the climate which withdraws physical vigor frequently compensates by giving mental alertness. The man of the second and third generation on the Island is often quicker to comprehend any complex matter than his Spanish ancestor. This gives him a penchant toward the professions or the higher mechanic arts. It is not indolence so much as a combination of qualities of temperament that turns him away from manual occupations. He does not lack industry in his new career. This charge of indolence against the Cuban workman is sometimes justified by the slowness with which they perform their tasks. They are not nearly so expeditious as Americans. But this is due in part to the system of industrial administration. The Cuban bricklayer lays as many bricks as the Englishman in the same trade. Recently in building the new Westinghouse electric plant at Manchester, American supervision raised the average number of brick laid a day by the British bricklayers from less than 400 to 1,800, with a maximum of 2,500 for the plainest work. This illustrates how large a part organization and supervision play in creating industrial efficiency. Employing the same men, the English [Illustration: STREET SCENE, HABANA.] contractor got only about twenty per cent. as much work out of them as did the American superintendents. In Cuba a change to American methods and implements, and from oxen to mules as draft animals, has reduced the cost of plowing from $97.50 and $76.50 a caballeria (33 1-3 acres), in two specific instances, to $39.16 and $24 respectively. There is reason to believe that in all industries this factor of supervision and administration counts for as much in Cuba as it does elsewhere. If so, a large part of the relative inefficiency of the Cuban must be charged off to poor management and a wasteful industrial system. When regularly employed the Cuban works long hours. A chart of the street-railway traffic of Habana shows that during the shorter days of the year the registered number of passengers carried per hour in the whole city is nearly one-half the maximum by 6 A.M., and that it reaches its maximum at just 6 P.M. Considering only those lines running into the city from suburbs occupied by the working classes, the traffic before 6 A.M. is nearly or quite two-thirds the maximum. For most of these men, therefore, twelve hours, with the noon rest deducted, is the usual term of daily labor. On the plantations the eleven-hour day is still the rule. In riding through the country at earliest dawn one sees workers already in the fields. The independent country laborer usually protracts his noon-day rest until the heat of the day is over, and some of the apparent idleness of Cuba is due to the fact that the hours of work are divided by this interval of repose.