The Politics of Intervention

38 THE POLITICS OF INTERVENTION

tration made significant advances in roadbuilding, harbor
clearance, prison and judicial reform, the management of
charities, sewerage system improvement, and in the repair
and construction of public buildings. The outstanding achieve­
ment of the Military Government was, of course, the eradica­
tion of yellow fever, an epic of courage and perseverance.
Within the government itself Wood weeded out grafters and
incompetents. His most dramatic act was the removal of Estes
G. Rathbone, Director-General of Posts and a crony of Senator
Mark Hanna, for fraud.
Wood's Americanization program proceeded in his reform
of the public school system. After an enthusiastic if dis­
organized beginning under Brooke, educational reform, admin­
istered by Lieutenant Matthew E. Hanna under laws patterned
after those of his native Ohio, received top priority from the
Military Government. Enrolments soared from twenty-one
thousand in 1899 to over one hundred thousand children by
the end of 1900. The curriculum, which included instruction
in English and local government in the lowest grades, was
taught from translated American textbooks. In addition,
Wood persuaded Harvard to train Cuban teachers during
summer vacations, and more than a thousand eventually
journeyed to the United States for advanced training.
With all these successes, there were significant and dis­
heartening failures. Efforts to use the jury system in criminal
and civil proceedings, to introduce habeas corpus into the
judicial system, and to create elected local school boards
proved unworkable.
In all his enthusiasm for using the Military Government
to engineer fundamental changes in Cuban life, Wood con­
tinued to hold his narrow view of the government's responsi­
bility for Cuban prosperity. Though he recognized that the
sugar planters were operating at a loss because of overpro­
duction and high labor costs, he was unwilling to advocate
more than tariff reduction by the United States.^37 In light
of Congressional resistance to tariff revision, even this stand
was bold. Wood recognized that a loan program was popular