The present volume touches on all these topics, and endeavours to give the reader a clear and practical idea of the present industrial condition of Cuba. The present chapter aims to present in a concise form a few of the more important problems which the United States Government was called upon to face January 1, 1899, and with which it may have to grapple during the first years of the new century. No attempt is made to forecast the manner of their settlement. It is not, as a rule, wise to worry about how we are to cross a bridge until we get to it. Many Cuban economic problems which at a distance seem to be complicated, will simplify as we come within close range. Once the United States military authorities are in possession, ways and means will suggest themselves to overcome obstacles which now seem almost insurmountable. The most urgent needs of the Island, when it was turned over to our Government, were those briefly discussed in this review of the economic conditions of Cuba. First among these needs of the Island was a tariff that should bear lightest in directions where the people could least afford the burden of taxation, and heaviest on commodities which the well-to-do and those engaged in large enterprises required. The Spanish tariff was made by Spaniards, for Spain, in the interests of the Spanish. That seems to be the actuating principle of it. On any other theory it was inexplicable. In adopting, July, 1898, for an exigency measure, the rates of duty which Spain levied for her own commodities, the United States acted wisely. These rates, however, were full of inequalities, and were not levied on any sound principle, but on the "heads, Spain wins; tails, Cuba loses" idea which prevailed in the whole fiscal fabric. It was found that the only way to remedy these inequalities, equalise the rates of duties, improve the administration, and reduce the rates of duties on all articles of general consumption, was to frame a practically new tariff. This was done, and the new tariff now in force will undoubtedly do its share in the industrial reconstruction of Cuba. In this tariff it was not thought advisable to make radical changes in the administrative branches, nor to change weights and measures into United States equivalents, because the people of Cuba are accustomed to the metric system. As a rule, all duties in Cuba are levied by the kilo and hundred kilos. United States currency, however, was substituted for the Spanish _pesos_. This will simplify collection of taxes, as customs duties were collected by Spain in three different classes of currency: gold, silver, and bank notes, all (for the gold coins used in Cuba have fictitious values) fluctuating in value.