nce; but
customers are sadly wanting in these days of business depression. "I
have been compelled to dismiss my salesmen and do their work myself,"
said a dry-goods merchant to us; "we dare not give credit, and few
persons have cash to spare in these times."

One of the principal causes of the present bankrupt condition of the
people of Cuba is the critical period of transition through which the
island is passing from slave to free labor; besides which there is the
exhaustion consequent upon years of civil war and a succession of bad
crops. Labor is becoming dearer and sugar cheaper. The Spaniards are
slow to adopt labor-saving machinery, or new ideas of any sort, and
those not already supplied have neither capital nor credit with which
to procure the new machinery for sugar-making. The enormous production
of European beet-sugar has cut off all Continental demand for their
staple, and has in some degree superseded its use in America.
Brigandage is on the increase, as poverty and want of legitimate
employment prevail. Money, when it can be borrowed at all, is at a
ruinous interest. The army of office-holders still manage to extort
considerable sums in the aggregate from the people, under the guise of
necessary taxes. Financial ruin stares all in the face. It is a sad
thing to say, but only too true, that among people heretofore
considered above suspicion in commercial transactions great dishonesty
prevails, pecuniary distress and lack of credit driving men, once in
good standing, to defraud their creditors at home and abroad. Estates
and plantations are not only heavily mortgaged, but the prospective
crops are in the same condition, in many cases. In former prosperous
years the planters have been lavish spenders of money, ever ready to
use their credit to the full extent, until their interest account has
consumed their principal. The expensive habits acquired under the
promptings of large profits and a sure market are difficult to
overcome, and people who never anticipated the present state of
affairs are now forced to exercise economy and self-denial. Cuban
planters and their families, in years past, came to our most
fashionable watering-places decked with jewels of almost fabulous
value, and they lavished gold like water; most of these individuals
considered themselves to be rich beyond the chances of fortune. Their
profuse style of living was a source of envy; their liberality to
landlords and to servants was demoral