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The National Geographic Magazine 



very useful. Soaring in the blue ethereal 

 without knowledge of the ground beneath 

 is dangerous. The higher you go the 

 more disastrous the fall, as a distin- 

 guished speaker of the day said. 



The hope of this country is in the gen- 

 erous, educated youth who are graduating 

 from this and other institutions. Now, I 

 do not want to say anything that is going 

 to deter these young men, and yet I must 

 speak the truth. There are one or two 

 traditions that still persist in this civiliza- 

 tion, the first of which is that the learned 

 professions are the only pursuits worthy 

 of the graduates of universities and of 

 educated men. This is a great mistake. 



In the first place, a university educa- 

 tion is not an obstruction to success in 

 commercial and mercantile life. I am 

 afraid the young Cubans coming forward 

 are not sufficiently infused with the mer- 

 cantile spirit, of which we have too much 

 in America. What you need here among 

 the Cubans is a desire to make money, to 

 found great enterprises to carry on the 

 prosperity of this beautiful island, and 

 young Cubans ought, most of them, to 

 begin in business. In the next genera- 

 tion the banks, commercial houses, and 

 shipping interests of this country should 

 be in Cuban hands, not those of for- 

 eigners. 



It is quite true that in order to develon 

 Cuba you must have foreign capital, and 

 a profound debt of gratitude this country 

 owes to that great man, Tomas Estrada 

 Palma. He realized more than any of 



the Cuban people the necessity for bring- 

 ing capital into the island. 



But the coming of foreign capital is not 

 at all inconsistent with the gradual ac- 

 quirement of capital by industrious, in- 

 telligent and energetic Cubans. There- 

 fore I urge upon the young men who are 

 going out into life today that they devote 

 their attention, if they have estates, to the 

 betterment of those estates, and upon the 

 others, who have no estates, that they 

 get into commercial houses and commer- 

 cial pursuits, so that when twenty-five 

 years hence sympathetic strangers come 

 here they will not find the governing or 

 political class, the commercial class, and 

 the class representing the sciences and 

 professions all different and divided. 



It gives me great pleasure in saying 

 this much to you, and I wish to thank the 

 rector of the university and the faculty. 

 I have only to say, be not discouraged. 

 No one ever achieved a high ideal with- 

 out failing two or three times. The only 

 way to make failures successes is to make 

 those failures a vehicle leading on to suc- 

 cess. Take to your hearts the lesson that 

 each stumble, each failure, ought to teach, 

 and the next time avoid that particular 

 danger. When everything is smooth, 

 when the winds blow the right way, when 

 you seem on the high road, then is the 

 most dangerous time. It is when hum- 

 bled bv the lesson taught by disappoint- 

 ment that you win success. I thank you. 



Viva la Republica de Cuba. 



The immigration into Cuba has in- 

 creased very rapidly. In 1902 it was 

 11,898; in 1903, 17,844; in 1904, 28,467; 

 and in 1905, 54,221. The figures do not 

 include colonists and settlers from the 

 United States who are not classed as 

 immigrants and of whom no statistics 

 are kept. About 87 per cent of the im- 

 migrants, or 48,000, in 1905 were from 



Spain. The number of Americans in 

 Cuba, excluding the Isle of Pines, prob- 

 ably does not exceed 6,000. Of the 

 $120,000,000 of United States money in- 

 vested in Cuba, probably one-half is in 

 sugar and tobacco, one-fourth in rail- 

 roads and street railways, and the bal- 

 ance in real estate, mortgages, mines, 

 commercial interests, and fruit culture. 



