Thenceforward meat was sold in the markets at 25 cents. The same simple plan was evolved for all other kinds of supplies. Naturally such high-handed methods caused a great hue and cry {116} amongst certain of the citizens and no such method could have been carried out by any one but a military commander with absolute authority. Some of the newspapers, all of which had been given a free hand by Wood and were allowed for the first time to say what they liked, started a campaign against the new administration and its busy head. But hand in hand with this autocratic procedure went the organization of native courts, the appointment of native officials for carrying on the government, native police to catch Cuban bandits and native judges to give decisions and impose sentences. Furthermore, in these same days of autocratic action, the people gradually discovered that although everybody was forced to work all those who did got paid--something new to the Santiago-Cuban consciousness--that the invading American army was not arresting natives in the streets and thrusting them into jail, but that their own native police were doing this work. Gradually, as the city became clean, as prices fell, as payment for work came in, as illness decreased, as law became fairly administered by the Cuban officials themselves, a certain awe {117} and veneration grew for the invaders and their big, hardworking head. It was a revelation, unbelievable yet true, unknown yet a fact, which opened up to the minds of these long-suffering, incompetent people the first vision of an existence which has since through the same agency of General Wood become a fact throughout the whole island, so that Cuba is to-day a busy, healthy, self-governing state. Parallel with the feeding and sanitation work General Wood put into effect a certain system of road building where it was necessary in order to keep the people at work and allow them to make money and at the same time to produce necessary transportation facilities. Five miles of asphalt pavement, fifteen miles of country pike, six miles of macadam were built and 200 miles of country road made usable out of funds collected from the regular taxes which had heretofore gone into the pockets of the Spanish government officials. The costs varied somewhat from the old days, as may well be guessed. A quarter of a mile of macadam pavement built by the Spaniards the year before along the water-front had cost $180,000. Wood's {118} engineers built five miles of asphalt pavement at a cost of $175,000.