transportation of produce to the towns is clumsy to
a degree. Often it is carried long distances on the
heads of men and women and the backs of beasts.
Frequently there is only a trail or bridle-path grown
up with tangled vegetation and crossed by bridgeless
streams. A system of roads has been planned but
only partly executed. There is a fine military road
which winds across the island from Ponce to San
Juan, making a distance of more than eighty miles,
with stations under military guard at frequent intervals;
but this was constructed and maintained by
the government for strategic purposes. The principal
towns are connected by roads, some of which
have been kept in fair condition; but those which
have not been solidly built for military use are apt
to be washed out by heavy rains and grown over by
rank vegetation.
A railroad system has been projected to connect
the towns near the coast all around the island, with
inland spurs at all important points. The plan is
quite feasible. Roads have already been built from
Mayaguez to San German in the west and from
Ponce to Coamo in the south, and there is a line
across the island from Guayama to San Juan. A s
hardly any point is more than twenty miles from
a coast town, the development of means of communication
will be an easy matter. Most of the towns
are already connected by telegraph, and the telephone
has come into use in the principal cities.
Telegraphic communication has been established by
submarine cable from San Juan to St. Thomas and
thence down the Lesser Antilles to South America,
and also from the capital to Jamaica, Cuba, and the
United States in the other direction.
Notwithstanding the backwardness of industrial
methods and a general lack of capital and enterprise
in the island, and in spite of the exacting and oppressive
rule of Spain, the numerous population has been
fairly prosperous, and a considerable trade has been
built up, which is mostly in the hands of Spaniards
or other foreigners. T he collecting and distributing
of commodities have been effected by an active
coasting trade, but the foreign commerce has been
carried on chiefly through the Danish island of St.
Thomas, which was long the principal entrepot of
trade in this part of the West Indies. The latest
statistics of foreign trade give the imports as about
$17,000,000 in annual value, and the exports $16,-
500,000. Over one half the exports consists of coffee
and a little less than one fourth of sugar, the next
largest item being tobacco. Cacao and fruits make
up a large part of the remainder, though some timber,
hides, and rum are sent abroad. T he exports
to Spain, under her system of trade restriction,
amounted to 28,750,000 pesetas annually, and the
imports from Spain to 21,500,000 pesetas, the peseta
being about equivalent to a French franc, or one fifth
of a dollar. T he annual revenue of the government
under Spain was about $4,000,000, and the expenditures
a little less, more than one fourth of the
latter being for the support of the Spanish military
force in the island.
Of the social condition of the people of Puerto
Rico there is not much to be said. A s in Cuba, the