Cuba’s Deficit and Political Patronage
Cuba’s financial deficit this year is due in no slight degree to the salary list of the government, which has been swollen all out of proportion to the real needs of administration by the clamorous demands of the politicians for office. The government of Gomez is said virtually to admit this condition of affairs, but, at the same time, it points out that the situation can not be remedied, inasmuch as satisfying the pressure for office was the price of peace in the island. In other words, it is so easy to start a revolution in Cuba by burning a plantation or two that any politician of importance can force a multiplication of places at the public crib. Allowing for exaggerations, there must be some truth in these explanations, if one may draw inferences from the appetite for office so highly developed in our own country.