Santo Domingo Correspondence (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905 Excerpt: ...as it was to the population and wealth of the country. Thousands of the more educated, talented, courageous, and energetic citizens of the country had been demoralized by the pension system. They had been educated into the idea that the Government owed them a living, and had largely lost capacity and desire to engage in business. On the other hand, the thirteen years of peace and relentless enforcement of the criminal laws had greatly improved the condition of the agricultural and commercial classes. The sugar, cacao, tobacco, and cattle industries had become prosperous, and population and wealth had increased. But the educated and military classes always bitterly resented Heureaux's tyranny, and finally in 1898 an unsuccessful and ruinous emission of paper money lost him the confidence and support of the ignorant but industrious peasants. Symptoms of revolt appeared simultaneously in many parts of the Republic, and when on July 26, 1899, he was shot by a popular Dominican whom he was about to have arrested the country awoke as if from a nightmare. Horacio Vasquez, the head of a widely spread and wealthy family in the Provinces of Moca and Santiago, and Juan Jimenes, a wealthy merchant at Monte Christi, were the two most popular and prominent men in the Republic and as such indicated as the heads of the revolution which at once broke. The party which Heureaux had so painstakingly built up by his subsidies fell to pieces with hardly a semblance of resistance. The Vice-President gave up without a struggle when Yasquez appeared at the gates of the capital; the latter was declared Provisional President, and when Jimenes arrived a few weeks later it was agreed that the latter should be President and the former Vice-President. Jimenes started in to make a clean s...