Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 April 1895 — Causes of Cuban Discontent. [ARTICLE]

Causes of Cuban Discontent.

“I was in Havana just a few days prior to the recent Cuban disturbances,” said O. M. Zane, a prominent citizen of Philadelphia, at the Shoreham. “I don’t blame the people for wishing to rebel against the Spanish government, but it’s doubtful if they’d be a whit better off under home rule. The Spanish officials sent there on small salaries go home in a few years enormously rich. There is more stealing and rascality on the island of Cuba than any spot of the globe. The merchantshave to pay such high duties that fully onehalf of the goods imported are smuggled in, yet with all the peculation and holding out the island paid into the revenues of Spain last year the sum of $26,000,000. “The business is altogether in the hands of the Spaniards, and the native Cubans are their servants. The latter, as a rule, are on a very low plane of civilization, and I think it is a good thing that this government never carried out the scheme of Cuban annexation that was so popular in some parts of the country before the war.”