“who had visited Cuba at the paper’s behest, used the figure of 600,000 in a speech to his colleagues.64 The Sun and the World printed comparable numbers while the Tribune preferred a toll of 400,000. Other observers who were not in competition with Hearst had arrived at similar counts. In March 1898, writes John Offner, the American minister told the Spanish prime minister that 400,000 had died in Cuba; the Spanish leader did not dispute the figure, since his sources reported a similar loss of life.65 José Canalejas, a Madrid publisher and respected politician who toured Cuba late in 1897, wrote two extensive reports on the situation for Premier Sagasta. Everyone he encountered on the Spanish side, of whatever political persuasion, agreed “that the war and reconcentration policy [had] led to the death of a third part, at the very least, of the rural population, that is to say, more than 400,000 human beings.†Canalejas put the total losses between reconcentration and fighting at 600,000, which represented close to 40 percent of the island’s population, with no end in sight.66 At the start of 1898, there was a rough consensus in the United States that war, starvation, and disease had claimed at least 400,000 people in Cuba in very short order. More recent studies, working with data extrapolated from the last Spanish census and an American-led survey in 1899, have put the death toll in Cuba at less than 200,000.67 The new numbers may be unduly conservative (there are serious problems with the data underlying these estimates). Whyte, Kenneth. The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst (p. 356). Counterpoint Press. Kindle Edition. Whyte, Kenneth. The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst (p. 356). Counterpoint Press. Kindle Edition. ”
