THE CUBA REVIEW 



CUBA WILL COIN ITS OWN MONEY 



AN INTERESTING INTERVIEW WITH THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY 



Cuba will have national money as soon as plans can be completed and coining done, said 

 recently by Dr. Leopoldo Cancio, Secretary of the Cuban Treasury. Dr. Cancio says that the 

 law is comparatively simple and easy to put into effect, because in reality it almost exclusively 

 concerns the question of coining, and he hopes soon to publish the proposal of the local bankers 

 who will have charge of the details of the transaction. He explained the situation very 

 fully as foUows: 



"It does not seem to me that there will be serious difficulties presented in carrying the law 

 into practice and giving to Cuba a national currency. The work of Congress in the matter 

 did not go into details, because, as I say. it almost entirely depends upon the coining; there 

 is need of regulation and it can be perfected by the Executive until fixed details are arrived 

 at which will insure the prompt transition of our present confused monetary system to the new 

 order of things. 



"One of the most delicate problems of the new system will be the exclusion from the market 

 of foreign money now circulating and its substitution by national money. The details of 

 that transformation require operations of exchange which only bankers can perform satis- 

 factorily, and the banks will accordingly be offered an opportunity to make proposals at 

 public auction, as provided by the law. It is my intention, and also my obligation, to exercise 

 the greatest care, over measures that may be adopted by the banks, in order that the economic 

 interests of the Republic may not be sacrificed to the spirit of lucre, and that the change to 

 the new system may be fair and easy of accompli.shment. 



"We will endeavor to have the Government receive part of the new coinage, both of gold 

 and silver, before the end of the fiscal year, June .30th, 1915, and even before the end of the 

 next sugar season and before the beginning of the tobacco harvest. Great care will be taken 

 that the old currency wUl not disappear before a sufficient quantity of the new is ready. 



"The money to be coined will have on the obverse side the head of the liberator Marti, 

 and on the reverse the shield of the Republic. The silver money wiU be of the denominations 

 with which our public is already familiar, that is, 10 centavos, 20 centavos, 40 centavos and 

 one peso, or dollar. They will have the same value as similar coins of the United States 

 or of the same amounts in American money. 



"The new law respects the gold standard to which Cuba has held in her prosperous and 

 adverse fortune to such an extent that the expert financier, Mr. Porter, who came to Cuba in 

 1898 to prepare the financial resources with which the new regime was to begin, qualified 

 as pathetic the history of the efforts of the producing classes of Cuba to sustain that standard. 

 The Executive proposes to adopt the necessary measures to maintain the parity of gold and 

 silver money, as in all well organized monetary systems; for the purpose of and in conformity 

 with the law, a reserve wUl be established in the Treasury formed from part of the profits 

 of the coining of silver. Cuba will attain the object proposed by the authors of the new system 

 by estabhshing its own monetary circulation, and will be free from the daily tax imposed by 

 the Exchange on the different monies in circulation, which renders unstable the value of labor 

 and even domestic transactions of less importance, profiting by the gains produced by fiduciary 

 issues. In the present regime the Spanish Treasury is benefitted or has been benefitted by 

 the profits produced by the coining of Spanish silver and copper, and the United States 

 Treasury by the nickel and copper circulated among us. The profits of the new silver money 

 will be more than 50 per cent, of the nominal value, and a considerable part will be turned 

 into the Treasury for the general obligations of the State, over and above what will be reserved 

 as a guarantee of the circulation of silver and its parity with gold. The Secretary wants to 

 lose no time, but to immediately put the new law to a test so that by April next the new cur- 

 rency will be in circulation. The fears felt in financial centers of the world by reason of the 

 European war make it advisable not to weaken the instrument which the new law places in 

 our hands." 



The Cuban Government, on November 27th, made public in the OfficialGazelte, the informa- 

 tion that the Secretary of the Treasury will receive, until 12 o'clock December 31, 1914, 

 propositions for the contract to coin Cuba's new national currency, the contract being open 

 to local banking institutions whether national or representing the home office in this country. 



Banks applying to take part in the contract must justify that they are in a position to 

 acquire the necessary gold and silver to make the new coin, and the one favored with the con- 

 tract shall offer a bond of $200,000 to guarantee the contract. 



The Government, under the contract to l^e made, obliges itself to make payment within 

 the first ten days after the delivery of the coined metal, of the value of the material employed, 

 and within thirty days afterwards the expenses incurred in the coinage as well as the commis- 

 sion of one-half of one per cent, on the nominal value of the money delivered. 



Under the announcement the Cuban Government offers to secure, for the bank obtaining 

 the contract, the right to coin the money at the United States mint, the Government receiving 

 the right to fix the amounts to be coined at a time, the time of delivery, etc. 



