Bananas Read online

  In winter weather, the fruit was warmed up several degrees in the ship’s hold before unloading, and the unloading machines were sheltered with canvas canopies to protect the fruit from the cold.18 On the dock bananas were loaded onto railroad cars and trucks, each stem counted by automatic tally machines. Fruit that showed evidence of damage or was too ripe to ship further was sold locally at reduced prices.

  Most fruit companies chartered or leased from Norwegian or British owners ships built in Europe specifically for the banana trade.19 In 1900 United Fruit out of Boston had thirty-six steamers, the “Southern Fleet,” that carried fruit to New Orleans and Mobile as well as to more northern East Coast ports.20 Another twenty worked out of the ports of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.21 By 1915 United Fruit was operating a fleet of ninety-five ships.22 The ships had 5,000-ton capacities, carrying 40,000 bunches of bananas each trip.23

  The S.S. Venus, the first refrigerated produce boat, was launched in 1903. In that year, United Fruit Company imported from its Caribbean holdings 1¼ billion pounds of bananas.24 By 1905 banana imports reached 33 million bunches, over 3½ billion pieces of fruit, an average of forty bananas a year for each person in the United States.25

  By 1920 United Fruit had become one of the largest enterprises in the United States, with a vertically integrated network of plantations, refrigerated steamships, and railroad cars to produce, transport, distribute, and market bananas.26 In addition to bananas, the Great White Fleet carried passengers, mail, and other merchandise between Caribbean and North American ports. A second fleet, painted gray, operated between the Caribbean and Europe.27 Banana ships carried freight and mail on return trips to the Caribbean using otherwise empty cargo space. Many of these ships were equipped with comfortable passenger cabins, and the service rivaled that of the transcontinental railroads. In 1902 over 5,500 people chose to travel on the banana boats.28 A 1904 publication described United Fruit’s steamship passenger service as follows:

  The “Admiral” steamships operated by this company are American built twin-screw vessels, and are especially adapted to tropical travel. They have commodious promenade decks, cool and airy, well-ventilated staterooms situated on the main and hurricane decks amidships, thus insuring a minimum of sea motion. The dining saloon is located on the main deck well forward of the engine room, and removed from all disagreeable odors incident. Bathrooms are supplied with fresh or sea water and are at the disposal of passengers at all times.

  The table is made an especial feature of these boats, and is supplied with every delicacy the northern and tropical markets afford.

  The ships are furnished throughout with a perfect system of electric lighting and steam heating.

  The stewards and waiters are unremitting in their duties and everything is done for the comfort and convenience of the passengers.29

  United Fruit Company’s Fleet, J. M. Hill, A Short History of the Banana and a Few Recipes for Its Use (Boston, United Fruit, 1904), 32.

  The company also built hotels in Jamaica and other popular destinations. United Fruit promoted tourism and established a separate passenger department featuring special tropical cruises. They published travel guides such as “A Happy Month in Jamaica” (c. 1915) in which potential tourists or armchair travelers could look at lots of black-and-white photographs and read descriptions of what to see and where to stay. Concerns about foreign travel were soothed with assurances that disembarkation “at the wharf of a modern American hotel [is] conducted in the best American method; on landing, greedy native porters do not snatch our baggage and quarrel about the fees.”30 The fare from Boston, New York, or Philadelphia to Port Antonio (including meals and berth in stateroom) was $40 one way and $75 round trip. Fares were $35 and $70 from Baltimore.

  Businessmen in 1918 were assured that the accommodations and cuisine on the ships of the Great White Fleet were on a par with those of their favorite club or hotel and that they would be “free to enjoy the salt air, sunshine and relaxation of a sea voyage—without the petty annoyance caused by inferior quarters or service.”31 A travelogue for a “Great White Fleet Caribbean Cruise” published in 1922 gave a highly romantic account of the various ports of call including Cuba, Jamaica, Panama, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Guatemala. Potential customers were assured that

  the steamships are all especially designed for cruising in the Caribbean Sea and while some are a little larger than others, the same high standard of service is aimed at for all. They are the most expensively constructed vessels of their kind in the world. All cruise staterooms are outside and are first class only. Not how large, but how fine, best expresses the thought dominating the construction of the ships of the Great White Fleet; a steamship service designed to meet the most exacting requirements of the traveler.32

  In 1928, at the height of its success, the Great White Fleet numbered a hundred vessels and carried 70,000 passengers, 250,000 bags of mail, and 56 million stems of bananas.33

  Standard Fruit entered the tourist business in 1926, with service from New Orleans to the Caribbean.34 In the early 1930s Standard Fruit moved into direct competition with United Fruit for banana trade in Central America, and for the tourist trade in North America. Standard offered twelve-day cruise service to Nassau and Kingston from New York as well as package tours to Cuba, Mexico, and Honduras.35

  At the height of the Depression, United Fruit Company advertised its “30th Successful Season” of guest cruises to the West Indies and Caribbean:

  Thirty years … and now the “Guest Cruises” of 1933! As in 1903, here is the truly intimate way to enjoy the tropics … with six new, magnificent liners now leading a finer Great White Fleet! Every spotless vessel in the service was built for the tropics, its men trained in the tropics, its free-handed, personalized service perfected for tropical cruising … in the favorite informal manner. With outdoor swimming pools and other modern shipboard facilities, with the superb cooking that helped make these ships famous, and with adept staffs afloat and ashore whose pleasure it is to make you comfortable, these are the cruises preferred by those who KNOW the tropics … and no wonder!36

  The cost began at $125 from New York or $97.50 from New Orleans, and it was possible to travel from New York to California for $200, $300 for the round trip.

  Tourism dropped during the Depression years of the 1930s and came to a halt during World War II. At the end of the war, United Fruit moved the basis of its operations from the Caribbean to the Pacific coast of Central America. It was expected that the company “would continue to accommodate passengers in spite of the Great White Fleet’s unofficial motto: ‘Every banana a guest, every passenger a pest.’ ”37 An illustration in a 1954 United Fruit Company magazine shows passengers, mostly women, in bathing suits relaxing in deck chairs while being served bananas from a tray.38

  Beginning in the 1880s, technical advances in steamships, railroads, and refrigeration made it possible to transport perishable tropical merchandise such as bananas to all parts of North America.39 The nationwide network of railroads that developed after the Civil War not only enabled farmers to transport their crops to seaboard cities and foreign markets, but also meant that foreign products such as bananas could be distributed throughout the country. In 1885 a weekly cookery journal noted with some exaggeration that

  one of the best evidences that the American people of this generation live better than their fathers did is found in the steady and rapid growth of the trade in tropical fruits. It is not many years since the great majority of people scarcely knew what a banana was, and considered oranges and lemons as luxuries to be afforded only in sickness or on great occasions. Now, not only these, but other tropical fruits, are brought and eaten almost as generally and freely as apples, and the consumption of melons, peaches, pears, plums and berries, is on the same universal and extensive scale. This is a change which tends to gratify the taste, and to promote health, which is the foundation of human happiness, and is of advantage to everybody.40

  A
decade later a cookbook author extolled the railroads that were bringing

  early fruits from the far South and late fruits from the far North, so that at the centres of population the several fruit seasons are delightfully prolonged. Nor are we restricted to our own country’s production. Such are the facilities for rapid and safe communication from distant points that the world lays her tribute of fruits, sweet and sound, at the door of the enlightened nations.41

  In order to sell billions of pounds of bananas to the people of the United States, the fruit companies had to establish wholesale and retail networks to move the fruit to the consumer. Profits lay in efficient distribution and sales, as well as the total volume of fruit sold.42 Bananas have to be harvested fully developed but green enough to stand a journey of anywhere from five to eighteen days before ripening to a yellow color with brownish flecks. At first the stems were hung in tiers, in stalls, or boxes built of slats, in the between-decks of steamers where they would get the most air circulation.43 Later steamships with refrigerated holds kept the cargo at a constant temperature of 57°F to prevent the fruit from ripening too quickly on the voyage.44

  Stowing the bunches, J. Mace Andress and Julia E. Dickson, Radio Bound for Banana Land, Education Department (Boston: United Fruit, 1932), 15.

  New Orleans was a logical port for the banana trade. It was the closest major American port to the Caribbean and it was the hub of an expanding railroad network that ran up the Mississippi River. A large market developed in the growing Midwestern cities and towns at the turn of the century. By 1905 New Orleans was the largest fruit-importing port in the world, distributing more than nine million stems of bananas by rail to the cities in the interior of the United States.45

  The first ventilated railroad car for transporting fruit resembled a large cage with iron bars, on the theory that the more ventilation the better the fruit would “carry.” When the Armour meatpacking company designed an improved slat-sided freight car it was quickly adopted for banana transport.46 In 1910 over 60,000 freight cars, each containing 500 bunches were dispatched throughout the United States.47 The Fruit Dispatch Company claimed that it was the first to successfully ship bananas under ice. This experiment was undertaken in response to the refusal of storekeepers in certain sections of the country to handle bananas during the summer months because of the risk in transit and their inability to sell the fruit without significant losses. By 1920 all companies had adopted the use of ice to cool banana freight cars, and in the warm months of 1923 the southern division of the Fruit Dispatch Company alone used 29,731 tons of ice.48

  One of the beauties of the banana business was that the freight moved inland from the port cities in the opposite direction to the bulk of other railroad traffic, making economical use of freight cars. Banana trains consisted of from twenty to one hundred cars and maintained fast schedules.49 In 1927 it took 55 hours for bananas to travel from New Orleans to Chicago, 88 hours to Minneapolis, 184 hours to Seattle, and 208 hours (nearly nine days) to Vancouver.50 From the ports of New York and Philadelphia, the fruit was shipped to Cleveland, Detroit, and Toronto in about 36 hours.

  The main line from New Orleans ran along the Mississippi River to Fulton, Kentucky, where five railroad lines met. Fulton became known as the Banana Capital of the World (see Chapter 7). At first the Fruit Dispatch Company and other import companies sent “messengers,” often Italian, with each train to look after the perishable freight. Their job was to inspect cars and test the temperature of sample fruit by sticking thermometers into random bananas. The cars could be either iced, heated, or the ventilation slats adjusted according to the weather and the condition of the fruit. By 1923 resident messengers were stationed at strategic divisional and junction points along the route such as Fulton, Dubuque, Iowa, and Mounds, Illinois.51 The boxcars were then dispatched north, east, and west. Messengers and the men stationed at strategic checkpoints also reported to each other on existing and predicted weather conditions along the route.

  Ice companies in New Orleans and at stops along the way supplied large blocks of ice that were inserted into compartments at either end of the railroad cars during hot weather. The ice racks were elevated to prevent over-refrigeration of the bottom layers of fruit.52 Standard Fruit managed to buy up most of the ice plants in New Orleans after 1915, and its President Joseph Vaccaro became known as the “Ice King.”53

  Icing cars of bananas at New Orleans, Story of the Banana, Education Department (Boston: United Fruit, 1921), 44.

  In cold months the boxcars were papered at the bulkheads and doorways, and straw protected the fruit. As an added precaution, kerosene, oil, or charcoal heaters could be used to warm the cars.54 In the northern ports, banana boxcars were heated before they were loaded and, in particularly cold weather, again after they were loaded before being sent on their way. There were several large heating plants, one located at Rouses Point, New York, for shipments to Canada, one at Mounds, Illinois, and another at Dubuque, Iowa. The facilities in Illinois and Iowa were for shipments from southern ports heading north and northwest. The plant at Mounds was the largest and could handle seventy-two freight cars at one time.55 A large cooling and heating plant in Springfield, Missouri, built by the St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad Company, consisted of four tracks inside a shed. Each track could hold ten freight cars. Large air ducts crossed the roof of the shed, and canvas tubes carried warm or cool air into one end of the freight car and took it out at the other after passing through the fruit.56

  Another peril of the shipping business was constantly changing regulations concerning disease in southern U.S. cities. In a 1905 yellow fever epidemic that swept the ports of the Gulf Coast, 452 lives were lost in New Orleans and perhaps as many more in other areas of the South. Quarantines requiring a fifteen-day fumigation period were imposed against ships from the tropics, often without notice. This was particularly hard for perishable produce such as bananas that when spoiled were dumped into the Mississippi River.57

  The public blamed epidemics on the fruit industry with its ties to the tropics, and specifically the Italians working on the ships and on the railroads in the United States.58 In the 1905 epidemic, the port of New Orleans refused to allow bananas to enter or leave the city. Montgomery, Alabama, prohibited the entry of all bananas until frost. The town of Mounds, Illinois, asked the state board of health to prohibit the passage of banana trains through the state, fearing that the messengers would infect them with yellow fever.59 Once the epidemic was over, the banana trade quickly returned to its normal level.

  In the 1920s and 1930s the banana market in the western United States was supplied by ships that crossed through the Panama Canal and sailed to West Coast ports. This cut the time of transportation significantly from the six- to nine-day train trip to the West Coast from the port of New Orleans. Standard Fruit plantations in Mexico served the southwest by railway until labor unrest forced the company out of the country.60 Direct shipments to Canadian ports on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts in the 1930s also cut some of the banana traffic in the United States. In the summer months, bananas could be found even beyond the Arctic Circle.61

  After World War I, Americans began to demand better roads for the ever-increasing number of automobiles and trucks. Trucks had proven their worth during the war in Europe but needed an extensive system of paved roads. In 1921 Congress passed the Federal Highway Act, providing federal aid for state roads. In 1923 the Bureau of Public Roads began to plan a national highway system. By 1930 efficient truck services to small towns at first supplemented but ultimately supplanted the railway system in the United States. Trucking began to affect a wide range of American life from manufacturing plant location to eating habits, and more transport firms appeared to deliver goods to the expanding consumer-oriented society motivated by advertising.62 Towns heretofore unserved by railroads could be efficiently served by truck routes, and bananas found their way into shops and stores even in small villages throughout the nation.

  The road
system grew slowly during the 1920s and then construction came to a halt with the Depression until the Works Progress Administration was authorized in 1935. Between 1935 and 1943 the WPA was responsible for building over 650,000 miles of highways, streets, and roads.63 With the expansion of the road system, trucks began to compete with the railroads in regional and national markets. They changed distribution patterns, upset established markets, and opened up new venues. It is estimated that during this period trucking brought the final 10 percent of the population, once isolated from major railroad arteries, into contact with the national economy.64

  Refrigerated trucks began to compete with railroads for the banana business in the 1940s. At first, trucks were insulated with grass and sawdust and cooled by barrels of water and ice. The technology of refrigeration improved with the adoption of dry ice and later mechanical devices. One entrepreneur, Everett Lawrence, built up a fleet of thirty-four trucks to haul bananas to Midwestern markets previously supplied by rail. Trucking the fruit cost about half as much as by rail in the early 1950s, and the railroad banana freight business began to decline.65

  The Highway Act of 1956 dealt a severe blow to the railroads. The law resulted in the construction of a 41,000-mile interstate highway system intended to assist commerce. This network connected all the major cities and important industrial areas in the country. It was fed by county, state, and national highways, and provided a much more complete system than that of the railroads.

  Another advantage in truck transportation was that truckers charged flat rates with no extra charges for loading and unloading or for refrigerating the cargo. Railroads offered these services and arranged for carting small shipments to retail stores but charged extra for these services. Not all trucking was cheaper than rail transport, but the savings in time and in the reduction in handling perishable goods often offset higher rates.66