the fault of someone else.
In the early part of the last century a number of Chinese were imported under contract as
laborers in the cane-fields. Each one had a metal tag strung round his neck, with a number and the expiry date of the contract on it. Once received on the sugar-estate, the coolie was reduced to a state of slavery, measurably worse than that in which the negroes were held. He had no privileges whatever, was miserably housed, insufficiently fed, and received less consideration than the cattle and horses. When the legal date of his release approached, his identification check was frequently changed to make him appear to be another man with a considerable period of service in prospect.
This condition of things went on for many years, until at length knowledge of it reached the Chinese Government. A commission was sent from China to investigate the matter, with the result that exportation of laborers from the Celestial Kingdom to Cuba was stopped. Nowadays, there is an insular statute against the importation, but they come in, nevertheless, and find their way to the sugar-houses of the interior, apparently without enquiry or interference.
There are more than ten thousand Chinamen in Cuba at present. A considerable number are engaged as merchants and shop-keepers in Habana, and many work truck-farms in the suburbs with much profit.
Perhaps the most remarkable of the many remarkable things about a Chinaman is his adaptability. Any one seeing him ironing shirts in the States might suppose that he was exercising an inherited talent. But he never saw an iron before coming to America and took to the calling because there was an evident unfilled demand for the work. He is not a laundryman in Cuba, because when he arrived the field was already occupied by the negroes. On the other hand, there was a distinctly felt want of market gardeners, and John jumped into the opening without hesitation. He would have acted with the same prompt decision had the need been for burglars or balloonists. He takes up one line of work as readily as another and whatever he attempts he does well. It matters not whether the hole be round or square, his plastic personality will fit in it snugly. When he went to Calcutta, he found that there was no one to make shoes and paint portraits in manner satisfactory to the Englishman. He calmly and confidently undertook to do both. It is quite unnecessary to state that he succeeded. But when you consider the essential differences between European and Chinese art, both in conception and execution, as well as the fact that the Chinese emigrant is not usually deeply versed in either, the result was simply miraculous.
Three favorite occupations of John Chinaman in Cuba are cooking, peddling sweetmeats, and keeping a fruit-stand. In each of these fields he has had to meet native competition, and in his quiet, forceful way he soon overcame it, although in the second he had serious difficulties to master. In short time he had learned to make better dulces than the Cubans had been accustomed to, but when it came to advertising his wares, he found himself hopelessly handicapped by a naturally weak voice when pitted against the Cuban hawker, who has no superior in the world as a street crier. However, with the Chinaman, the next thing to being confronted with an obstacle is to overcome it. John mounted a long red box upon his head and on this drummed continuously with a hardwood stick. In the course of time the Cuban women and children forsook the man who bawled frantically for the silent man who beat a box.
The acclimated, it would be altogether incorrect to say the naturalized, Chinaman in Cuba has been shorn of his pigtail, wears the same free shirt, and pantaloons as the native, and is called José, or Miguel, but if you should go into the back room of his store, you would find a vase of joss sticks burning before the shrine of his repulsive looking deity.
There are very few Chinese women in the country and John is usually a celibate, but occasionally he marries a negress or mulatto. The children are generally bright, and often good-looking. The Chinaman is an excellent husband and father in such cases.
Probably all these sallow-skinned taciturn Celestials yearn for their mother-country while they patiently plod through life in an uncongenial environment. At least they have the satisfaction of knowing that when they die their bones will be shipped back to be buried in the land of their fathers. Meanwhile their numbers are increasing in Cuba and it is easily conceivable that the country may have a Chinese problem to grapple with some day.
Numerically the Americans are not an important element in the foreign population but they represent more wealth and greater business than any other. There are about seven thousand white citizens of the United States, more or less permanently resident on the Island. A large proportion of the sugar and tobacco estates, as well as extensive railroad and mining properties, are in American hands. A few Americans are engaged in wholesale business and a considerable number in fruit culture. I shall have more to say about these in a later portion of the volume.
The first American occupation was the signal for a number of swindlers, loafers, and topers from the United States to take up residence in Habana. They caused endless trouble to the American officials and created a bad impression among the natives. By degrees this class has been almost entirely eradicated and the Cubans long since learned that they were in no sense representative of their countrymen. The American in Cuba to-day is either a responsible business man, or an industrious farmer, whom the people of the country look upon with respect, and with whom they are generally upon the most friendly footing.
CHAPTER VII
THE CONDITION OF CUBA
Here is a country, small in extent, it is true, but as rich proportionally in natural resources as any in the world. It exports over $100,000,000 worth of the products of its soil annually. Yet less than half of its productive area is turned to account, and of its cultivated tracts only a small proportion is subjected to intensive treatment. Bad government and ill-judged commercial policy have retarded the development of the country which, under favorable conditions, might to-day be producing five times its output and supporting a population five times as great as that which it has. It is importing large quantities of foodstuff that ought to be raised upon its lands and paying substantial sums for foreign labor that should be supplied by its own people.
The economic condition of Cuba is as unfavorable as possible to the welfare of its population. Foreigners own practically everything in the country. The Island is exploited for the benefit of everyone but the natives.
Additional capital is constantly coming in. New enterprises are continually being floated. In a way these are beneficial to the community at large, but, with the exception of the official class, they work little good to the natives. In fact, they decrease the Cuban’s chances of ever doing anything for himself. Capital and corporations create wealth, but precious little of it finds its way into the pockets of the guajiro, or the negro. What the country needs, if ever its people are to become prosperous, is a greater diversity of industries with opportunities for the little man, and an increase in the small land-owners. There is a bare possibility of the former condition coming about; the latter is beyond the bounds of hope. There is no public domain for disposal to homesteaders. Practically all the land in the Island is occupied or held for sale at high figures. A very small proportion of the peasant class own their holdings. Many of them are merely squatters and others maintain possession on defective titles.
The country that produces one great staple by the agency of slave labor lays itself under a curse that will be felt long after the conditions are changed. For well-nigh a century sugar-cane has been the one chief source of Cuba’s wealth and it has cast a blight upon everything else. The sugar industry has exercised a detrimental influence upon the material welfare, morals, and health, and the independence of the people in general. But for it, blacks would never have been introduced into the Island in numbers sufficient to affect seriously the general population. But for it, the larger estates, growing out of the system of repartimiento, would long since have been carved into small holdings, the homesteads of peasant proprietors with some ambition and some opportunity to lead a life of manly self-support. The Island might not have been so wealthy, it might not have afforded such rich pasture for the professional politician to browse in, nor have yielded such comfortable profits to American and British stock-holders, but its people would have been happier and in the way of enjoying greater and more stable prosperity than the present prospect holds for them.
But this is an idle speculation. Foreigners own ninety per cent. of all the land in Cuba
that is worth working, and, since this is the case, the more foreign capital that comes in, the better for the country. In other words, the only outlook for the Cuban is to serve as a hired man. If he had any bent toward the mechanical industries and could command a little capital, he might make innumerable openings in new directions for independent enterprises on a small scale.
Cuba should support a variety of manufacturing industries. It has the necessary materials,—wood, fibres, metal, hides, etc. It imports many commodities that are made from raw material exported by it. In many of these cases it would be more profitable for the country to produce the finished article. Before long, no doubt, the many opportunities long latent will attract enterprise, and industrial development along this line will take place. But even so, the Cuban can not hope to play a very prominent or profitable part in the movement. The extension of education and manual training may better fit him for mechanical pursuits but lack of capital will prevent his aspiring to any higher position than that of workman.
There is little doubt about the future prosperity of the Island along the present lines of exploitation. There is good reason for believing that cane sugar will come into its own again, and that before long. Germany is likely to tire soon of coddling the beet cultivators in the face of foreign discrimination against them. Improvements in the cultivation of cane and in the selection of the plant are to be looked for. Labor-saving devices will be introduced into the fields. The invention of a satisfactory cane harvester would revolutionize that branch of industry.
The great future development of the Island will take place at the eastern end. Oriente is the most promising, and probably the richest, section of Cuba. Several large corporations have heavy investments in the Province. Its mineral wealth has hardly been touched. It is an especially favorable region for the cultivation of citrus fruits and coffee. These industries will be extensively prosecuted by Americans, of whom there are already a number located in colonies and individual plantations.
Cuba is growing constantly in favor with Americans as a health resort and, with the extension of roads fit for motoring, pleasure
seekers from the United States will travel on the Island in increasing numbers. There is a tendency among well-to-do Americans to make winter homes in Cuba and to build residences in the capital and suburbs. All this will lead to a better knowledge of the country and a great interest in its industries with consequent additional investment of capital. There appears to be little room for doubting that ultimately American money and American management will dominate the industrial and commercial affairs of the Island.
Only one retarding factor mars the prospect of progress—that is the deficiency of labor supply. Doubtless a large part will be for years to come imported from southern Europe, and this of necessity. If these, or a considerable proportion of them, could be induced to settle in the country they would form a desirable addition to the population. At present, few of them display an inclination to remain, but, on the contrary, make Cuba the means of furnishing them with sufficient money to set up in a small way of business at home.
The most easily available source of supply is the Jamaican negro, but he is not a valuable acquisition. His efficiency is calculated by employers as less than half that of the Spaniard, or native of the Canary Islands. Negroes from the United States might seek employment in the Island, but the kind who would be of the most use can always fold work at home at as good a rate of wages as they would receive in Cuba.
It is not to be assumed that the native will never supply the greatest part of the labor employed in his country. He would be available to-day to a greater extent and with greater efficiency if American managers understood him better and accorded him more judicious treatment.
Dr. V. S. Clark, in a government report, makes such an excellent and comprehensive statement regarding the Cuban laborer, that an extensive quotation is justified.
Some of the opinions of Cuban workingmen are given in the following quotations from the remarks by American and English employers of broad experience. It is not possible to have perfect agreement in judgments of this sort, and naturally no attempt has been made to do so. But those sweeping denunciations of Cuba and everything Cuban that come from tactless adventurers and from men who have left their own country because they are chronically out of sorts with the world have been omitted:
A railway manager: “A Cuban seldom has a real conception of what is meant by special qualifications. On railways a man might occupy in succession a dozen different posts, each requiring a special kind of training. We have an instance where the same man has been station agent, telegraph superintendent, and superintendent of locomotive power within a few months’ time.”
A contracting foreman: “In the mechanic trades men are constantly presenting themselves as applicants for any positions to be had, assuring us with the greatest apparent candor that they unite all the qualifications of expert masons, carpenters, painters, plumbers, and gas-fitters. We don’t employ such men any more. A modest range of acquirements is one of the best credentials a mechanic can offer us.”
A government engineer: “The labor cost of all kinds of construction is half as much again as in the United States. But with time and patience intelligent Cuban mechanics can be trained to keep pretty well up with Americans on the same job. They will not do this, however, unless they are paid for it.”
An English railway manager: “After many years of experience in railway managing in Brazil and other South American countries, I must say that the Cuban labor is the dearest labor I have ever had under my charge.”
A factory superintendent: “We employ only Spaniards. They equal in industry and endurance the American workingman and are more steady and regular in their habits. I have had more than twenty years’ experience in Cuba as factory and plantation manager, and have seldom found Cubans efficient in occupations requiring physical endurance or manual skill. But they make neat and fairly accurate clerks.”
An army officer in charge of twelve hundred men in road construction: “The Cuban laborer is not as strong physically nor as intelligent as the unskilled laborer in the United States. He accomplishes about half as much work in a day as the latter. We bought a number of the iron wheelbarrows commonly used by American contractors for our work here, but the men were not strong enough to handle them successfully, and I had to substitute wooden ones in their stead.”
An electric railway manager: “You can not manage the Cubans with a club. The amount
of work you get out of them depends upon the way in which you handle them. We find our men unusually distrustful because they have been so often cheated by their past employers. If their paymaster is a little late they jump at the conclusion that their money is not coming to them. It has taken time to win their confidence in the company. They do not understand how to take care of their own interests. Our unclaimed wage book shows that during the last two years many hundred men have not applied for all the pay due to them. Probably ten per cent. of the whole number of common laborers employed thus fail to collect their full wages. On our fortnightly pay-days fifty or sixty men fail to claim amounts ranging from one or two days’ pay to as high as $20 or $30 silver ($14 or $21 American). Of course such men are often imposed on, and a man who knows or thinks he is being cheated by his employer isn’t going to overexert himself in his service. An intelligent Cuban makes a good mechanic. He learns more rapidly than an American. It has taken me less time here to break in motormen than in the United States. In the last year or two we have trained most of our force of mechanics, repair men, and our armature winders. They are about as efficient as Americans.”
The head of an electrical supply house: “Labor conditions in Cuba have not changed materially since 1890. Cubans make efficient mechanics in our line of business. We also employ them in contracting work, such as bridge construction, so that our monthly pay roll is sometimes over $6,000. They are slower than Americans, but are less independent and work longer hours. In electric fitting we get about as much service for the same wages as in New York. A man who has had long experience with the working people here, and who knows their language and how to treat them, will not have much trouble with his employees, and will find them fairly efficient.”
A railway superintendent: “Spaniards are the future laborers of Cuba. But they will work mostly under the direction of Cubans. The amount you get out of men depends upon how well you pay and feed them. It is worth the money it costs an employer to provide and compel his common laborers to eat a substantial meal before going to work in the morning.”
The variety of opinions here expressed illustrates the fact that the man in practical touch with the labor question in Cuba usually has some aspect of the situation in mind which appeals to him from his own experience. As to labor efficiency, all agree that for manual labor the Spaniard excels the native Cuban. This is true of factory as well as field occupations. Cane-cutting must be excepted from the latter, for here the negro is the best workman; and in the machine shops, and some mechanic trades, where a certain dexterity of mind as well as hand is required, the more nervous and intellectual Cuban is at an advantage. There is practical unanimity in the opinion that the cost of labor is high, the only exceptions being in some trades requiring much skill and intelligence and where the men work under the direct control of their employer.
The emphasis laid upon the fact that the amount to be obtained from employes depends largely upon the way they are treated and the wages they are paid is significant, and it accords fully with the other testimony and with observation in different parts of the Island. At one place a gang of laborers was just completing what appeared even to the casual observer a rather scanty day’s work. The foreman looked up with a half-vexed smile and said:
“Their wages have been lowered 30 per cent., and no driving will get more than two-thirds of the former amount of work out of them. They simply shrug their shoulders and say: ‘Poco dinero, poco trabajo.’ Little money, little work.”
Beneath a most unimposing exterior a Cuban laborer generally manages to cherish a considerable sense of personal dignity and he resents deeply, however unperturbed he may appear, the rough way of handling that has come to mean so little to his fellow-laborer in the United States. Perhaps the unexpressed contempt with which he is tolerated by some Americans is resented still more deeply. In any case, the very efforts put forth by employers and representatives to increase the amount of work done by employes often have the reverse effect to that intended. Tactful management is often one of the most expensive assets a foreign enterprise has to acquire in Cuba. Cuba is one of the most democratic countries in the world. Nowhere else does the least considered member of a community aspire to social equality with its most exalted personage. The language, with its conventional phrases of courtesy shared by all classes, the familiar family life of proprietor and servant, master and apprentice, a certain simplicity and universality of manners inherited from pioneer days, and a gentleness of temperament that may be both racial and climatic, which shrinks from giving offence by assuming superiority of rank with others, have all contributed to render class assumptions externally less obvious in Cuba than in other countries where equal differences of race, culture, and fortune exist. The Cuban is naturally self-possessed. It is difficult to fancy him having stage fright. He is so imaginative and Tarasconese that he frequently confounds ideals with realities, and as his ideal of himself is usually an exalted one this disposition does not incline him to diffidence or humility. He is therefore apt to assume an artlessly familiar air with his employer, and to try to put their business relations, so far as their social aspect is concerned, as nearly upon a partnership basis as possible. With his manual services he bestows the gifts of his own discretion and judgment as gratuity, and he is thus enabled to amplify or modify any instructions he may receive to guide him in his work. These personal advances and well intended departures from what are called orders, principally as a matter of courtesy in Cuba, are received quite differently by an American and Cuban employer. The former resents them brusquely, often profanely, and thus sows the first seeds of misunderstanding that result in much concealed resentment and hostility, and unless he master the situation by great force of will and character, may occasion more serious damage to his interests. The Cuban or Spanish employer, understanding his man, contrives to secure his ends more diplomatically; but he never has a really disciplined force of employes. Organization and discipline are two of the most seriously lacking things in Cuban life; and they are lacking because of a certain timidity, a lack of self-assertiveness on the part of the officers of industry toward their men. The Cuban is capable of discipline; but so long as nothing else is required, he naturally prefers discussing politics and local news or comparing notes about their children with his foreman to performing more commonplace duties. His friendliness toward his employer is usually well-meaning, even if unwisely manifested. It is something akin to the easy, inquisitive, but sympathetic familiarity one finds in a New England village. Occasionally it can be turned to good account in securing the loyalty of the men. Two American retail merchants were interviewed in Habana. One was evidently reserved toward his working people. He reported that among several employed he had never had a Cuban he was not obliged to discharge for stealing. Another, who was conducting a larger business, and who had many Cubans in his employ, but who stood on terms of greater intimacy with them, reported that he had no difficulty whatever of this kind. Whether the difference in the experience of the two merchants was due to the reason suggested or not, it is certain that the Cuban is peculiarly susceptible to appeals to ideal motives, whether made directly or only by implication, and that success or failure in dealing with the workmen of the Island often hinges upon an understanding of this trait of character.
One desirable outcome of the aspiration toward social equality on the part of Cubans is their aversion to tips. Employes, who had made some money sacrifice by leaving piece-work to act as guides about a factory, refused, evidently with considerable embarrassment, the offer of gratuity. A poor countryman who had left his field labor for several hours to show a trail through a tract of forest would only accept compensation under protest—and when it was turned into a gift for the children. These same men would have made as shrewd a bargain as possible and would have haggled for hours over centavos in a matter of trade, but for a service of courtesy money was no compensation for their sense of wounded dignity in accepting a gratuity.
With reference to the personal honesty of the Cuban, no unqualified statement is likely to be just. All people possessing great love of approbation and an excessive desire to please are apt to be more or less insincere in social intercourse. Extend the ethics of an afternoon tea to all statements of fact in business relations, and one has an atmosphere of reliability or the reverse about equivalent to that in Cuba. Men tell you things they think you will like to hear. It appears to strike a Cuban as something akin to discourtesy to bring a painful fact to your attention, even though a knowledge of it be quite essential to your business welfare. To save himself the embarrassment of refusing a request, he will often make a promise that he can not keep, and to save you from being disquieted by uncertainty he will give you an assurance as unqualified that ought to be decidedly conditional. His business statements are like his currency, subject to fluctuating discount. As in case of money, this is undoubtedly an inconvenience in conducting a transaction. But, as there is sound money in Cuba, so there are men to be found whose word in business is as good as their bond.
The upper commercial classes of the Island preserve a conservative integrity in their dealings and their methods of conducting business as high as prevails in any country. There are few failures. The representatives of large American houses report that their losses from bad debts are less in Cuba in proportion to the amount of business done than in the United States. In purchasing at retail one has to guard against overcharging. But this is simply a feature of a very ancient and still very common way of doing business. There are no settled prices, and each individual sale is a separate transaction to be settled by independent agreement, and is not prejudiced in the least by the precedent of previous transactions of a similar character. Americans, with little experience outside their own country, frequently bring up this practice as a main argument to prove the universal dishonesty of the Cuban. But it is like many other ingenuous arguments of the same sort—“It is not our way, ergo, it is wrong”—that would result in making virtue a decidedly local thing in this world if they were universally applied.
It is sometimes stated that while the Cuban, especially of the middle or lower class, is often lax about keeping his word, he shows quite the opposite disposition with regard to trifles belonging to other persons. The experience of foreigners on the Island doubtless varies in this respect. It is hardly probable that the Cuban has abnormally high regard for the rights of property. But here is the result of a single personal experience covering nearly two years, and divided between Cuba and Porto Rico, where the general moral standards may be assumed to be about the same. Though the person in question travelled most of this time, stopping at boarding-houses and hotels, and a guest in native families where only native servants were employed, though he allowed small articles of personal property to lie about uncared for, with the same freedom as in the United States, and habitually left satchels and other hand-bags unlocked, during these two years not a single thing was stolen. In Cuba umbrellas and unlocked baggage were frequently left unchecked in baggage and waiting rooms at railway stations, wharves, at warehouses, and at hotel offices, and nothing was ever lost in this way. Articles accidentally left behind in travelling, or when making purchases, were returned when opportunity offered. At no time during the two years was any attempt made to pass bad money or incorrect change. He travelled sometimes all night over rough trails and in the remotest parts of the Island, with only native companions, with considerable sums of money upon his person and unarmed, and was never molested.
Large contractors in Cuba report no unusual loss of tools through the peculations of their workingmen. The owners of retail stores, where there is such a multitude of petty sales that no record of such transactions can be kept, entrust practically their whole business to their clerks. Judging from actual experience with people and their way of doing business, there is nothing to indicate but that a fair degree of private and commercial honesty prevails. As a rule, the Cuban has not a passion for acquisition for its own sake. The question of money is an ever present and insistent one with the middle and working classes in Cuba as elsewhere; but when current demands are met, and they are not excessive, the Cuban is usually satisfied. He is not ambitious to accumulate. Men in political life, with uncertain tenure of office, expensive ambitions, and the worst kind of precedents to influence them, are said not to be trustworthy, but Cuba should not be judged by its politicians. Considering only the industrial classes, there is no reason to reproach Cuba with a particularly low standard of commercial and personal integrity. One will not find there conditions equalling those in countries where greater intelligence and social discipline have long prevailed, and where reasonably good government has been habitual; but the moral standards of the people in the respects mentioned are not such as to present a serious bar to the industrial development of the country.
One of the most common and perhaps the most popular charge made against Cuban workmen by Americans is that they are indolent. Disinclination to hard physical labor is a widely disseminated peculiarity of the human race. That is perhaps the reason why it is so confidently brought up as a defect of one’s neighbors. Foreign immigrants to the United States say that the American likes to do all the bossing and none of the hard work. German and Swiss peasants along the Rhine consider the Frenchman’s great weakness his desire to have clean hands and fine clothes, and that the Italian is a “lazy beggar.” And the Italian borderer will assure you that the Germans and Swiss want to “eat and sleep all the time.” Therefore, in forming a judgment about the working people in Cuba, one has to allow for this national equation. The climate of the Island does not encourage long-continued physical labor apart from all question of race. The American, the Spaniard, the native, and the negro are all subjected to this influence. But a moderate amount of any kind of work can be done by any of these under the right conditions. The immigrant from the North brings with him a fund of physical stamina superior to that of the native, which runs for life and is not bequeathed to his successors born on the Island. No statement that can be made is less likely to be controverted than the oft repeated one that the Spaniard is superior to the Cuban, even of the first generation as a laborer. But the climate which withdraws physical vigor frequently compensates by giving mental alertness. The man of the second and third generation on the Island is often quicker to comprehend any complex matter than his Spanish ancestor. This gives him a penchant toward the professions or the higher mechanic arts. It is not indolence so much as a combination of qualities of temperament that turns him away from manual occupations. He does not lack industry in his new career.
This charge of indolence against the Cuban workman is sometimes justified by the slowness with which they perform their tasks. They are not nearly so expeditious as Americans. But this is due in part to the system of industrial administration. The Cuban bricklayer lays as many bricks as the Englishman in the same trade. Recently in building the new Westinghouse electric plant at Manchester, American supervision raised the average number of brick laid a day by the British bricklayers from less than 400 to 1,800, with a maximum of 2,500 for the plainest work. This illustrates how large a part organization and supervision play in creating industrial efficiency. Employing the same men, the English