The Politics of Intervention

174 THE POLITICS OF INTERVENTION

retainers or hired gangs provided by the local alcalde.^21
Another predictable reaction to arson came from the Span­
ish financiers who, upon news of violence, cut off the cash
advances the planters needed to pay their laborers.^22 It took
no genius to guess what the unemployed laborers would then
do. As for the planters, there always seemed to be someone
eager to buy their land at depressed "unrest" prices.
Faced with economic conditions for which they could offer
only palliatives and fearing the political implications of the
annexationist movement, Magoon and his advisers also had
to entertain a group of junketing Republican congressmen in
March, 1907.^23 The attitudes of these visitors illuminates the
Congressional restraints on Roosevelt's Cuban policy- At the
head of the delegation was none other than Joseph G. Cannon,
the powerful and autocratic Speaker of the House. His entou­
rage was the cream of the Republican "regulars": Senator-elect
Charles Curtis of Kansas; Representatives James S. Sherman
(N.Y.), chairman of the Republican Congressional Campaign
Committee and chairman of the Committee of Indian Affairs;
James A. Tawney (Minn.), chairman of the Appropriations
Committee; Henry C. Loudenslager (N.J.), chairman of the
Committee on Pensions; J. Van Vechten Olcott (N.Y.); James
R. Mann (111.); William B. McKinley (111.); and J. Hampton
Moore (Pa.).
This group of investigators sailed into Havana aboard a
German steamer and there saw the ubiquitous gunboat
"Panther", all of which moved "Uncle Joe" Cannon to worry
about European influence in the Caribbean and German sea
power in particular. J. Hampton Moore also noted that thirty-
three vessels of the United States Navy were in port. Ashore,
where Moore marveled at the children playing baseball under
the Spanish-language Lydia Pinkham billboards, the delega­
tion was greeted by Magoon, Steinhart, Morgan, Governor
Nunez, and Mayor Cardenas of Havana. The congressmen
soon met representatives of the American Club, German Club,
Spanish Club, the Cuban clubs, the Chamber of Commerce,
and several "financial institutions." Cannon was not very im­
pressed with the conservative businessmen: "These rich fellows