28 



THE CUBA REVIEW 



HANDICAPS OF THE CUBAN "GUAJIRO" 



HE CANNOT READ, AND IS NOT KEPT INFORMED RECEIVES NO HELP 



FROM HIS GOVERNMENT 



It is not true that the American farmer in Cuba is a harder worker than the Cuban 

 farmer; on the contrary, the Cuban "guajiro" works more and harder than any other 

 countryman of the world. 



The Americans who cultivate the lands of their colonies, who exhibit fine fruits and 

 other products of the annual expositions, work very much at their ease. They do not 

 labor during the heat of the day, they (use tents in the fields, they stay indoors when it 

 rains and they sleep under mosquito bars. 



We do not blame them therefor. Such is the modern way of living. 



But it is not true that they work more or are more inclined to work than the Cuban 

 farmer, who makes of himself a beast of burden, and becomes bent under the burden of 

 his toil. What is true — and therein rests the whole secret of the phenomenon, — is that 

 the American farmer is a man prepared for his task, so prepared by his national govern- 

 ment, and the Cuban farmer is a man absolutely destitute of any preparation. 



In the United States, primary education is taught and trfuly taught in the rural dis- 

 tricts, and there is not to be found a single farmer who does not know how to read and 

 to count, who does not, in a word, possess the rudiments of a general education. Then, 

 in the United States are published thousands and thousands of pamphlets, most of them 

 for free distribution, treating, and treating well, upon agricultural problems, — methods 

 of cultivation, the nature of plants and trees, etc., etc. 



And there are, moreover, in the United States, everywhere schools, institutes of every 

 kind, and scientific establishments, really practical and really popiularized, placed at the 

 easy and profitable disposition of the rural population. 



The American farmers, moreover, have perfectly organized the economic side of their 

 business, the buying and selling and everything relating in the interests of the national 

 production. And the Cuban Guajiro! How does he live? 



He does not know how to read or write or count, he has no notion of anything, nor 

 does he hear anything talked of, the nation preserves him in the crude just as he came 

 from the bosom of Mother Nature. He doesn't read because he doesn't know how, and 

 he couldn't read if he did know how, for in this country there is nothing about agricul- 

 ture of the least utility or profit published, in fact there is no agricultural matter pub- 

 lished at all. If an agricultural experiment station is established, it promptly becomes a 

 purely bureaucratic center, absolutely useless, though absorbing an enormous amount of 

 money, without publishing a page. We have often visited these stations and they have made 

 our heart sink, while, when we have come away from a private plantation and stopped 

 at the government experiment station at Santiago de las Vegas, the contrast has been 

 tremendous, the latter looking like a neglected barnyard. The government announces 

 branch experiment stations, but the public knows in advance that they will be merely so 

 many new bureaucratic sub-centers, founded solely to furnish jobs for political friends 

 and henchmen, in wihich no one will be found to know anything about anything, and 

 where nobody will try to teach anyone anything, and whither nobody will take the trouble 

 to go in hope of learning anything. 



Nor has the guajiro here any to help him economically or any other way, being left to 

 the mercy of the storekeeper, under whose gallows he lives and dies. 



Is it possible to expect under such conditions that the Cuban guajiro shall produce, 

 labor, cultivate, select and improve, like the American farmer, and shall come and exhibit 

 fancy fruits at the National Exposition? The miracle is that he is alive — that he doesn't 

 bray, never having been educated to do anything else ! And it is a wonder that he is not 

 exhibited naked and in a state of nature as the primitive "Homo Cubensis," survivor 

 from the age of ignorance and hardship. — La Discusion, Havana, translation of the Ha- 

 vana Telegraph. 



HOLBROOK TOWING LINE 



W. S. HOLBROOK, Prop. 



Sea Harbor and General Tofving - - - Steamship Tomng a Specialty 



Boilers Tested for Any Required Pressure 



""'"Tsss^rs!? SOUTH ST, NEW YORK, U. S. A. f^^f i^Zt 



