COMMERCE AND TRANSPORTATION 95 



domestic merchandise from the United States to that island 

 for the ten years endiug June 30, 1897. 



The principal article exported is sugar, the largest ex- 

 portation of which was in the fiscal year 1893-94, when 

 it amounted to 949,778 tons of 2240 pounds, or over 

 1,000,000 tons of 2000 pounds. This was equivalent to 

 thirty pounds or more per capita of our population, and 

 constituted about one half of our total consumption. The 

 next item in importance is tobacco, the exports of which 

 reached their highest figures in 1895-96, when they 

 amounted in point of value to considerably more than 

 one third of the total value of our own tobacco-crop. The 

 only other class of exports that calls for special mention 

 consists of fruit and vegetables, which had a value in 1892- 

 93 of nearly $2,500,000. 



The principal articles imported from the United States 

 are, as will be seen from the table, meats, breadstuff s, and 

 manufactured goods, the trade in all of which articles was 

 rapidly assuming very large dimensions at the outbreak of 

 the insurrection. Coal, coke, and oils were also imported 

 in considerable quantities ; indeed, so diversified were our 

 exports that there is no considerable section of the entire 

 country that was not to a greater or less degree benefited 

 by the market for our agricultural, mineral, and manufac- 

 tured products that existed in Cuba. 



Between 1893-94 and 1896-97, however, our imports from 

 Cuba suffered a decline of 75.7 per cent., and our exports to 

 the island a decline of 61.7 per cent., the imports being re- 

 duced to less than one fourth and the exports to little more 

 than one third of their previous volume. During the first 

 year of the insurrection our trade fell off over $30,000,000, 

 during the second year a further sum of $18,000,000, and 

 during the third year a still further sum of $21,000,000. 

 making a total decline of $69,000,000 in the annual value 

 of our foreign trade, and of a branch of it, moreover, that 

 is carried almost entirely in American bottoms. 



Is it any wonder that, entirely aside from the humani- 



