Our War with Spain for Cuba's FreedomWhite, Trumbull
History
Our War with Spain for Cuba's Freedom
White, Trumbull
Cuba -- History; Spain -- Foreign relations -- United States; Spanish-American War, 1898; United States -- Foreign relations -- Spain
By comparing the different prices with the quantity of each class of
tobacco produced, we find that the "Factoria" paid an average price of
$16 per hundred pounds for the leaf tobacco. With the expense of
manufacture, the cigars cost the government seventy-five cents per
pound; snuff, fine grain and good color, forty-three cents, and common
soft, or Seville, nineteen cents a pound in Havana. In good years, when
the crop amounted to 350,000 arrobes of leaf, 128,000 arrobes were
manufactured for Spain, 80,000 for Havana, 9,200 for Peru, 6,000 for
Buenos Ayres, 2,240 for Mexico, and 1,100 for Caracas and Campeachy.
In order to make up the amount of 315,000 arrobes, (for the crop
loses ten per cent. of its weight, in loss and damage in the
transportation and manufacture) we must suppose that 80,000
arrobes were consumed in the interior of the island; that is, in
the country, where the royal monopoly did not extend. The
maintenance of 120 slaves and the expenses of manufacture did not
exceed $12,000 yearly; but the salaries of the officers of the
"Factoria" amounted to $541,000. The value of the 128,000 arrobes
of tobacco sent to Spain, in the abundant years, either in cigars,
leaf or snuff, at the customary prices there, exceeded the sum of
five million dollars.
It is surprising to see in the returns of the exports from Havana
(documents published by the Consulado), that the exports for 1816
were only 3,400 arrobes; for the year 1823, only 13,900 arrobes of
leaf tobacco; and in 1825 only 70,302 pounds of cigars and 167,100
pounds of leaf tobacco and strips; but we must remember that no
branch of the contraband trade is more active than that in cigars.
The tobacco of the Vuelta de Abajo is the most celebrated, but
large quantities are exported which are produced in other parts of
the island. The cultivation of tobacco has been one of the most
uncertain branches of industry in Cuba. Trammeled by restrictions
and exactions, it was confined almost entirely to the poorer
classes of the population, who were enabled to raise a scanty and
uncertain crop through the advances of capital made them by the
"Factoria." Since the suppression of this monopoly, it has had to
contend with the more popular and profitable pursuit of sugar
planting, which has successfully competed with it for the
employment of the capital, skill and labor of the island.
SUGAR CANE AND ITS CULTIVATION.
Maturin Ballou, in his "Cuba Past and Present," published in 1885,
when the sugar industry was in its best days, writes an
interesting account of cane cultivation:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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