The Fish That Ate the Whale; The Life and Times of America's Banana King
February 3, 2017 | Author: Rich Cohen | Category: N/A
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Farrar, Straus and Giroux 18 West 18th Street, New York 10011 Copyright © 2012 by Rich Cohen Map copyright copy right © 2012 by Jeffrey Jeff rey L. Ward All rights rig hts reserved rese rved Distributed in Canada by D&M Publishers, Inc. Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2012 Grateful acknow acknowledg ledgment ment is made for permission to reprint the following material: Excerpt from One Hundred Years of Solitude ( Solitude ( Cien Cien años de soledad ) by Gabriel Gabr iel García Garcí a Márquez, translat t ranslated ed by Gregory Gregor y Rabassa, Raba ssa, copyr c opyright ight © 1967 by Gabriel Gabr iel García Garcí a Márquez, translation copyright © 1970 by Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. Re printed by permission permissi on of Agencia Literaria Li teraria Carmen Ca rmen Balcell Bal cellss and HarperCol Har perCollins lins Publishe P ublishers. rs. Excerpt from Living to ell the ale ( Vivir Vivir para contarla ) by Gabriel Gabr iel García Márquez, Márque z, translated by Edith Grossman, translation copyr ight © 2003 by Gabriel García Márquez. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. Excerpt from Every Man a King: Te Autobiography of Huey P. Long , Long , copyright copy right © 1933 by Huey P. Long, renewal copyright © 1961 1961 by Russell Ru ssell B. Long. L ong. Unabridged reprint edition published publis hed 1996 by Da Capo Press, P ress, by b y arrangement arrangeme nt with Russell Ru ssell B. Long, L ong, Palmer Palme r Long, and Christopher R. Brauchli. Reprinted by pe rmission of Palmer R. Long, L ong, Jr., Jr., trustee, and R. Katherine Long, L ong, granddaughter of Huey P. Long. Te poem “United Fruit Company” from Canto General by General by Pablo Neruda, translated by Jack Schmitt, Schmit t, copyright copy right © 1991 by the Fundación Fundac ión Pablo Neruda. Ner uda. Publishe P ublished d by the University of California Press. Reprinted by permission. Library of Congress Cataloging-inCataloging-in-Publication Publication Data Cohen, Rich. Te �sh that ate the whale : the life and times of Americ America’s a’s banana king / Rich Cohen. — 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978978-00-374374-2992729927-99 (alk. paper) 1. Zemur Zemurray, ray, Samuel Samuel,, 1877 1877– –196 1961. 1. 2. Jewis Jewish h busin businesspe esspeople— ople—Louisiana— Louisiana— New Orleans— Orleans—Biography. Biography. 3. Banana trade— trade—Louisiana—New Louisiana—New Orleans— History. Histor y. 4. United Fruit Company— Company—Biography. Biography. I. itle. HD9259.B2 Z463 2012 338.7'634772092—dc23 [B]] [B 2011041207 Designed by Abby Kagan www.fsgbooks www .fsgbooks.com .com 1
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Frontispiece: Photograph of Samuel Zemurray reprinted by permi ssion of Eliot Elisofon / ime & Life Pictures / Getty Images.
1 Selma
Sam Zemurray saw his �rst banana in 1893. In the lore, this is presented as a moment o clarity, wherein the uture was revealed. In some versions, versio ns, the original origi nal banana bana na is presented as a platonic platonic ideal, an archetype ty pe circling the young man’s man’s head. It is seen rom rom a great distance, then very close, each reckle magni�ed. magni �ed. As it was his �rst banana, I imagine it situated on a velvet pillow, in a display alongside Adam’s rib and Robert Johnson’s guitar. Tere is much variation in the telling o this story,, meaning each expert story exper t has written w ritten his or her own history; meaning mean ing the story has gone rom reportage to mythology; meaning Sam the Banana Man is Paul Bunyan and the �rst banana is Babe the Blue Ox. In some versio versions, ns, Sam sees the banana bana na in the gutter in Selma, Alabama, A labama, where it’s it’s allen al len rom a pushcart; pushcar t; in some, he sees it in i n the window w indow o a grocery and is smitten. He rushes ru shes inside, grabs the owner own er by the lapel, and makes him tell everything he knows. In some, he sees it amid a pile o bananas on the deck o a ship plying the Alabama R iver on on a lazy laz y summer afernoon. Te most likely version has Sam seeing that �rst banana in the wares o a peddler in the alley behind his uncle’s store in Selma. Te American banana trade had begun twenty years beore, but it was still embryonic. Few people had ever seen a banana. I they were spoken o at all, it was as an oddity, the way a person might speak o an Arican cucumber today. In this version, Sam peppers the salesman with questions: What is it? Where did you get it? How much does it cost? How ast do they sell? What do you do with the peel? What kind o money can you make? But none o the stories mentions a crucial detail: did
12 • The Fish That Ate the Whale
Zemurray taste that �rst banana? I like to imagine him peeling it, eating the ruit in three bites, then tossing the skin into the street the way people did back then. ossing it and saying, “Wonderul.” In uture years, Zemurray always spoke o his product the way people speak o things they truly love, as something antastical, in part because it’s not entirely necessary. When he mentioned the nutritional value o bananas in i n interviews, interv iews, he added, “And “And o course it’s it’s delicious.” Putting us at a urther remove rom Zemurray is the act that the kind o banana he saw in Selma in 1893, the banana that made his ortune, the variety known as the Big Mike, went extinct in the 1960s. Sam Zemurray was born in 1877, in the region o western Rus sia once known as Bessarabia. It’ It’ss Moldavia today. He grew up on a wheat arm, in a �at country ringed by hills. His ather died young, leaving the amily beref, without prospects. Sam traveled to America with his aunt in 1892. He was to establish himsel and send or the others— mother, siblings. He landed in New York, then continued to Selma, Alabama, where his uncle owned a store. He was ourteen or �feen, but you would guess him much older. Te immigrants imm igrants o that th at era could not afford afford to be children. child ren. Tey had to struggle every minute o every day. By sixteen, he was as hardened as the men in Walker Evans’s photos, a tough operator, a dead-end dead- end kid, coolly �guri �g uring ng angles: Where’ W here’ss the play? What’s in it or or me? His humor was black, his explanations ew. He was driven by the same raw energy that has always attracted the most ambitious to America, then pushed them to the t he head o the crowd. Grasper, Grasper, climber— cli mber—nasty nasty ways o describing this th is kid, who wants what you take or granted. From his �rst months in America, he was scheming, looking or a way to get ahead. You did not need to be a Rockeel Rocke eller ler to know the basics o the dream: Start at the bottom, �ght your way to the t he top. Over time, Sam would develop a philosophy best expressed in a handul o phrases: You’re there, we’re here; here ; Go see for yourself ; Don’t trust the report . Tough immensely immensely complicated, he was, in a undamental way, simple, earthy. He believed in staying close to the action— in the �elds with the workers, in the dives with the banana cowboys. You drink with a man, you learn what he knows. (“Tere is no problem you can’t solve i you understand your business rom A to Z,” he said later.) In a
Selma • 13
amous exchange, when challenged by a rival who claimed he could not understand Zemurray’s accent, Zemurray said, “You’re �red. Can you understand that?” Selma, Alabama, was the perect spot or a kid like Sam: an incubator, a starter town, picturesque yet aded, grand but still small enough to memorize. A manuacturing center in the time o the Conederacy, it had since been allowed to dilapidate. Tere was a main street, a ruit market, a butcher shop, a candy store, a theater with plush seats, a city hall, churches. Tere were brick houses with curtains in the windows and swings on the porches—the porches— the white side o town. Tere were shotgun shacks, blue and yellow and red, ronted by weedy yards— the Negro side o town. Tere were taverns and houses o worship where Christian gospel was mixed with Arican voodoo. Tere were banks, savings and loans, raternal orders. Tere was a commercial district, where every store was �lled with unduly optimistic businessmen. Tough the biography o Zemurray’s uncle has been orgotten, we can take him as a standstand-in in or the generation o poor grandathers grandat hers who came �rst, who worked and worked and got nothing but a place o honorr in the amily hono a mily photo in return. retur n. Sometimes described descr ibed as a grocery, sometimes as a general store, his shop was precisely the sort that Jewish immigrants had been establishing across the South or �fy years. Such concerns were usually operated by men who came to America because they were the youngest youn gest o many brothers, without property or plans. Tese people p eople went went south because, in the early e arly days o the American republic, it was not inhospitable to Hebrews. Many began as peddlers, crossing the country with a mountain o merchandise strapped to their backs. You see them in ancient silver prints and daguerreotypes, weathered men humping hal the world on their shoulders, pushing the other hal in a cart—bags cart— bags o grain, dinnerware, tinware, lamps, clothes, canvas or tents, chocolate, anything an isolated armer might want but could not �nd in the sticks. When they had saved some money, many o these men opened stores, which meant moving all that merchandise under a roo in a town along their route. Even now, as you drive across the South, you will see their remnants baked into the soil like ossils: an ancient veranda, a ghost sign blistered rom years o rain—������� � ����, ���� �� ��� ����� ����. Tese men were careul to open no more
14 • The Fish That Ate the Whale
than one store per town, partly because who needs the competition, partly because they worried about attracting the wrong kind o attention. Tey stocked everything. What they did not stock, they could order.. Te most successul order successu l grew into great department depart ment stores: stores: S. A. Shore S hore in Winchester, Alabama, ounded by Russian-born Russian- born Solomon Shore, ather o Dinah; E. Lewis & Son Dry Goods in Hendersonville, North Carolina, ounded by Polish-born Polish- born Edward Lewis; Capitol Department Store in Fayetteville, North Carolina, ounded by the Rus sian Stein brothers. Others, having started by extending credit to customers, evolved into America’s �rst investment banks. Lehman Brothers, ounded by Henry Lehman, a Jewish immigrant rom Bavaria, began as a dry goods store in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1844. Lazard Frères, ounded by three Jewish brothers rom France, began as a wholesale business in New Orleans in 1848. Te store s tore owned owned by Zemurray’ Zemur ray’ss uncle was probably o this variety: having begun as a young man carry ing merchandise, it grew into a neat grocery on Broad Street. Selma closed early. By ten p.m., p.m., the bustling bust ling o the marketplace ma rketplace had given way to the swamp stink and cicadas, but there was always action or those who knew where to look: in the private clubs where merchants played aro and stud, in the juke joints that stayed open rom can till can’t. According to those who knew him, Sam did not care or crowds and parties. He had a restless mind and a persis per sistent tent need to get outdoors. He liked to be alone. You might see him wandering beneath the lamps la mps o town, a tough, lean young man in i n an overcoat, hands buried deep in his pockets. He stacked shelves and checked inventory inventory in i n his uncle’ uncle’ss store. Now and then, he dealt with the salesmen who turned up with sample cases. He stood in the alley, amid the garbage cans and cats, asking about suppliers and costs. Tere was money to be made, but not here. He interrogated customers. He was looking or different work and would would try tr y anything, i only or experience. His early lie was a series o adventures, with odd job leading to odd job. Much o the color that would later entertain magazine writers—Sam’s writers— Sam’s lie had the dimensions o a airy tale—were tale—were accumulated in his �rst ew years in Selma. He worked as a tin t in merchant. Well, that’s how it would be described descr ibed in the press. “Young Sam Z. bartered iron or livestock, chickens and pigs.” According to newspaper and magazine accounts, he was in act
Selma • 15
employed by a struggling old-timer old- timer who was less tin merchant than peddler, the last o a vanishing breed, the country cheapjack in a tattered coat, sharing shari ng a piece o chocolate with the t he boy. boy. Now and then, he might offer some wisdom. Banks fail, women leave, but land lasts forever. He forever. He combed trash piles on the edge o Selma, searching or discarded scraps o sheet metal, the cast-off cast- off junk o the industrial age, which he piled on his cart and pushed rom arm to arm, looking or trades—wire trades— wire or a chicken coop in return or one o the razorbacks in the pen. Afer the t he particulars part iculars were agreed on, Sam was told to get movmoving, Catch and tie that animal, boy. boy. It was Zemurray’s �rst real job: racing through the slop with a rope in his hand. “In those days,” he told a reporter rom Life Life,, “I could outrun any pig in Dixie. Dix ie.”” Paid a dollar a week, he kept the t he job just long enough to know he would rather be the man who owned the hog than the man who collected the junk, and would rather be the man who discarded the sheet metal than the man who owned the hog. A series o jobs ollowed, tried on and thrown off like thrif- store suits. He was a housecleaner house cleaner and a delivery deliver y boy. boy. He turned tur ned a lathe or a carpenter. By eighteen, eighteen, he had saved enough to send or his brothers and sisters, hal hal a dozen pale young Jews who turned up in Alabama in the last years o the nineteenth century. But his real lie began only when he saw that �rst banana. He de vised a plan soon afer: he would would travel to Mobile, where where the ruit boats arrived rom Central America, purchase a supply o his own, carry them back to Selma, and go into business.
2 Ripes
Zemurray took his money and went south. Wisteria bloomed along the railroad tracks. owns drifed by. He could smell the ocean beore he could see it. He was like a kid on the rontier, who, a day afer the har vest, olds his savings into i nto a roll roll and goes to try tr y his luck in town. Mobile Mob ile was a seedy industrial industrial port �lled with all a ll the amiliar ami liar types: ty pes: the sharpie, the �nancier, the scoundrel, the chucklehead, the sport. Sam was a bit o everything. He could be shrewd, but he could also be naïve. He was greedy or inormation. He took a room in a seamen’s hotel near the port. Te waterront waterront was crossed by train tracks— t racks—dozens dozens o lines converged here. Boxcars crammed with coal, ruit, cotton, and cane stood on the sidings. Te railroad ra ilroad conductors conductors were the aristocrats o the scene. Tey drank dran k coffee in the station stat ion house, house, smug in their t heir checkered caps. Te docks were crowded with stevedores, most o them immigrants rom Sicily. Te train sheds were crowded with peddlers, most o them Jewish immigrants imm igrants rom rom Poland Poland and Russia. Rus sia. Tey bought merchandise off the decks o ships and sold it rom carts in the streets o Mobile. One evening, evening, Sam stood on the whar watching a Boston Fruit banana boat sail into the harbor. Te Boston Fruit Company, which would become United Fruit, dominated the trade, with a �eet that carried bananas rom Jamaica to Boston, Charleston, New Orleans, and Mobile. Zemurray would have seen one o the smaller ships that made the trip to the Gul ports, a cutter with sails and engine. Te unnel sent up black smoke. Te pier strained under the weight o unloaders who appeared, as i i out o nowhere, nowhere, whenever a ship landed. la nded. As soon as
18 • The Fish That Ate the Whale
the boat was anchored, these men swarmed across the deck, ants on a sugar pile, working in orga or ganized nized teams. In the South, in the days beore mechanical equipment, bananas were unloaded by hand, the workers carry ing the cargo a stem at a time—rom time— rom the hold, where the shipment was packed in ice, onto the deck o the ship. A banana stem is the ruit o an entire tree— a hundred pounds or more. Each stem holds perhaps a hundred bunches; each bunch holds perhaps nine hands; each hand holds perhaps �feen �ngers—aa �nger being a single banana. It was backbreaking work, and �ngers— dangerous, not just or the shoulders and arms but also or the central ner vous system. As any a ny banana cowboy would tell you, banana plants are prized nesting places or scorpions. When the stems are cut down, the killers go along or the ride, rom the banana plantation to the jungle railroad, ra ilroad, to the whar, wha r, to the t he ship, across the t he Gul Gul to Mobile, or New Orleans, or Boston, where where they spring out, stinging sti nging the t he �rst stevedore they happen upon. Most workers on the banana docks were West Indians who arrived in the southern ports on the ships that carried the cargo. Early last century, newspaper reporters looking or local color ofen wrote about these hired hands, painting them in barbarous shades o minstrel blue. Tey described dark skin, big lips, grinning grin ning aces, heavy haunches, their shirts as white as their eyes, lifing and hauling, working as one man. Tey pictured them in sunlight and gaslight, moving like shadows along the docks, docile, content, content, occasionally breaking breaki ng into hymns and psalms and strange tribal music that chilled their white overseers. “Most o them are Jamaican Jama ican negroes,” Frederick Upham Upham Adams Adam s wrote in Conquest of the ropics, ropics, “black as the ace o spades and care-ree care- ree as the birds who sing in the t he adjacent adjacent park. Fat negro ‘mammies’ trudge tr udge in with handcarts loaded with ood and sweetmeat delicacies dear to the negro taste. . . . Powerul clusters o electric lights �ash out in the vast covered shed which protects the docks, and the myriad lights o the ship add their glow to the general effect.” Sam would have watched closely as the workers ormed lines that snaked rom the deck o the ship down a ramp, and across the pier to the waiting boxcars. (He wanted to learn every detail o the trade.) Each stem was passed rom man to man until it reached the open door
Ripes • 19
o the train, trai n, where an agent rom the company company examined exami ned it or or bruises, reckles, color. I the stem passed muster, it was loaded into the car, which was air cooled and straw �lled. When the car was ull, the door was swung shut and locked. An empty car was rolled into its place. Tis continued or hours—a hours— a shif might run rom three p.m. until midnight. When a train was packed, the switchman signaled and the cargo was carried across the South. Te bananas that did not pass muster were dumped on the side o the yard, where they were urther divided. Some were designated as turnings, meaning they were on their way to being worthless. At the end o the day, they were sold at a discount to store own ers and peddlers. You could see them, with their carts piled high, trundling through the streets, calling, “Bananas, bananas or sale! A nickel a bunch! Yes, we have bananas, we have bananas or sale!” Te bananas that did not make the cut as greens or turnings were designated “ripes” and heaped in a sad pile. A ripe is a banana ba nana you have lef in the sun that has become as reckled as a Hardy boy. Tese bananas, though still good to eat, delicious even, would never make it to the market in time. In less than a week, they would begin to sofen and stink. As ar as the merchants were concerned, they were trash. When de�ning a ripe, Boston Fruit used the ollowing standard: one reckle, turning; two t wo reckles, ripe. Sam noticed everything—the everything— the care with which the bananas were handled, the way each boxcar was �lled and rolled to a siding, how men rom the banana company, college men, moved through the crowd barking orders—but orders— but paid special attention to the growing pile o ripes. Anything can cause a banana to ripen early. I you squeeze a green banana, it will turn in days instead o weeks; ditto i it’s nicked, dented, or banged. A ripe banana will cause those around it to ripen, and those will cause still others to ripen, until an entire boxcar is ruined. Beore rerigeration was perected, as much as 15 percent o an average cargo ended up in the ripe pile. Sam grew �xated on ripes, recognizing a product where others had seen only trash. It was the worldview o the immigrant: understanding how so-called so-called garbage might be valued under a different name, seeing nutrition where others saw only waste. He was the son o a Rus sian
20 • The Fish That Ate the Whale
armer, or whom ood had once been scarce enough to make even a reckled banana seem precious. Afer the ship had been unloaded, afer the trains had carried off the green bananas, afer the merchants and peddlers had taken away the turnings, Sam walked down to the pier to talk to the company agent. Tey spoke as the sun went down, the man with the Ivy League elocution and the kid with the Russian Rus sian accent, who rolled his r ’s ’s and spit his vowels. Zemurray had $150. Tat was his stake. He �gured it would go urther urt her i it was spent on ripes. He was no ool. He knew what this meant—that meant—that he would have to move ast, that he was entering a race with the t he clock. Tree days, �ve at the most. Afer that, t hat, he would would be lef with a pile o glue. But he believed he could make it. As ar as he was concerned, ripes were considered trash only because Boston Fruit and similar simi lar �rms �r ms were too slowslow-ooted to cover ground. It was a calcuca lculation based on arrogance. I can be ast where others have been slow. I can hustle where others have been satis�ed with the easy pickings o the trade. Zemurray’s �rst cargo consisted o a ew thousand bananas. bananas . He did not spend all his money but retained a small balance, which he used to rent part o a boxcar on the Illinois Central. Te trip to Selma was scheduled to take three days, meaning he would have just enough time to get the ruit to market beore the sun did its worst. In most cases, a ruit hauler would spend a ew dollars extra or a bed in the caboose, but since the reight charge used the last o his money, Zemurray traveled in the boxcar with his bananas, the t he door door open, the country country drifing d rifing by.. It seems appropriate: Zemurray sleeping beside by be side his �rst haul, hau l, attending to his product like a baby in a nursery. Te train lef on a uesday morning, say, the sun �ery above the smoky reight-yard dawn, the clank o wheels over switches, the ocean drifing away. Color and country: blue in the morning, green at midday,, red in the evening. day eve ning. Zemurray sat in the boxcar doorway. Te train traveled maddeningly, inuriatingly, exceedingly slow. In the country, it went the speed o a trotting mule. In the towns, it was no aster than a man walki wa lking. ng. In the t he cities, it stopped stopped altogether, altogether, sometimes or hours, waiting or cargo and crew. Zemurray paced the railroad bed, hands on his hips, muttering. Stoplights. emporary holds. What was supposed to be three days
Ripes • 21
was turning into �ve, six. With each hour, the bananas became more pungent. He spoke to the t he conductor conductor, who commiserated, commis erated, saying, saying , “What a terrible shame. sha me.”” In a Mississip M ississippi pi train yard, where the redbrick redbrick buildings, eed stores, and tinsmiths crowded close to the tracks, a brakeman, hearing Sam’s story, said, “You’ve got good product there. I you could just get word ahead to the towns along the line, I’m sure the grocery own ers would meet you at the platorms and buy the bananas ba nanas right rig ht off the boxcars.” During Dur ing the t he next delay, Zemurray Zemurr ay went into a Wester Western n Union office and spoke to a telegraph operator. Having no money, Sam offered a deal: i the man radioed every operator ahead, asking each o them to spread the word to local merchants—dirtmerchants— dirt-cheap cheap bananas coming through for merchants and peddlers— peddlers—Sam would share a percentage o his sales. When the Illinois Central arrived in the next town, the customers were waiting. Zemurray talked terms through the boxcar door, a tower o ripes at his back. en for eight. Tirteen for ten. He ten. He broke off a bunch, put the money in his pocket. Te whistle whi stle blew, the train rolled on. He sold the last banana in Selma, then went home in the dark. When he tallied his money, it came to $190. His �rst real success: afer accounting or expenses Sam had earned $40 in six days. Zemurray had stumbled stu mbled on a niche: ripes, overlooked overlooked at the bottom o the trade. It was logistics. Could Cou ld he move move the product aster than the t he product was ruined by time? Tis work was nothing but stress, the margins ridiculously small (like countereiting dollar bills), but it was a way in. Whereas the t he big ruit ru it companies monopolized monopolized the t he upper precincts o the industry—you industry— you needed capital, railroads, and ships to operate in greens—the greens— the world o ripes was wide open. Within a ew weeks o his return to Selma, Zemurray set out again, then again, then again. It was in these months, on train platorms and in small towns, that Zemurray �rst came to be known as Sam the Banana Man.
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