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President Roosevelt showed his clear perception that Cuba's troubles, superficially political, actually spring from an economic misery rooted chiefly in the low price of sugar. To supply the Allies with sugar during the War, Cuba became virtually a one-crop country, suffered terrific hardship when the sugar boom collapsed. In 1924 Conservatives and Liberals united to elect Gerardo Machado who was hailed as a "businessman President" much as was Herbert Hoover later. President Machado has cooperated actively in the Chadbourne Plan of world sugar crop restriction, but with U. S. tariffs soaring higher and higher against Cuban sugar the business of government in Havana became more and more that of preserving order among an impoverished and rebellious people by methods increasingly brutal. What Cuba needs, if her problems are to be solved realistically, is a new sugar deal from Washington.
Last week U. S. Secretary of State Hull inspired despatches to the effect that he believes Cuba has been economically choked by the U. S. tariff policy of recent years. As the London Conference proved, Mr. Hull's tariff-slashing ideas are broadly disapproved by his chief, but in the case of Cuba and her sugar, special exceptions might be made. Cautiously the President let it be known that he favors a "New Deal" for Cuba on somewhat these lines:
1) Return of Cuba to a multi-crop system with peons now employed on the large sugar and tobacco plantations being established on smaller farms where they could produce their own sustenance in case of need.
2) Establishment of a regional sugar control agreement to give Cuba a fairer share of the U. S. market.
3) Negotiations with the Cuban Government both as to reciprocal tariff favors and the protection of U. S. investors who now have in Cuba a partially frozen stake exceeding $1,000,000,000.
"Corruption probably is the chief cause of the trouble in Cuba," said Nevada's Key Pittman, Chairman of the U. S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, returning last week from the London Conference. "If the United States should intervene I think other nations would understand." After conferring with the President, Senator Pittman amended: "I expect our warships back soon. The Monroe Doctrine is a thorn in the side of South American nations."
New Cabinet. Not until the morning after Provisional President de Cespedes' inauguration did Cubans end their general strike. Tramcars clanged again, busses rattled, milk wagons resumed their rounds, markets opened and storekeepers finally raised their steel shutters. After a conference with Ambassador Welles, the Provisional President formed a partial Cabinet, with no Secretary of State. Triumphant members of the ABC, the secret anti-Machado cabal formed three years ago to combat the Porra, received four Cabinet posts, with Dr. Joaquin Martinez Saenz, chief of the A B C, as Secretary of the Treasury.