Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 December 1898 — Commercial Products of Cuba. [ARTICLE]

Commercial Products of Cuba.

In the future Cuban industries, winter gardening must figure prominently. Good market land is cheap and plentiful. With ten to twenty acres, an enterprising American farmer could raise all the vegetables he could use, and ship enough to the United States to pay him a moderate income. The work would be comparatively easy. With considerably less cultivation than we give to our gardens and farms in the United States, fruits and vegetables produce remarkable crops, and without fertilizers the same land continues to raise plants and their fruits with prodigal luxuriance. Crops are produced every month in the year. Tomatoes are as plentiful as sands on the seashore. Vines never cease to produce fine tomatoes. In mid-winter it is possible to purchase In Cuba corn, celery, lettuce, tomatoes and artichokes cheaper than in our American cities in mid-summer. The plants simply revel in the warm, moist climate. Onions and potatoes raised in Cuba are equal to any imported from Bermuda, and they could be shipped to the United States at less cost than from the latter place. In a very few years, American brains and Industry could monopolize most of the trade in tropical fruits and winter vegetables, which is now controlled largely by alien West Indian planters.