the progress of Cuba toward self-government, and
recommended that provision be made for sending diplomatic and consular
representatives thither, and the Secretary of War began preparations for
withdrawing the Military Governor and all American officials and forces,
and permitting the installation of the native government. It was
arranged that the last-named event should occur on May 20, 1902, four
years and a month after the American act of intervention.

The closing weeks of the American occupation were made busy with the
closing up of affairs preparatory to departure. Two new laws relating to
railroads were promulgated on February 7 and March 3; laws which the
Cubans on assuming the government of the island found so beneficent that
they retained them unchanged. Another law on January 24 rearranged the
municipalities of the island and abolished a considerable number of
them, and still another on March 5 was intended to facilitate the
determination of boundaries of estates. Still another, on April 12, was
so vigorously opposed by Cubans that it was presently revoked, to the
great loss of the island. This was practically an application of the
merit system to a part of the civil service, declaring that officials in
the judicial and public prosecution services should not be removed from
their places without proof of adequate cause. Its revocation left those
and all branches of the civil service to be the prey of the spoils
system.

In April and May there were promulgated orders for systematizing
municipal finances, a manual for military tribunals, quarantine
regulations, rules for the revenue cutter service, immigration laws,
sanitary regulations, and some modifications of the Code of Civil
Procedure. These were all practical measures, of undoubted benefit to
the island, and all dealt with matters in which American experience was
reasonably supposed to be of advantage to Cuba.

General Wood on May 5 called the elected members of the Cuban Congress
together at the Palace, in the name of the President of the United
States, to welcome them and to wish them success in their coming work,
and to have them examine and pass upon their own credentials and count
and rectify the vote of the Electoral College for President and
Vice-President. He also announced to them that the formal transfer of
government, from the United States military authorities to the Cuban
President and Congress, would take place at noon of May 20. Mendez
C