Though politics in South Carolina thus wear a somewhat sinister complexion, yet there is a healthy action and a sober practical opinion underneath the service that promise beneficial results. The issues left by the war are being rapidly closed; the Refor. Union, which has figured prominently in the late elections as the organ of the native white people of the State, recognizes fully the civil and political equality of the negroes not only as an election platform, but as the fundamental law of the United States; this position is likely to be maintained, and may be expected soon to bring about in this, as in other Southern States, a better balance of parties. Meanwhile social bonds are being knit together, and many ameliorative influences are quietly at work. The ladies, who had a long apprenticeship of self-devotion during the war, are exerting themselves to give work, and to sell the work of poor needlewomen of both races. Nearly all the old charities of Charleston remain in operation, and schools and missions are doing much to improve the population.

By a law passed five years before the war a public school system was introduced into South Carolina, which became well developed in Charleston; and now the State has passed under the new free-school principle, embodied in the Constitutions of the Southern States under the Acts of Reconstruction. It is only by degrees that this system can get into general operation, and, indeed, it is doubtful whether the ground lost in education during the war has yet been recovered. The official statistics for 1860 give 20,716 pupils in 757 public schools, whereas they show for 1869 only 381 public schools and 16,418 pupils. The new law is now, however, being put into operation; the State has appropriated $50,000 to this object, and, aided by the Peabody Fund and other voluntary contributions, South Carolina may be expected soon to be tolerably well furnished with the means of education for the whole population. Charleston is probably more advanced in this respect than any other part of the State, and the education of negro children is already quite a prominent feature, one building devoted to the coloured. people being capable of receiving 1,000 scholars.

REDFIELD PROCTOR

REDFIELD PROCTOR was born at Proctorsville, Vermont, in 1831. He became Governor of his State in 1878, Secretary of War in 1889, and United States Senator in 1891.

Before the Spanish-American War, he made a special investigation for his own sake of the conditions in Cuba. Considerable previous experience in the island fitted him admirably to be a competent judge, and the speech given below-a plain, conservative statement of affairs there had the greatest influence in convincing the Senate of the necessity of interference for reasons of humanity.

CONDITIONS IN CUBA

Mr. President, more importance seems to be attached by others to my recent visit to Cuba than I have given it, and it has been suggested that I make a public statement of what I saw and how the situation impressed me. This I do on account of the public interest in all that concerns Cuba, and to correct any inaccuracies that have, not unnaturally, appeared in some of the reported interviews with me.

My trip was entirely unofficial, and of my own motion, not suggested by anyone. The only mention I made of it to the President was to say to him that I contemplated such a trip and to ask him if there was any objection to it; to which he replied that he could see none. No. one but myself, therefore, is responsible for anything in this statement. Judge Day gave me a brief note of introduction to General Lee, and I had letters of introduction from business friends at the North to bankers and other business men at Habana, and they in turn gave me letters to their correspondents in other cities. These letters to business men were very useful, as one of the principal purposes of my visit was to ascertain the views of practical men of affairs upon the situation.

Of General Lee I need say little. His valuable services to his country in his trying position are too well known to all his countrymen to require mention. Besides his ability, high character, and courage, he possesses the important requisites of unfailing tact and courtesy, and,

withal, his military education and training and his soldierly qualities are invaluable adjuncts in the equipment of our representative in a country so completely under military rule as is Cuba. General Lee kindly invited us to sit at his table at the hotel during our stay in Habana, and this opportunity for frequent informal talks with him was of great help to me.

In addition to the information he voluntarily gave me, it furnished a convenient opportunity to ask him the many questions that suggested themselves in explanation of things seen and heard on our trips through the country. I also met and spent considerable time with Consul Brice at Matanzas, and with Captain Barker, a stanch ex-Confederate soldier, the consul at Sagua la Grande, a friend of the Senator from Mississippi [Mr. Walthall]. None of our representatives whom I met in Cuba are of my political faith, but there is a broader faith, not bounded by party lines. They are all three true Americans, and have done excellent service.

The Maine

It has been stated that I said there was no doubt the Maine was blown up from the outside. This is a mistake. I may have said that such was the general impression among Americans in Habana. In fact, I have no opinion about it myself, and carefully avoided forming one. I gave no attention to these outside surmises. I met the members of the court on their boat, but would as soon approach our Supreme Court in regard to a pending case as that board. They are as competent and trustworthy within the lines of their duty as any court in the land, and their report, when made, will carry conviction to all the people that the exact truth has been stated just as far as it is possible to ascertain it. And until then surmise and conjecture are idle and unprofitable. Let us calmly wait for the report.

Sections Visited

There are six provinces in Cuba, each, with the exception of Matanzas, extending the whole width of the island, and having about an equal sea front on the north and south borders. Matanzas touches the Caribbean Sea only at its southwest corner, being separated from it elsewhere by a narrow peninsula of Santa Clara Province. The provinces are named, beginning at the west, Pinar del Rio, Habana, Matanzas, Santa Clara, Puerto Principe, and Santiago de Cuba. My observations were confined to the four western provinces, which constitute about one-half of the island. The two eastern ones are practically in the hands of the insurgents, except the few fortified towns. These two large provinces are spoken of to-day as "Cuba Libre."

Habana, the great city and capital of the island, is, in the eyes of the Spaniards and many Cubans, all Cuba, as much as Paris is France. But having visited it in more peaceful times and seen its sights, the tomb of Columbus, the forts-Cabana and Morro Castle, etc.-I did not care to repeat this, preferring trips in the country. Everything seems to go on much as usual in Habana. Quiet prevails, and except for the frequent squads of soldiers marching to guard and police duty and their abounding presence in all public places, one sees little signs of war.

Outside Habana all is changed. It is not peace nor is it war. It is desolation and distress, misery and starvation. Every town and village is surrounded by a "trocha" (trench), a sort of rifle pit, but constructed on a plan new to me, the dirt being thrown up on the inside and a barbed wire fence on the outerside of the trench. These trochas have at every corner and at frequent intervals along the sides what are there called forts, but which are really small blockhouses, many of them more like large sentry boxes, loopholed for musketry, and with a guard of from two to ten soldiers in each.

The purpose of these trochas is to keep the reconcentrados in as well as to keep the insurgents out. From all the surrounding country the people have been driven in to these fortified towns and held there to subsist as they can. They are virtually prison yards, and not unlike one in general appearance, except that the walls are not so high and strong; but they suffice, where every point is in range of a soldier's rifle, to keep in the poor reconcentrado women and children.

Every railroad station is within one of these trochas and has an armed guard. Every train has an armored freight car, loopholed for musketry and filled with soldiers, and with, as I observed usually, and was informed is always the case, a pilot engine a mile or so in advance. There are frequent blockhouses inclosed by a trocha and with a guard along the railroad track. With this exception there is no human life or habitation between these fortified towns and villages, and throughout the whole of the four western provinces, except to a very limited extent among the hills where the Spaniards have not been able to go and drive the people to the towns and burn their dwellings. I saw no house or hut in the 400 miles of railroad rides from Pinar del Rio Province in the west across the full width of Habana and Matanzas provinces, and to Sagua La Grande on the north shore, and to Cienfuegos on the south shore of Santa Clara, except within the Spanish trochas.

There are no domestic animals or crops on the rich fields and pas

tures except such as are under guard in the immediate vicinity of the towns. In other words, the Spaniards hold in these four western provinces just what their army sits on. Every man, woman, and child, and every domestic animal, wherever their columns have reached, is under guard and within their so-called fortifications. To describe one place is to describe all. To repeat, it is neither peace nor war. It is concentration and desolation. This is the "pacified" condition of the four western provinces.

West of Habana is mainly the rich tobacco country; east, so far as I went, a sugar region. Nearly all the sugar mills are destroyed between Habana and Sagua. Two or three were standing in the vicinity of Sagua, and in part running, surrounded, as are the villages, by trochas, and "forts" or palisades of the royal palm, and fully guarded. Toward and near Cienfuegos there were more mills running, but all with the same protection. It is said that the owners of these mills near Cienfuegos have been able to obtain special favors of the Spanish Government in the way of a large force of soldiers, but that they also, as well as all the railroads, pay taxes to the Cubans for immunity. I had no means of verifying this. It is the common talk among those who have better means of knowledge.

The Reconcentrados-The Country People

All the country people in the four western provinces, about 400,000 in number, remaining outside the fortified towns when Weyler's order was made were driven into these towns, and these are the reconcentrados. They were the peasantry, many of them farmers, some landowners, others renting lands and owning more or less stock, others working on estates and cultivating small patches; and even a small patch in that fruitful clime will support a family.

It is but fair to say that the normal condition of these people was very different from what prevails in this country. Their standard of comfort and prosperity was not high measured by ours. But according to their standards and requirements their conditions of life were satisfactory.

They lived mostly in cabins made of palms or in wooden houses. Some of them had houses of stone, the blackened walls of which are all that remain to show the country was ever inhabited.

The first clause of Weyler's order reads as follows:

I Order and Command

First. All the inhabitants of the country or outside of the line of