If the uprisings became serious the other
appropriations of the budget were reduced by fifty or even
seventy-five per cent until all the available cash was devoted to war
purposes. In 1903 military and naval expenditures absorbed 71.7 per
cent of the Republic's disbursements, and in 1904 72.6 per cent. At
such times the government was reduced to a desperate struggle for
existence; the loss of the custom-houses in power of the insurgents
made its position still more precarious; it contracted loans on
ruinous terms; it neglected its foreign obligations and paid its
employees in promissory notes and even in postage stamps, which they
would then peddle about the streets. Under such conditions it is
natural that nothing was left for public improvements. Even under the
peaceful administration of Heureaux a disproportionate part of the
national funds was expended for military purposes and three gunboats
were acquired and maintained, but not a single mile of improved road
was laid out.
With the American military occupation political conditions in the
Dominican Republic have radically changed.
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