Too Many Bananas

Through half a century and three wars United Fruit Co. has grown to a $192 million empire. Before the war it raised and merchandised about 65% of the world's banana crop, operated a banana fleet of 80-odd trim white ships, had 126,000 acres of banana land under cultivation. Today all but a dozen of the oldest and slowest of these ships have gone to war (some of the best refrigerated ships have ignobly hauled steel ingots across the Atlantic), and the old hulks still in the Caribbean service must load high priority coffee, sugar, cocoa before hoisting one banana into their holds.

All this means much more than just another corporate dislocation caused by the war. United Fruit's troubles are also the troubles of Central America, 80% of whose monthly crop of 100,000 tons of bananas rots in the fields for lack of shipping to the U.S. Broke and disillusioned, the people of five banana-exporting Central American republics (Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras) are now angry at the United Nations' policy that annihilated their chief export but failed to provide them with any other means of employment. The problem is all the more acute since Government revenues, which might be used for unemployment relief, in most cases are largely dependent on the banana trade.

For the U.S., bound to a good-neighbor policy for better or worse, there are two loser's choices: 1) divert more shipping to Central America--not a very likely possibility in view of Army needs; 2) try to work out some system, such as Britain last week was planning to do for her Caribbean colonies (Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad, etc.). The British scheme includes buying up colonial products just as the U.S. is now buying Brazilian coffee and Peruvian cotton, and let the Caribbean countries use the cash for made-work projects such as road building and swamp clearance. Such a subsidy will cost Britain $24 million per year in the Caribbean, but might cost the U.S. less than $20 million in Central America.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.