"Spain has placed an almost insuperable barrier in the way of American merchants, should they attempt to enter her ports with American products, in the form of a protective tariff, which resembles in many respects, the policy once pursued by England against her American colonies, of which the 'Boston tea party' was the direct result, has proved very detrimental to American interests. For while the United States purchases, at least, more than seventy per cent. of everything Cuba has to sell, Cuba in return buys from the United States less than twenty per cent. of the articles she imports--chiefly flour, petroleum, and other non-competitive articles, which Spain is unable to furnish; so that it is to the land of the Stars and Stripes that Cuba must look, since, as long as beets are grown in Europe, the product of the sugar cane will find no market on the European side of the Atlantic. Thus, the mother country pockets annually, through her antiquated institutions, the Yankee millions, which, under proper conditions of trade, would be returned to the people of the United States in payment for American coal, iron, and manufactured goods, which are often sent to Spain and then re-shipped to Cuba, as the only practical method of getting into the latter country. Owing to the backwardness of Spanish industries, and the inability of Spain to supply Cuba with the products she requires, the Cubans have to consume Spanish articles of inferior quality, or pay exorbitant prices for foreign goods, owing to the prohibitive duties imposed, which merely place large sums in the Spanish exchequer. Spanish merchants practise a novel fraud by nationalising foreign products for importation into Cuba, and thus the senseless commercial policy of Spain is the cause of inextinguishable discontent. "It is true, also, that Cuba is within the economic orbit of the United States, and that the commerce of the island is a strong factor in the Cuban problem, inasmuch as it is the active agent of civilization everywhere; and sugar is omnipotent from the purely commercial American point of view. There are certain fixed economic laws, which are as sure in their operation as gravitation, and must inevitably affect the ultimate destiny of Cuba."