Identifier: industrialcubabe00port (find matches)
Title: Industrial Cuba : being a study of present commercial and industrial conditions with suggestions as to the opportunities presented in the island for American capital, enterprise and labour
Year: 1899 (1890s)
Authors: Porter, Robert P. (Robert Percival), 1852-1917
Subjects:
Publisher: New York : Putnam
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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t to-day youhave great banking centres: New York, Philadelphia, and Bostonconstituting an eastern centre; Chicago, St. Louis, and Cincinnaticonstituting another; with a smaller one at New Orleans, and awestern one at San Francisco. Certain centres, such as the NewYork one, which has an excess of capital, will act in this annexa-tion of Cuba as a multiple in the matter of capital. The capitalwill in preference come to Cuba, instead of going west. In the political problem, the condition of the population ofCuba must be considered. It is not a new country, but fourhundred years old,—a totally different nation, with differenthabits, ways, and languages. Then how can you profitably ab-sorb that population as a State ? You cannot afford to sacrificethe United States for Cuba, but must lend Cuba both moral andmaterial riches without forgetting yourself. Is it profitable forthe United States to absorb Cuba as a State ? If I were anAmerican, I would oppose it. I do not think the Cuban people
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°^0&a SKETCH MAP OF THE PROVINCE OF PUERTO PRINCIPE. Political Future of Cuba 39 have sufficient adaptation; in fact they will not Americanise forquite a while, and therefore you must create an empire and apublic right that is not within the federal bounds. Your terri-torial laws pursue colonisation towards the end of absorption,and have placed in your Constitution a limit of population, whichwe initially possess. Were I an American, I would not be forannexation of Cuba as one of the units of the Union. I thinkthere is a condition of injustice which would be felt by bothparties, if you held Cuba in an inferior political state so close toFlorida. I say that this is inevitably American, from the materialdefence which it procures to the United States, and it is a mil-itary necessity. It cannot, however, be absorbed and governedrapidly, and for a time you will have to create a new politicalright, for it is inevitable. You cannot absorb it without creatinga different political right.

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