In the same year (March 15th) the reform laws were promulgated, which
were followed in the next year by the municipal law.[76]
In the meantime commerce languished. The excessively high export
duties on island produce imposed by Governor Sanz in 1868 to 1870
brought 600,000 pesos per annum into the treasury, but ruined
agriculture, and this lasted till the end of Spanish rule.
The directory of the Official Chamber of Commerce, Industry, and
Navigation of San Juan, at the general meeting of members in 1895,
reported that it had occupied itself during that year, through the
medium of the island's representative in Cortes, with the promised
tariff reform, but without result. Nor had its endeavors to obtain the
exchange of the Mexican coin still in circulation for Peninsular money
been successful on account of the opposition of those interested in
the maintenance of the system. The abolition of the so-called
"conciertos" of matches and petroleum had also occupied them, and in
this case successfully; but the directors complained of the apathy and
the indifference of the public in general for the objects which the
Chamber of Commerce was organized to advocate and promote, and they
state that within the last year the number of associates had
diminished.
The Directors' report of January, 1897, was even more gloomy. They
complain of the want of interest in their proceedings on the part of
many of the leading commercial houses, of the lamentable condition of
commerce, of the inattention of their "mother," Spain, to the
plausible pretentions of this her daughter, animated though she was by
the most fervent patriotism.
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