number ninety-one, to be chosen by the Departments in the following. proportion: Havana, twenty-one; Santiago, seventeen; Santa Clara, eighteen; Matanzas, twelve; Pinar del Rio, eleven; Puerto Principe, twelve. Governors of Departments, departmental legislators, and senatorial electors were to be elected eight days prior to the election of Congressmen and presidential electors. Thirty days after the presidential electors had been chosen they were to meet and choose a President.

Cuba was virtually ready to assume the reins of government. The election of a President was now the most important question before the people. The three candidates most prominently mentioned were General Maximo Gomez, General Bartolome Maso, and Señor Tomas Estrada Palma. General Gomez announced that he would not accept a nomination, but would turn his strength to Señor Palma, who not only possessed in a large degree the confidence of the Cubans because of his long devotion to the cause of Cuban independence and his well-known patriotic ideals, but was also the candidate most acceptable to the United States Government.

Señor

The Presidential election was held on December 31, 1901. Palma was elected President and Doctor Luis Estevez, Vice-President. The vote was not heavy and only a very small proportion went to General Maso, the other presidential candidate, who, at the last moment, had formally withdrawn from the contest because he was dissatisfied with the make-up of the Board of Scrutiny, the body of men in charge of the election. The educated and conservative elements among the Cubans were virtually a unit for Palma. The fact that the members of the Board of Scrutiny happened to be favorable to him was purely fortuitous and need have had no bearing on the election and its results. There is some ground for thinking that General Maso's protest may have been fundamentally due to his recognition of the hopelessness of his candidacy.

Señor Palma, the first President of independent Cuba, was sixtysix years old when the people conferred this honor upon him. His active services in the struggle for independence began with the opening of the Ten Years' War, in 1868. During that war he was made President of the Provisional Government established by the insurgents. Shortly before the insurrection was finally put down the Spaniards cap

tured him and sent him to Spain, where for some time he was held a close prisoner, and even threatened with death. Later he was released and went to Honduras, becoming identified with that country and marrying the daughter of a former President. When the Cubans revolted in 1895 Señor Palma became the head of the revolutionary Junta in New York, working indefatigably until the success of the cause had been assured. He then retired to Central Valley, New York, where he conducted a school until he was chosen for the Cuban Presidency. His election was not sought by himself. "Of course I can never forget,” he said, "the debt we owe to the United States for helping us to gain our independence. Nevertheless, I am first of all a Cuban. No one will control me. I am free to act without fear or favor. I have made no pledges for the purpose of gaining office."

In policy Señor Palma strongly favored commercial reciprocity between Cuba and the United States. This was a question of growing importance. Cuba, free, was exhausted from her struggle, and it seemed possible that she would begin her new life with financial ruin ahead. Her products required markets. It is significant that even during the American military occupation the imports to Cuba from Europe increased, while imports from the United States fell away. Nearly all the shoes imported by the Cubans in 1901 came from Spain!

On October 3 a procession of twenty thousand orderly persons passed through the streets of Havana, headed by a deputation which presented to Governor Wood a petition to President Roosevelt, asking for a reduction of the American duties on Cuban products. The Cubans saw no other relief for the existing economic distress. In the United States the movement was gaining headway, but a strong opposition was also developing among the American manufacturers of sugar. At the close of 1901 the American interests for and against Cuban reciprocity were strongly arrayed in anticipation of a struggle in the session of Congress which was just beginning.

The Results of Three Years of Colonial Activity.

Three years had not proved too short a time to show that the United States, the youngest of the colonizing Powers, the latest to take up the "white man's burden," was by no means the least successful in carrying out the obligations entailed by the control of subordinate

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races. Mistakes a-plenty had been made; but in general they were valuable mistakes-the kind that are afterward looked back to as useful experiences. In three years the United States had pacified the Philippines and had made a good beginning at the work of civil development. In three years Cuba had been brought to the threshold of a new dignity as an independent nation. In three years Porto Rico. had been given a start in education and in economic growth.

The men chosen to conduct the affairs of the dependencies had, in almost every case, proved surprisingly efficient. They took their American business methods and their American ideals with them when they went to Manila or Havana or San Juan. They knew that they had new records to make for their country, and they entered upon the task with honest, wholesome, patriotic purpose. While serving their own country by planting her outposts in the Pacific and the Caribbean, they helped the new peoples with whom they were working; and it was not long before the Filipinos and the Cubans and the Porto Ricans, even the Samoans and the few inhabitants of Guam, responded to the frankness of their new rulers, and met confidence with confidence.

This new activity of the United States was the colonial marvel of the period. But the other great colonizing Powers were not inactive in the meantime. They were busy with their own great tasks, conquering the undeveloped or laggard races and urging them to advance toward the standard of civilization that had been fixed by the more progressive nations.