What progress has
been made is due to the short periods of peace, principally the period
of Heureaux's ascendancy, from 1880 to 1899, and the periods from 1905
to date. The rapid and gratifying strides made since the
Dominican-American fiscal treaty increased the probabilities of peace
are an indication of what the country may and will in time attain. As
an English-speaking resident put it, paraphrasing a familiar saying in
the United States, "If the people will only raise more cacao and less
Hades, the country will soon be a paradise." At the present time the
most serious obstacle to rural development is the lack of adequate
means of communication--roads and railroads. It is evident that the
interior cannot be developed so long as the cost of transportation is
prohibitive or the roads are impassable during a great part of
the year.
The condition of land titles leaves much to be desired. All titles are
supposed to be derived from original grants by the crown or the
government of the Republic. As there is no record extant of such
grants and as much land has been acquired by adverse possession, the
amount of land remaining to the state cannot even be the subject of an
intelligent guess.
Pages:
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243