Page:Senate Reports 1892–’93.djvu/788

{| under the treaty of 1819 a great many families would not live under the American flag and they came over here; and there are a great many very good families in Havana and out in the country here who came from those people, and this office has been at times filled with them coming in here to get papers to visit their friends in Florida.
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Senator. What proportion of passengers from Cuba do you think remain in the States?

Mr. . It is hard to tell what the proportion is. It is according to how business is for them there and how wages are. If wages are good there they remain there; if work is slack there and they can get work here they come back here.

Senator. Do many of them take their families?

Mr. . A good many take their families, but a good many of them go without their families. You must understand that these people look upon Florida almost as a part of their own country.

Representative. Right in that connection let me ask whether you know of the existence of any contract system involving the labor of these immigrants.

Mr. . I know of no contracts; I know of no such system. They go with funds to take care of themselves, and I know of no cases where they have been thrown upon public charity.

Senator. I understand that 95 per cent of an the importations at Key West is tobacco for the purpose of being made into cigars. Do you know whether cigar-makers are taken from this place to Key West under contract to go there and go to work?

Mr. . I do not know of any such case. The people here look upon Florida as so much a part of their own country that very often they come here and say, “I want to go to the Key,” just as in Baltimore they would say, “I am going over to Washington.”

Senator. You have been familiar with the commercial aspects of the case. What has been the effect of this immigration of laborers to the United States upon the industry that they were engaged in here; has there been any transfer of that?

Mr. . I recollect Mr. Ebor. When the insurrection broke out in 1868 the volunteers went and mobbed him because he was doing business with the United States. He established a place in Key West in order to avail himself of the difference of duty provided by our tariff. The volunteers mobbed him, so he finally resolved to move to Key West; then he went to Tampa and built a factory there; then he bought land out back of Tampa and built Ebor City.

Senator. He is a very wealthy man?

Mr. . Yes.

Senator. Then the business drawing the workmen there indicates that it has been more profitable there?

Mr. . I believe it has not only been more profitable to them, but it has been a great item in the development of Florida.

Senator. If these conditions should continue it would follow that the immigration would not only continue with the present flow, but would increase?

Mr. . Yes; they love the personal benefit they derive from the presence of the United States flag.

Senator. Do they become citizens of the United States to any great extent?

Mr. . Yes; most of them become citizens. We have a great many coming in here every day to go over there.