thin
the next ten or fifteen years. There will be some wildcat speculation,
some unwise investment and some loss to investors. The schemer and the
promoter will find victims who will put their money into companies whose
future is wholly hopeless. But along with that there may reasonably be
expected a steady growth and improvement. But it will come by gradual
increase and development, and not by a sudden bound."

According to Mr. William J. Morrisey, a prominent real estate dealer of
Brooklyn, who spent some time in Porto Rico, the island is no place for
an American to invest any money at present. He says that the place can
be made to pay, provided the United States Government clears the entire
island of Spaniards and fills the towns and cities with the American
people.

Mr. Morrisey also states that the natives of the cities are desirous of
becoming American citizens, but that out in the country, it is far
different. These people are constantly in fear of the Americans, and
their sole desire is to dispose of their property as soon as possible
and return to Spain. The more enlightened of them are of the opinion
that the United States Government will banish all the Spaniards from the
island and thereby make it more agreeable for the residents.

A dispatch of the Evening Post says that in view of representations made
to the War Department that the municipal councils in Porto Rico were
making hay while the sun shines, and granting business franchises right
and left under the Spanish law empowering them to do so, orders were
recently issued to General Brooke to put a stop to the practice
forthwith, and the announcement was given out that on the evacuation by
the Spaniards, and our assumption of military authority in the island,
no more of these loose grants would be made. Meanwhile American shippers
were in a state of mind over a lack of ships with which to conduct the
normal commerce of this country with Porto Rico. The change of status
for the island, from being a foreign possession to a port of the United
States coast, had made the rigid regulations of our coasting trade
applicable to it, and the purchase of so many of our coasting vessels by
the government for use as transports, coalers, and the like, had
embarrassed the progress of coast commerce not a little. The regulations
had to be suspended on two or three occasions to let in ships which
seemed absolutely necessary, and now the question came up whether it
would