Upon the resignation of Estrada Palma, an American Governor was again installed, and Cuba was told in unmistakable fashion that the next intervention might be permanent.
Less drastic but quite as effectual a method of assuring order and regularity in administration was the action taken by the United States in another Caribbean island.

A little country like the Dominican Republic, in which few Presidents managed to retain their offices for terms fixed by changeable constitutions, could not resist the temptation to rid itself of a ruler who had held power for nearly a quarter of a century.

After he had been disposed of by assassination in 1899, the government of his successor undertook to repudiate a depreciated paper currency by ordering the customs duties to be paid in specie; and it also tried to prevent the consul of an aggrieved foreign nation from attaching certain revenues as security for the payment of the arrears of an indemnity.

Thereupon, in 1905, the President of the United States entered into an arrangement with the Dominican Government whereby, in return for a pledge from the former country to guarantee the territorial integrity of the republic and an agreement to adjust all of its external obligations of a pecuniary sort, American officials were to take charge of the custom house send apportion the receipts from that source in such a manner as to satisfy domestic needs and pay foreign creditors.

* * See "The Path of Empire", by Carl Russell Fish (in "The Chronicles of America")..