There is at this time a steady increase in the demand for labour on plantations and, in Santiago Province, for the mines. While in Cuba the author received one cable despatch calling for fifteen hundred labourers for the mines, while three large planters stood ready, among them, to employ a thousand men to work in the sugar fields. In the neighbourhood of the sugar plantations all the able-bodied men had either been killed in battle, died of disease and starvation, or were still in a state of practical destitution, hidden away in the insurgent camps. Those who offered themselves for employment were, as a rule, too weak to endure the hard labour. Three years of privations and lack of food had destroyed their stamina. To be sure, there is surplus labour in Havana,--able-bodied labour,--but those who applied there had no means of transportation to the localities where they could obtain work. Through a suggestion made by the writer to an enterprising American concern, four hundred of these Havana labourers were sent to Santiago. It is estimated that at least three thousand additional labourers could be well employed in these mines at once, if it were possible to send them from the spots where starvation stares them in the face to the localities where work can be obtained for those able to endure, as already indicated, the hardest toil under trying climatic conditions. Many Spanish soldiers desire to remain in the Island. They have formed alliances in Cuba; some of them have married and have families there. These men have come before American officials and entreated them to aid in finding them employment of some kind, either as Civil Guards, in the mines, or on the plantations. As a rule they make industrious and faithful labourers. Attention is called to an extract from a letter written by a prominent business man of Havana,--the man, in fact, who in October was employed to send the four hundred labourers from that city to Santiago: "I advertised for labourers in the Santiago mines in our principal newspapers, and, in consequence, have had for the last three days at least one hundred and twenty men calling at my office for situations. They are willing to accept the price offered, but not one of them can pay the passage from this port to Santiago. "Lots of soldiers, lots of labourers, many of whom have already worked in the Santiago mines and know all about the work, living, and everything else, but were taken away from there as guerrillas, volunteers, and soldiers of some kind, are willing to go; but, as you will understand, the people here have been without work and the soldiers without any pay, and therefore nobody can pay the passage. "While I have been writing these lines several men have called on me, but it is the same thing over and over again; they need work, and are willing to work, but they have not got one cent to save their souls."