Beneath a most unimposing exterior a Cuban laborer generally manages to cherish a considerable sense of personal dignity and he resents deeply, however unperturbed he may appear, the rough way of handling that has come to mean so little to his fellow-laborer in the United States. Perhaps the unexpressed contempt with which he is tolerated by some Americans is resented still more deeply. In any case, the very efforts put forth by employers and representatives to increase the amount of work done by employes often have the reverse effect to that intended. Tactful management is often one of the most expensive assets a foreign enterprise has to acquire in Cuba. Cuba is one of the most democratic countries in the world. Nowhere else does the least considered member of a community aspire to social equality with its most exalted personage. The language, with its conventional phrases of courtesy shared by all classes, the familiar family life of proprietor and servant, master and apprentice, a certain simplicity and universality of manners inherited from pioneer days, and a gentleness of temperament that may be both racial and climatic, which shrinks from giving offence by assuming superiority of rank with others, have all contributed to render class assumptions externally less obvious in Cuba than in other countries where equal differences of race, culture, and fortune exist. The Cuban is naturally self-possessed. It is difficult to fancy him having stage fright. He is so imaginative and Tarasconese that he frequently confounds ideals with realities, and as his ideal of himself is usually an exalted one this disposition does not incline him to diffidence or humility. He is therefore apt to assume an artlessly familiar air with his employer, and to try to put their business relations, so far as their social aspect is concerned, as nearly upon a partnership basis as possible. With his manual services he bestows the gifts of his own discretion and judgment as gratuity, and he is thus enabled to amplify or modify any instructions he may receive to guide him in his work. These personal advances and well intended departures from what are called orders, principally as a matter of courtesy in Cuba, are received quite differently by an American and Cuban employer. The former resents them brusquely, often profanely, and thus sows the first seeds of misunderstanding that result in much concealed resentment and hostility, and unless he master the situation by great force of will and character, may occasion more serious damage to his interests. The Cuban or Spanish employer, understanding his man, contrives to secure his ends more diplomatically; but he never has a really disciplined force of employes. Organization and discipline are two of the most seriously lacking things in Cuban life; and they are lacking because of a certain timidity, a lack of self-assertiveness on the part of the officers of industry toward their men.