[Illustration: Large group on men.] Judge Cruz Perez Gov. Gen. Wood. General Maximo Gomez. T. E. Palma. Governor-General Leonard A. Wood transferring the Island of Cuba to President Tomaso Estrada Palma, as a Cuban Republic, May, 1902. From copyrighted stereoscopic photograph. By Underwood & Underwood. N. Y. A week before the Platt amendment passed, the Cuban convention adopted a declaration of relations, "provided the future government of Cuba thinks them advisable," not mentioning coaling stations or a right of intervention, but declaring that "the governments of the United States and Cuba ought to regulate their commercial relations by means of a treaty based on reciprocity." When the convention heard that the Platt amendment must be complied with, a commission was sent to Washington to have this explained. Upon its return the convention, June 12, 1901, not without much opposition, adopted the amendment. The first President of the Cuban Republic was Tomaso Estrada Palma. He had been years an exile in the United States, and was much in sympathy with our country. His home-coming was an ovation. In May, 1902, the Stars and Stripes were hauled down, and the Cuban tricolor raised. The military governor and all but a few of his soldiers left the island, as the Spaniards had done less than three years before; yet with a record of dazzling achievement that had in a few months done much to repair the mischiefs of Spain's chronic misrule. Cut off from her former free commercial intercourse with Spain, Cuba looked to the United States as the main market for her raw sugar. Advocates of reciprocity urged considerations of honor and fair dealing with Cuba, where, it was said, ruin stared planters in the face. The Administration and a majority of the Republicans favored the cause. Not so senators and representatives from beet-sugar sections. The "insurgents," as the opponents of reciprocity were called, urged that raising sugar beets was a distinctively American industry, and that to sacrifice it was to relinquish the principle of protection altogether. The so-called "Sugar Trust" favored reciprocity, being accused of expending large sums in that interest. Against it was pitted the "Sugar Beet Trust," a new figure among combinations. During the long session of the Fifty-seventh Congress, a Cuban reciprocity bill being before the House, the sugar-beet interest demonstrated its power. The House "insurgents," joining the Democratic members, overrode the Speaker and the Ways and Means chairman, and attached to the bill an amendment cutting off the existing differential duty in favor of refined sugar. A locking of horns thus arose, which outlasted the session, neither side being able to convince or outvote the other. Sanguine Democrats thought that they espied here a hopeful Republican schism like that of 1872. CHAPTER XIV. THE UNITED STATES IN THE ORIENT PHILIPPINES AND FILIPINOS