I just finished this marvelous book recounting the life of the “American Banana King”, Samuel Zemurray. If you went to Tulane or followed the donors of Zionism, you may know his name but otherwise, his story is rather untraveled. Zemurray was a Russian Jewish immigrant that moved to Louisiana in the late 1800s. He was coined a ‘fruit jobber,’ a peddler of sorts that is used derogatorily to prescribe the low end workers who would catch the spoiled fruit as they fell off the railcars and sell them for a profit. Zemurray like many rags-to-riches immigrants story was a journey of ascendance from the peddler, to the wholesaler, to the risk taking business owner with nothing to lose, to the innovative land owner and finally to the ultimate banana juggernaut. While my explanation is rather curtailed, his journey was ripe with peaks and valleys but it encapsulated the American dream and the pioneerism of early American lore.
More than just an American story, Zemurray helped formulate much of the Latin American political relationships that exist between the Central American isthmus and the US’s economic engine. Zemurray built up his business by taking a tremendous amount of risk to establish banana plantations in the low lying tropics of Honduras and running a strong fleet of ships to America. It’s said that “He went into the jungle at 17 and at 21, he came out.” He lived and worked the land along with his employees, built local schools & hospitals, formed political relationships (at one point staging a coup-de-etat) and led from the frontier. At one point in time, Zemurray’s company, Cuyamel Fruit Company owned 70% of the private land of Hunduras and 15% of the banana trade in America.
Around the early 1920s however, the US government saw an impending international crisis as the United Fruit company (UF), which owned much of the land in Guatemala, started to butt up against the lands of Cuyamel Fruit Company on the southern border. The two companies were battling for territory and market share (Cuyamel the fast growing challenger to UF’s incumbent supremacy). The US government brokered a deal that made Zemurray the largest shareholder of a newly merged conglomerate. In the deal, Zemurray was silenced under a stack of shares while the incumbent United Fruit company could continue to operate at their preserve-and-protect pace rather than a true growth at all costs approach. UF was run by a gaggle of ivy-league execs in Boston who had never truly stepped foot in the tropics but rather were handed down the company through a long lineage of successful businessmen.
At one point in the story, Zemurray flies up to Boston, to the UF Headquarters, to listen to a board meeting. In the meeting, the executives are evaluating a proposal that was sent via courier by their managers at the plantation in Guatemala asking for $10,000 to build an irrigation ditch at one of the plantations.
“The executives called on experts, who detailed the costs and benefits of the project. Zemurray grew restless. To him, such a debate was symptomatic of a greater problem. The executives running United Fruit did not understand their role, what they could and could not do. he raised his hand, stood to speak. “This man in Guatemala, he’s your manager, isn’t he?” Zemurray asked. Yes. “Then listen to what the man is telling you. You’re here, he’s there,” said Zemurray. “If you trust him, trust him. If you don’t trust him, fire him and get a man you do trust in the job.”
I found this anecdote extremely important and something that exemplified his leadership. While Zemurray was in the trenches and built his business with his own two hands and elbow grease, he eventually built his business to the size and scale that warranted trusting delegation. When you do that, you’ll inevitably have failure of duties but while you’ve got your team, don’t undermine them; leverage them or get rid of them and find someone else you trust. Ultimately this spoke to me as decisions are hard but when you want to know the truth, go to the people on the ground who are doing the work on a daily basis and you’ll find out the truth.
Zemurray later when on to takeover the United Fruit Company and turn the business around after a flailing couple of years post merger. He also was the mastermind behind numerous political regime changes in Central America, ‘the waist of the Americas.’ He was also very well known for contributing capital and expertise to the Zionist movement after World War II. Without his expertise we may never have realized the State of Israel. Zemurray was a special man and may his story never be forgotten.