iz Rivera
resigned the Secretaryship of Agriculture, Industry and Commerce, and
was succeeded by Perfecto Lacoste; and Louis Estevez resigned the
portfolio of Justice and was succeeded by Juan Bautista Barreiro, who in
turn was succeeded in the Department of Education by Jose Enrique
Varona, while the last named was succeeded as Secretary of the Treasury
by Leopoldo Cancio. Finally on August 11 Senor Barreiro retired
altogether and was succeeded in the Department of Justice by Miguel
Gener y Rincon.

We have said that General Brooke was charged with letting his
administration be controlled by his Secretaries. There was an
inclination in some quarters to charge General Wood with exactly the
reverse. He was not autocratic nor domineering. But he was Governor. He
was the actual as well as the nominal head of the government. Realizing
that he would be held personally responsible for everything that was
done,--as he was,--he rightly determined to exercise his authority in
everything that was done. Then, if he was blamed, he would not be blamed
for the fault of somebody else.

The significance which we have attributed to his Cabinet enlargement was
promptly demonstrated. Of the three subjects to which he most devoted
his attention, public education came first. He had deemed it worthy of a
Cabinet Department all for itself. He at once set about organizing that
department _de novo_. Mr. Frye had done good work as Superintendent of
Schools; but he had also done much of dubious merit. He had organized
too many schools too rapidly, and with too little system. Perhaps that
was partly the fault of the law, which bade him on December 6 to get
them all going by December 11, if possible. But then, he was responsible
for the law. He opened hundreds of schools. But most of them were pretty
poor affairs, with no proper text-books, no desks, no equipment and
supplies; they were not graded nor classified, and they were conducted
without proper system or order.

Such schools General Wood regarded as of little value, and he took
prompt measures, though at the cost of a somewhat acrimonious
controversy with Mr. Frye, to improve the system under which they were
being created. On January 24 he issued an order creating a Board of
Superintendents of Schools, instead of leaving the work to one man, and
he appointed as its members Mr. Frye, Esteban Borrero Echeverria, and
Lincoln de Zayas. The Board continued to act under the law of December
6,