256 CUBA AND POKTO RICO 



Company of New Fork. The United States gold dollar is 

 the standard of I be island. 

 The Roman Catholic is the official state religion, other 



forms being permitted under certain restrictions. There 

 arc fifty-fonr parishes. 



The state educational institutions are primary, superior, 

 technical, and normal schools, and a professional school 

 with the character of a university. The last school census, 

 taken in ]884, showed that there were two hundred and one 

 municipal schools for primary instruction with 7708 pupils. 

 Primary instruction is free and obligatory, being supported 

 by the communes and by central aid. 



About forty newspapers are published in the republic. 



San Domingo has the most fertile sugar-lands in the 

 West Indies. Large sugar-plantations and -factories are 

 found in the south and west. The cane does not require 

 frequent replanting, and plantations have often yielded 

 fifteen cuttings from the original roots. The cane is also 

 highly saccharine. Its production has quadrupled in the 

 last ten years, and the estates and factories represent a 

 capitalization of about twelve million dollars. About one 

 million six hundred thousand dollars is annually expended 

 upon them for labor. This industry is almost entirely a 

 growth of the last fifteen years. The export to the United 

 States for 1896 amounted to two million five hundred 

 thousand pounds about one fortieth the normal Cuban 

 shipment. 



The mountain regions of San Domingo, like those of 

 Haiti, Cuba, and Jamaica, are especially suited to the cul- 

 ture of coffee. The annual yield is about a million and a 

 half pounds. The area of uncultivated lands suitable for 

 coffee in this island probably exceeds that of all the rest 

 of the Antilles. 



Cocoa is extensively cultivated, much foreign capital 

 having been invested in it within recent years, and the 

 production having multiplied fivefold within the past 

 decade. 



