Industrial Cuba: Being a Study of Present Commercial and Industrial Conditions, with Suggestions as to the Opportunities Presented in the Island for American Capital, Enterprise, and LabourPorter, Robert P. (Robert Percival)
History
Industrial Cuba: Being a Study of Present Commercial and Industrial Conditions, with Suggestions as to the Opportunities Presented in the Island for American Capital, Enterprise, and Labour
Porter, Robert P. (Robert Percival)
Cuba -- Description and travel; Cuba -- Economic conditions
The peso $0.60
The medio-peso .30
The peseta .12
The real .06
The medio-real .03
"Bronze and copper coins now current in the Island of Cuba will be
received at their face value for fractional parts of a dollar in a
single payment to an amount not exceeding 12 cents (1 peseta).
"WILLIAM MCKINLEY."
[Illustration: FIRE DEPARTMENT, SANTIAGO DE CUBA.]
In signing and promulgating the above order, the currency question of
Cuba has been settled for all time to come on a sound basis. In offering
to accept for the present the Cuban peso or silver dollar for sixty
cents, American money, the United States Government merely delays the
migration of the coin to Spain. At this price it is profitable to ship
them to Spain, but at fifty cents they would have disappeared so rapidly
that a commercial disturbance might have followed on account of scarcity
of silver dollars and fractional currency. It is not probable, nor is
it asserted that this adjustment can be accomplished without hardship to
some debtors and a slight financial disturbance. It is not, however,
apprehended that the trouble will be as great as some have anticipated.
In Santiago the first step to absolutely sound finance was taken last
summer and six per cent. of the inflation squeezed out. The business
interests in that part of the Island were opposed to a continuation of
the ten per cent. inflation, and merely asked of the United States
Government that the several gold coins in circulation should be left at
their face value. As one of the evils arising from disinflation, certain
Cuban bankers put forward the fact that it will mean an increase of from
four to ten per cent. in the wages of labour, which Cuban industries
cannot afford. Such a result, if true, cannot be regarded as an evil,
but, on the contrary, a benefit to the poorer classes, whose condition
in Cuba is deplorable beyond description.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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