to the study of the problems of the island, because nappiness and the progress of that island must be a matter of pride to you. Since fate has decreed that this Nation should have possessions outside of the national continental territory, it is in your hands to show that you are not only able to govern them with justice, but also that you are able to make them prosperous and happy.

Porto Rico is to-day going through a very hard financial crisis, owing to the low price of sugar. Sugar is its main product. Sugar cane, which has been planted practically all over the island, employs the greatest number of laborers. It is necessary that you give to that industry your full direction and your full attention.

The statement that Mr. Travieso will read now to the committee will present much better the program of the sugar industry than any attempt to do it offhand and without reference to notes. I am asking you, gentlemen of the committee, to give a part of your heart to the interest of Porto Rico just as our little island has given its full heart to the Nation.

(Mr. Travieso read to the committee the following brief:)

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the Ways and Means Committee, on behalf of the people of Porto Rico we wish to submit as briefly as possible the following facts for your consideration in connection with the pending legislation to revise the tariff duties on sugar.

Unusual conditions prevail upon our island, and because of them the Porto Ricans as a whole are, relatively speaking, more vitally interested in legislation affecting sugar than any people under the American flag. A brief statement of the basic facts will prove this. The island has an area of 3,606 square miles and maintains a population of 1,279,772, or an average of more than 377 per mile. This is an increase of 345,000 during the 21 years of American occupation, and as a result Porto Rico is to-day one of the most densely populated countries in the world. This density is more than ten times that of the United States and is three times greater than that of New England. When it is recalled that there are practically no large cities, that there are but few manufacturing industries, and that the population is overwhelmingly devoted to agriculture, which in turn is confined largely to the cultivation of sugar, it will be seen how vital the maintenance of an adequate sugar tariff is to Porto Rico.

Out of a total area of approximately 2,198,000 acres embracing mountain, swamp, and tillable land, about one-fourth, or 541,000 acres, are devoted to the four principal crops-sugar, coffee, tobacco, and fruits in the following order:

The value of the exports of these crops for the year 1920 was as follows: Sugar, $98,923,750; tobacco, $25,114.003; coffee, $9,034,028; oranges, etc., $2,161,752; pineapples, $594,555; coconuts, $1,142.412. The predominance of the sugar industry as disclosed by these figures is even more strikingly illustrated by the investigation conducted by the United States Department of Commerce in 1916. That

investigation established the fact that of 394,148 persons engaged in gainful occupations on the island, 237,661, or more than 65 per cent, were farmers, planters, and farm laborers. As a large proportion of this number were heads of families it is easy to see what a tremendous factor the sugar industry is in the economic life of Porto Rico.

The advancement of the social condition of all these people has kept pace with the advancement of the industry. Thus, according to the official report made by Dr. H. K. Carroll, under date of December 30, 1898, immediately following the American occupation, the average wage on the sugar plantations in Porto Rico ranged from 21 to 30 cents a day. The Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor for Porto Rico for the year 1910 announced that the average wage for the same class of labor had at that time advanced to 62 cents a day. At the time of the tariff hearings before your honorable committee in 1913 it was shown that wages had increased to "from 70 to 80 cents per day." In striking contrast with those figures are the wages now prevailing in Porto Rico, as shown by Gov. Yeager in his annual report for 1920. The table giving the wages on the sugar-cane plantations during the fiscal year 1919-20, printed on page 563 of that report, goes into the matter in great detail. It establishes the fact that for many of the ordinary field operations the laborers received. as high as $2.75 per day.

The governor's report also shows (p. 527) that because of these wages, which prevailed throughout the island, it was difficult to secure labor for the government insular experiment station, because "the appropriation was made at a time when wages were much lower than they had been recently, and no provision existed for meeting the new conditions. The fact that the administration of the station could not afford to pay wages higher than $1.50 per day, when all the sugar planters around were paying $2.50 daily as an average, presented a very serious problem of difficult solution."

But wages are only one of the increased costs that enter into the production of sugar in Porto Rico. Her producers are subjected to certain other expenses which are proportionately heavier than the same items incurred elsewhere, by reason of the long extended use of the fields, whose natural fertility has become exhausted. Sugar was introduced into the island in 1515, or 105 years before the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, and some of her fields have been in constant tillage from that day to this. As a result, liberal applications of commercial fertilizers are necessary and constitute one of the fixed items of expense. This condition renders the cultivation of sugar far more expensive than in any of the adjacent islands of the West Indies, where there are vast areas of virgin land adapted to the cultivation of sugar cane. The new lands of these competing islands are constantly being cleared and improved, and because of the more extensive acreage it is possible to alternate grazing lands with cane fields. This wholesome system of rotation is impossible in Porto Rico, where every acre of her limited fields must annually be put to the plow. Instead of rotation, resort must be had to expensive commercial fertilizers to restore fertility. To what extent this is being done can be established from the official records. In 1902, when the modern American system was just beginning to get under way, com

mercial fertilizers to the extent of $20.921 were applied; in 1912 this item in the annual expenditures had increased to $1,221.454; while the governor's report for 1920 shows that last year it had grown to $3,578 248.

An analysis of all the operations connected with the production and marketing of the crop will show similar advances. Not only has the price of labor and materials immensely increased, but freights have gone up approximately 400 per cent since the outbreak of the World War.

The great bulk of the cane crop of Porto Rico is grown by small farmers or colonos, just as the beet-sugar crop is grown in the Western States. The investigations conducted by the Department of Commerce and published in 1917 took the crop year 1913-14 as an illustration in dealing with this phase of the subject. The investigation dealt with 72 per cent of the entire output of cane on the island, and it showed that 62.64 per cent was produced by the colonos and 37.36 by the corporations.

These colonos or small farmers represent a wide range of prosperity, extending from men who own their own land and finance their planting operations, to others who rent the land and are carried by the sugar corporations through advances, much after the credit system that is in vogue among the smaller tenants in the cotton States. A few colonos cultivate more than a thousand acres, but there are many more who cultivate but a single acre, and small holdings are the rule. It has been officially estimated that the average holding per colona on the island is 4.43 acres. As evidence of the fact that conditions with respect to land holdings have not changed materially since the Department of Commerce made its investigation, Gov. Yager in his annual report under date of October 6, 1918, points out that the island had just been divided into two agricultural districts. "In the first district," he says, "there are 30,842 farms, with a total acreage under cultivation of 739,813, and in the second district 26,147 farms, with 805,928 acres."

There is no authentic data to show the number of men employed on the plantations and in the sugar factories at the time of annexation, but it has been conservatively estimated that in 1902 the number did not exceed 20,000. From that small beginning the number has multiplied in the course of 20 years until it is now reckoned that those employed in the industry, together with their dependents, approximate three-quarters of a million people, including the more needy class of the population.

A wonderful change has been wrought in the condition of all these people by reason of the sugar industry, and the Federal Government has repeatedly cited this advancement in their health, education, and material welfare as one of the shining examples of achievement and uplift following the American policy of expansion. The most prejudiced critic must admit that this claim is entirely justified, and, moreover, that whatever material and social progress has occurred on the island has been due to the expanding influence of the sugar industry. This fact has been indelibly stamped upon the minds of the Porto Rican people. Whenever from natural causes, or because of economic disturbance such as uncertainty attending the revision of the sugar tariff, there has been a period of depression in

that industry, the most widespread distress throughout the island has followed.

To illustrate, we might cite the cyclone of 1899, which did so much damage to the cane fields and sugar houses, and following which many thousands of Porto Ricans were forced to leave with their families to seek employment in the United States, Hawaii, Mexico, and other foreign countries. The uncertainty attending the revisions of the tariff in 1909 and 1913 resulted on each occasion in a similar exodus. The island legislature has always found it necessary following these great migrations to consider relief measures for those Porto Ricans who were compelled to leave their homes. In their new environment they have rarely found conditions as congenial as those they left, with the result that they have written home for succor, and it has been necessary to provide return transportation or other relief at great expense to those of their countrymen who remained at home. It can readily be understood, therefore, with what apprehension the people of Porto Rico contemplate any revision of the tariff.

Without going into minute details, we believe we have made clear, by presenting only the more salient facts to the committee, how allembracing the sugar industry has become in the life of the Porto Rican people. Within 20 years they have advanced from the hardest kind of poverty, which denied even a sufficiency of nourishing food, to a place where their condition will compare favorably with those in like station wherever American institutions prevail. The governor said, in a recent report, that "there has been accomplished in those 20 years what seemed to the first American governors absolutely hopeless, even in a much longer period," and he added:

In short and in fine these two decades of progress made by Porto Rico under the American flag, taken altogether, constitute a record which I believe can not be equaled by any people anywhere in the world in the same length of time. It is a record creditable alike to the Porto Ricans themselves and to the great free Republic to which they owe allegiance. Much of it is due to the liberality and generous aid of the great American Government and people, but most of the credit is due to the splendid cooperation of the Porto Ricans themselves. Without their cooperation little of this progress could have been made. But the people of the island have eagerly availed themselves of every opportunity offered them for improvement. With patriotic devotion to their island and with a real aspiration for progress, they have made a quick response to all the changes that were necessary for development. In politics and government, in education, in commerce and industry, in social and moral improvement, they have offered their cooperation and aid to the forces that have made for betterment. This is the simple truth as to the past, and this is the best augury for the future. It seems easy to predict that, barring untoward and unexpected events, the next two decades will see even more wonderful progress and development.

But, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, Porto Rico. has had to labor under great economic disadvantages while making this remarkable progress. Because of her geographical position she will probably always import her breadstuffs and certain other necessary foods, many of which are not now produced in that climate. She imports all of the flour and practically all of the rice, which constitutes one of the principal articles of diet. The source of supply of these, as of practically all her other foodstuffs, is the United States, and the people of Porto Rico are glad to pay the enhanced price resulting from the American tariff, provided a sufficient duty

is in turn accorded to the principal industry of their island to insure to the mass of the people a living wage under a decent American standard of living.

To this end it is urged that the rate provided by the present law on sugar and by-products thereof be increased so that the duty on 96° test raw sugars entering the United States from Cuba shall be 2 cents per pound, instead of 1.02 cents, as at present. The Cuban duty only is effective, as our price is now determined by the price of Cuban raw sugars in the New York market; before the European war the world price was fixed by the price of German beet sugar in the markets of Hamburg and London; but this is not the case at present.

Before the war it cost approximately 3 cents per pound to make raw sugar in Porto Rico and about 1 cent per pound for shipping expenses to the United States market; during the same years the cost of production in Cuba was approximately 13 cents per pound, and Cuban shipping expenses about cent per pound. A fair average of the difference in the cost of Porto Rican sugars delivered to the United States market and Cuban sugars so delivered was about 14 cents per pound during these years.

At the present time Cuban costs are stated to be approximately 44 cents per pound of sugar delivered to the United States market: the Porto Rican cost has risen to nearly 63 cents per pound. The difference in cost is now about 2 cents per pound, and in the less favorably situated factories in Porto Rico the difference between the cost of production and the average Cuban cost is in excess of this. There is a large number of small factories in Porto Rico whose costs are comparatively high, but the aggregate amount of sugar made at these factories is large, and if they are compelled to go out of business the industry and the welfare of the island will be seriously affected.

We desire to thank the committee for according us the opportunity of presenting our case at this time. We sail from New York to-morrow morning, so that it will be impossible for us to be here when other representatives from the island appear in the interest of the coffee and tobacco industries, but we wish on behalf of the Porto Rican people to express the earnest hope that both of these industries will receive favorable consideration at your hands.

In the case of tobacco, we ask a straight increase of 5 cents a pound upon both stemmed and unstemmed filler tobacco. More than 27,000,000 pounds of manufactured and unmanufactured tobacco, valued at approximately $32,000,000, was exported during the last year, and many thousands of Porto Ricans engaged in the cultivation or manufacture of the crop join with the tobacco producers in the States in requesting this additional levy of 5 cents a pound upon the imported product.

With respect to coffee, we wish to point out that those of our people engaged in the cultivation of this crop are laboring under many of the same handicaps that confront the producers of sugar. Our coffee lands are suffering from long-continued cropping, and it is impossible upon the restricted territory in Porto Rico to compete with the newer orchards in Brazil and other countries, which have vast areas for this purpose.