There is no need for entering further into the history of Cuban currency, but in the following pages will be given the reasons which led up to the Executive Order of December 28, 1898. Considering that the author was called upon by the President of the United States and the Secretary of the Treasury to make a report upon this subject, and the report was subsequently adopted and acted upon, therefore the facts herein stated may be regarded as official. The real point at issue in relation to Cuban currency and the only one which caused the United States authorities any trouble was that arising from the inflation by royal decree of the Spanish twenty-five-_peseta_ pieces, popularly known as alfonsinos, or _centen_, and the subsequent inflation of the French twenty-franc piece, the so-called louis, which, as we have seen, were given a legal value of $4.24 and decreed since the end of 1893 as legal money. The Spanish authorities at Madrid, having thus inflated two gold coins six per cent. above their current value and about ten per cent. above their intrinsic value--for the mint value of these two coins at Havana is $4.776 and $3.8208 respectively--the United States authorities at Washington were now called upon to inflate a third gold coin and make the American eagle worth $11 in Cuba and our $5 gold piece current there at $5.50. As a temporary measure this might have had some justification, and the statements in support of it from Cuban bankers, planters, and business men had a certain degree of plausibility. The process, however, is entirely artificial, and whatever was done in this direction to-day must be undone some other day, and the only question the Administration had to decide was whether the inflation should be taken out when the United States authorities took possession or the operation postponed to some more opportune time. The danger in following the advice of some influential financiers of Havana lay in the adoption by the United States Government of a bad precedent in Cuban financiering, inaugurated by the Spanish Government, a precedent for which the United States was in no manner responsible. The reckoning day must come for all inflated values, whether of paper, of silver, or of gold; and when that day comes someone will suffer. Fortunately, in this case the degree of suffering was small, varying only from six to ten per cent. The practical question would seem to be how to disinflate these two coins with the least possible disturbance to mortgages, contracts, notes, and all classes of existing agreements to pay money. Current matters will adjust and take care of themselves. It is generally known that all transactions in Cuba since the close of the war have been made with the belief that the United States would not continue the royal decree of Spain, and that the inflations would collapse with the disappearance of Spanish rule.