The Cuba Company was a business firm active in pre-Castro Cuba in railroad construction and operation, as well as in the ownership and operation of sugar and tobacco plantations. The Cuba Company records include the President's Correspondence dating from 1900 to 1923, records of the board of directors and stockholders meetings, stock transactions, bank records, purchase and maintenance records, internal operations records, labor and personnel information, lists of stockholders, vouchers, cancelled dividend checks, stock proxies, land and right-of-way acquisitions, taxes, insurance, railroad equipment information, construction matters, photographs, maps and blueprints.
Of particular interest is the President's Correspondence, which includes much information concerning such significant topics as the Negro Protest of 1912, labor problems, strikes, importation of labor, manipulation of sugar prices and the effects of war on these prices, U.S. sugar tariffs, the revolution of 1917, the company's relationship with the Cuban government, plantation and railroad operations, and sugar and molasses production. The letters in the President's Correspondence reveal the day-to-day operations of the company through normal times and various crises. They also reveal the company's extensive influence in Cuban Society, economics, and politics over a period of sixty years.
The financial records--purchases, profits, losses, stock transfers and dividend payments, debentures--provide a reasonably complete picture of the company's finances from its board of directors and stockholders activities to the purchase of equipment for plantations, mills, railroads, and hotels.
The bulk of the collection dates from 1900 to 1925. After 1925, there are years where the information is spotty, such as the 1940s.
