Related Pronunciations
Adventurally Collaborated
Eventually Landscaperart Prints
Eventually Ended This Practice
Reconsidered Eventually Punished: Here Used. Deluded
I'm Sure She'll Come Round Eventually
They Say They Might Get Back Together Eventually.
Oh, Green Day Sucks And Is For Posers Since Like Half Of You, Who Hate Blink Only Listen To Them. Those Sell Outs.
Well wow those muted grey tunes create a sense of loss and lack of trust, furthered expressed through the brush work which appears rushed and almost bleeding into the background, reflecting an almost Kandinsky like aesthetic. The Dim lighting helps us dissect the piece further, it can be viewed as a story, the light, slowly getting darker reflecting onto the cycle of human life, it begins and eventually ends as do we all. Well I think overall this piece allows us to explore our deeper emotions when it comes to hidden trauma, we are allowed to feel scared when looking at this beautiful piece of work as this was Giles-Mcmillan's intention for the piece, he wanted us to feel unsure while also building a sense of home and security. My mother left me at 3 and I still have yet to overcome the fear of loss ??
Took me over to your house to meet your family
Introduce me to them, saying that you'd marry me
Then you'd look me in the eye and say, "It's just a joke"
Then you'd kiss me and I'd smile, did you even know?
When you'd say that kinda thing, I'd be excited
Got me hoping maybe one day you would mean it
Always thought I'd only make a fool of someone else
Now you've only gone and made me make one of myself
I guess that flowers aren't just used for big apologies
I guess I should've been more conscious how you spoke to me
'Cause when we'd fight, you'd give me space and not communicate
And for a while I thought that's what I should appreciate
Maybe I was holding onto what I thought you were
But when you think too hard, eventually it starts to hurt
The version of you in my head, now I know wasn't true
Young people fall for the wrong people, guess my one was you
I was getting any flight so we could make it work
You'd ignore me, coulda told me you were seeing her
Kinda hate myself for justifying your mistakes
Took a minute but I learned that shit the hard way
Who are you to tell me I can't be heartbroken?
Babe, you had the chance, the door for you was open
If it's what you need to tell yourself to sleep at night
Pretend I haven't found a man who finally treats me right
I guess that flowers aren't just used for big apologies
I guess I should've been more conscious how you spoke to me
'Cause when we'd fight, you'd give me space and not communicate
And for a while I thought that's what I should appreciate
Maybe I was holding onto what I thought you were
But when you think too hard, eventually it starts to hurt
The version of you in my head, now I know wasn't true
Young people fall for the wrong people, guess my one was you
If there's anything I've learned, it's you should watch yourself
If it's hurting you, then leave and go and get some help
I saw Ben Shapiro at a grocery store in Los Angeles yesterday. I told him how cool it was to meet him in person, but I didn’t want to be a douche and bother him and ask him for photos or anything. He said, “Oh, like you’re doing now?”
I was taken aback, and all I could say was “Huh?” but he kept cutting me off and going “huh? huh? huh?” and closing his hand shut in front of my face. I walked away and continued with my shopping, and I heard him chuckle as I walked off. When I came to pay for my stuff up front I saw him trying to walk out the doors with like fifteen Milky Ways in his hands without paying.
The girl at the counter was very nice about it and professional, and was like “Sir, you need to pay for those first.” At first he kept pretending to be tired and not hear her, but eventually turned back around and brought them to the counter.
When she took one of the bars and started scanning it multiple times, he stopped her and told her to scan them each individually “to prevent any electrical infetterence,” and then turned around and winked at me. I don’t even think that’s a word. After she scanned each bar and put them in a bag and started to say the price, he kept interrupting her by yawning really loudly.
After paying for the Milky Ways he proceeded to leave the store and throw all of them in the garbage. Haven't seen him since.
Interstate 695 (I-695) is a 51.46-mile-long (82.82 km) auxiliary Interstate Highway that is a full beltway extending around Baltimore, Maryland, United States. I-695 is officially designated the McKeldin Beltway but is colloquially referred to as either the Baltimore Beltway or 695. The route is an auxiliary route of I-95, intersecting that route southwest of Baltimore near Arbutus and northeast of the city near White Marsh. It also intersects other major roads radiating from the Baltimore area, including I-97 near Glen Burnie, the Baltimore–Washington Parkway (B–W Parkway; Maryland Route 295 [MD 295]) near Linthicum, I-70 near Woodlawn, I-795 near Pikesville, and I-83 in the Timonium area. The 19.37-mile (31.17 km) portion of the Baltimore Beltway between I-95 northeast of Baltimore and I-97 south of Baltimore is officially Maryland Route 695 (MD 695) and is not part of the Interstate Highway System but is signed as I-695. This section of the route includes the Francis Scott Key Bridge that crosses over the Patapsco River. The bridge and its approaches are maintained by the Maryland Transportation Authority (MDTA) while the remainder of the Baltimore Beltway is maintained by the Maryland State Highway Administration (MDOT SHA).
The Baltimore Beltway was first planned in 1949 by Baltimore County; the state eventually took over the project and it became part of the Interstate Highway System planned in 1956. The length of the route from MD 2 south of Baltimore clockwise to U.S. Route 40 (US 40) northeast of the city opened in stages from 1955 to 1962, providing an Interstate bypass of Baltimore. It was the first beltway in the US to be built as part of the Interstate Highway System. Plans were made to finish the remainder of the route, with a diversion to the Windlass and Patapsco freeways, opened in 1973, following the cancelation of a more outer route that was to partly follow what is today MD 702 (Southeast Boulevard). The Outer Harbor Crossing over the Patapsco River, which was dedicated to Francis Scott Key, who wrote "The Star-Spangled Banner", and its approaches were finished in 1977, completing the route around Baltimore. The approaches to the bridge were originally two lanes to accommodate a tunnel that was originally proposed to run under the river; in subsequent years, they were upgraded to a four-lane configuration compliant with Interstate Highway standards, allowing for this portion of route to be signed as I-695 rather than MD 695. There are future plans for I-695 that include high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes to ease traffic. In addition, the northeastern interchange with I-95 has been reconstructed in 2014 to accommodate express toll lanes that were added to I-95, and construction took place in 2016 to remove I-695's carriageway crossovers here.
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Infinite cum. You sit on the toilet to jack off, but you begin to cum uncontrollably. After ten spurts you start to worry. Your hand is sticky and it reeks of semen. You desperately shove your dick into a wad of toilet paper, but that only makes your balls hurt. The cum accelerates. It’s been three minutes. You can’t stop cumming. Your bathroom floor is covered in a thin layer of baby fluid. You try to cum into the shower drain but it builds up too fast. You try the toilet. The cum is too thick to be flushed. You lock the bathroom door to prevent the cum from escaping. The air grows hot and humid from the cum. The cum accelerates. You slip and fall in your own sperm. The cum is now six inches deep, almost as long as your still-erect semen hose. Sprawled on your back, you begin to cum all over the ceiling. Globs of the sticky white fluid begin to fall like raindrops, giving you a facial with your own cum. The cum accelerates. You struggle to stand as the force of the cum begins to propel you backwards as if you were on a bukkake themed slip-and-slide. Still on your knees, the cum is now at chin height. To avoid drowning you open the bathroom door. The deluge of man juice reminds you of the Great Molasses Flood of 1919, only with cum instead of molasses. The cum accelerates. It’s been two hours. Your children and wife scream in terror as their bodies are engulfed by the snow-white sludge. Your youngest child goes under, with viscous bubbles and muffled cries rising from the goop. You plead to God to end your suffering. The cum accelerates. You squeeze your dick to stop the cum, but it begins to leak out of your asshole instead. You let go. The force of the cum tears your urethra open, leaving only a gaping hole in your crotch that spews semen. Your body picks up speed as it slides backwards along the cum. You smash through the wall, hurtling into the sky at thirty miles an hour. From a bird’s eye view you see your house is completely white. Your neighbor calls the cops. The cum accelerates. As you continue to ascend, you spot police cars racing towards your house. The cops pull out their guns and take aim, but stray loads of cum hit them in the eyes, blinding them. The cum accelerates. You are now at an altitude of 1000 feet. The SWAT team arrives. Military helicopters circle you. Hundreds of bullets pierce your body at once, yet you stay conscious. Your testicles have now grown into a substitute brain. The cum accelerates. It has been two days. With your body now destroyed, the cum begins to spray in all directions. You break the sound barrier. The government deploys fighter jets to chase you down, but the impact of your cum sends one plane crashing to the ground. The government decides to let you leave the earth. You feel your gonads start to burn up as you reach the edges of the atmosphere. You narrowly miss the ISS, giving it a new white paint job as you fly past. Physicists struggle to calculate your erratic trajectory. The cum accelerates. The cum begins to gravitate towards itself, forming a comet trail of semen. Astronomers begin calling you the “Cummet.” You are stuck in space forever, stripped of your body and senses, forced to endure an eternity of cumshots. Eventually, you stop thinking.
Infinite cum. You sit on the toilet to jack off, but you begin to cum uncontrollably. After ten spurts you start to worry. Your hand is sticky and it reeks of semen. You desperately shove your dick into a wad of toilet paper, but that only makes your balls hurt. The cum accelerates. It’s been three minutes. You can’t stop cumming. Your bathroom floor is covered in a thin layer of baby fluid. You try to cum into the shower drain but it builds up too fast. You try the toilet. The cum is too thick to be flushed. You lock the bathroom door to prevent the cum from escaping. The air grows hot and humid from the cum. The cum accelerates. You slip and fall in your own sperm. The cum is now six inches deep, almost as long as your still-erect semen hose. Sprawled on your back, you begin to cum all over the ceiling. Globs of the sticky white fluid begin to fall like raindrops, giving you a facial with your own cum. The cum accelerates. You struggle to stand as the force of the cum begins to propel you backwards as if you were on a bukkake themed slip-and-slide. Still on your knees, the cum is now at chin height. To avoid drowning you open the bathroom door. The deluge of man juice reminds you of the Great Molasses Flood of 1919, only with cum instead of molasses. The cum accelerates. It’s been two hours. Your children and wife scream in terror as their bodies are engulfed by the snow-white sludge. Your youngest child goes under, with viscous bubbles and muffled cries rising from the goop. You plead to God to end your suffering. The cum accelerates. You squeeze your dick to stop the cum, but it begins to leak out of your asshole instead. You let go. The force of the cum tears your urethra open, leaving only a gaping hole in your crotch that spews semen. Your body picks up speed as it slides backwards along the cum. You smash through the wall, hurtling into the sky at thirty miles an hour. From a bird’s eye view you see your house is completely white. Your neighbor calls the cops. The cum accelerates. As you continue to ascend, you spot police cars racing towards your house. The cops pull out their guns and take aim, but stray loads of cum hit them in the eyes, blinding them. The cum accelerates. You are now at an altitude of 1000 feet. The SWAT team arrives. Military helicopters circle you. Hundreds of bullets pierce your body at once, yet you stay conscious. Your testicles have now grown into a substitute brain. The cum accelerates. It has been two days. With your body now destroyed, the cum begins to spray in all directions. You break the sound barrier. The government deploys fighter jets to chase you down, but the impact of your cum sends one plane crashing to the ground. The government decides to let you leave the earth. You feel your gonads start to burn up as you reach the edges of the atmosphere. You narrowly miss the ISS, giving it a new white paint job as you fly past. Physicists struggle to calculate your erratic trajectory. The cum accelerates. The cum begins to gravitate towards itself, forming a comet trail of semen. Astronomers begin calling you the “Cummet.” You are stuck in space forever, stripped of your body and senses, forced to endure an eternity of cumshots. Eventually, you stop thinking.
Infinite cum.
You sit on the toilet to jack off, but you begin to cum uncontrollably. After ten spurts you start to worry. Your hand is sticky and it reeks of semen. You desperately shove your dick into a wad of toilet paper, but that only makes your balls hurt. The cum accelerates. It's been three minutes. You can't stop cumming. Your bathroom floor is covered in a thin layer of baby fluid. You try to cum into the shower drain but it builds up too fast. You try the toilet. The cum is too thick to be flushed. You lock the bathroom door to prevent the cum from escaping. The air grows hot and humid from the cum. The cum accelerates. You slip and fall in your own sperm. The cum is now six inches deep, almost as long as your still-erect semen hose. Sprawled on your back, you begin to cum all over the ceiling. Globs of the sticky white fluid begin to fall like raindrops, giving you a facial with your own cum. The cum accelerates. You struggle to stand as the force of the cum begins to propel you backwards as if you were on a bukkake themed slip-and-slide. Still on your knees, the cum is now at chin height. To avoid drowning you open the bathroom door. The deluge of man juice reminds you of the Great Molasses Flood of 1919, only with cum instead of molasses. The cum accelerates. It's been two hours. Your children and wife scream in terror as their bodies are engulfed by the snow-white sludge. Your youngest child goes under, with viscous bubbles and muffled cries rising from the goop. You plead to God to end your suffering. The cum accelerates. You squeeze your dick to stop the cum, but it begins to leak out of your asshole instead. You let go. The force of the cum tears your urethra open, leaving only a gaping hole in your crotch that spews semen. Your body picks up speed as it slides backwards along the cum. You smash through the wall, hurtling into the sky at thirty miles an hour. From a bird's eye view you see your house is completely white. Your neighbor calls the cops. The cum accelerates. As you continue to ascend, you spot police cars racing towards your house. The cops pull out their guns and take aim, but stray loads of cum hit them in the eyes, blinding them. The cum accelerates. You are now at an altitude of 1000 feet. The SWAT team arrives. Military helicopters circle you. Hundreds of bullets pierce your body at once, yet you stay conscious. Your testicles have now grown into a substitute brain. The cum accelerates. It has been two days. With your body now destroyed, the cum begins to spray in all directions. You break the sound barrier. The government deploys fighter jets to chase you down, but the impact of your cum sends one plane crashing to the ground. The government decides to let you leave the earth. You feel your gonads start to burn up as you reach the edges of the atmosphere. You narrowly miss the ISS, giving it a new white paint job as you fly past. Physicists struggle to calculate your erratic trajectory. The cum accelerates. The cum begins to gravitate towards itself, forming a comet trail of semen. Astronomers begin calling you the “Cummet.” You are stuck in space forever, stripped of your body and senses, forced to endure an eternity of cumshots. Eventually, you stop thinking.
First, I love learning about different industries and commodities, how they developed over time, often over millennia, shaping world markets and modern political economies (e.g. cotton, gold, salt, cod, petroleum). “The Fish” provides a fascinating introduction to the world of bananas, a fruit that every American today knows and most of whom love on their breakfast cereal or as a mid-day, nutritious snack. Only, as I learned, bananas aren’t actually a fruit and little more than a century ago they were far from common, but rather quite exotic, a true luxury, displayed at the 1876 Centennial Exposition to crowds of gawking onlookers as if it came from another planet. Indeed, according to the author, a banana in 1900 was as unusual to the average American as an African cucumber is today.
There’s a lot about the very familiar banana that I never knew. For instance, Cohen explains that the banana tree is actually the world’s largest herb, and thus its offspring, the banana, are technically berries. Even more fascinating, bananas grow from rhizomes, not seeds. In other words, cut appendages continue to grow, replicating the original. As Cohen describes it: “When you look at a banana, you’re looking at every banana, an infinite regression. There are no mutts, only the first fruit of a particular species and billions of copies. Every banana is a clone, in other words, a replica of an ur-banana that weighed on its stalk the first morning of man.”
Believe it or not, the story of the banana gets even crazier. If you’ve ever wondered why old black-and-white films joked about slipping on a banana peel even though the banana peel that you’ve long known doesn’t feel particularly slippery, that’s because we have completely different bananas today. In the early nineteenth century, Americans were introduced to the “Big Mike,” a variety of banana that went extinct in 1965. It was bigger, tastier and more robust than the bananas we have today, according to Cohen, and their peels were far more slippery. The bananas we eat today are known as “Cavendish,” their primary benefit being immunity to the Panama disease that wiped out the Big Mike. Again, because bananas are all exact genetic copies, they are highly susceptible to rapid eradication from disease.
Second, I’m a sucker for a great rags-to-riches story. The tale of Samuel Zemurray delivers that in spades. He arrived in America in 1891, a penniless Jew from what today is Moldova, and settled in the Deep South. (It may surprise many Americans but the South was far more hospitable to Jews for most our history. For instance, Jefferson Davis had two Jews in his Cabinet; Lincoln had none.) While still in his teens Zemurray recognized a business opportunity where other only saw trash: the ripe bananas that Boston Fruit discarded along the rail line in Mobile, Alabama before shipping off to Chicago and other northern metropolitan destinations. Zemurray was a natural entrepreneur; he had no particular affinity for bananas, it was just the opportunity at hand. “If he had settled in Chicago,” Cohen writes, “it would have been beef; if Pittsburgh, steel; if L.A., movies.” Zemurray quickly turned one man’s trash into cash, renting a boxcar to carry the castoff bananas along the slow rail route through the South, selling his cargo to local merchants at each Podunk rail stop until either his inventory ran out or spoiled. From such humble beginnings did a great international trading company eventually take root, Cuyamel Fruit, named after the river separating Honduras and Guatemala, the heartland of banana growing.
By 1925, Cuyamel Fruit Company, the creation of an upstart Jewish immigrant banana jobber, had emerged as a serious threat to United Fruit, the undisputed king of the industry, a company that was led by Boston’s best, the sons of Brahmins. The threat was not because of Cuyamel’s size. In most ways United Fruit still dominated its aggressive rival (i.e. United Fruit was harvesting 40 million bunches a year with 150,000 employees and working capital of $27m, compared to Cuyamel’s 8 million bunches, 10,000 employees and $3m in working capital). The threat was that Cuyamel was a better run business and more innovative, leading the way with selective pruning, drainage, silting, staking and overhead irrigation. “U.F. was a conglomerate, a collection of firms bought up and slapped together,” Cohen writes. Cuyamel, by contrast, was a well-oiled machine, vertically integrated and led from the front by Zemurray, the ultimate owner-manager-worker.
Cuyamel’s success was certainly no accident. It was the product of hard work, an obsessed owner-operator who understood his business at a visceral level, a skill earned over decades of hard, unglamorous work. Zemurray adhered to his own, classically American immigrant code of conduct: “get up first, work harder, get your hands in the dirt and the blood in your eyes.” Cohen describes his commitment and ultimate advantage this way: “Zemurray worked in the fields beside his engineers, planters, and machete men. He was deep in the muck, sweat covered, swinging a blade. He helped map the plantations, plant the rhizomes, clear the weeds, lay the track…unlike most of his competitors, he understood every part of the business, from the executive suite where the stock was manipulated to the ripening room where the green fruit turned yellow…By the time he was forty, he had served in every position from fruit jobber to boss. He worked on the docks, on the ships and railroads, in the fields and warehouses. He had ridden the mules. He had managed the fruit and money, the mercenaries and government men. He understood the meaning of every change in the weather, the significance of every date on the calendar.” Indeed, dedicated immigrants like Sam Zemurray have made America great. There’s nothing wrong with doing grunt work. In fact, it’s essential.
United Fruit bought out Cuyamel in the early days of the stock market crash of 1929, when the former had a market share of 54% to the latter’s 14%. United Fruit’s profit was some $45m and its stock price $108. By 1932, profit was down to $6m and the stock languished at $10.25. “The company was caught in a death spiral,” according to Cohen. By January 1933, Zemurray used his massive stake and proxy votes to take over the company, claiming “I realized that the greatest mistake the United Fruit management had made was to assume it could run its activities in many tropical countries from an office on the 10th floor of a Boston office building.” The immigrant with dirt under his nails and a rumbled jacket knew the business better than the Ivy Leaguers with manicures and pinstriped suits. Indeed, the fish (Cuyamel Fruit) was swallowing the whale (United Fruit). Zemurray would run the company until 1951, arguably the most successful years of its history. In 1950, the company cleared $66m in profit. By 1960, profits would fall to just $2m. United Fruit collapsed, eventually restructuring and reinventing itself as Chiquita Brands, based in Cincinnati.
When Zemurray started in the industry at the turn of the century, bananas were curiosities, a sidebar trade, something for the rich. By the time he retired, bananas were part of the daily American fabric, the interests of the industry consistent with that of political leadership in Washington. Indeed, some of the most illustrious and powerful men in government had close connections to United Fruit during the Zemurray era: CIA director Allen Dulles (member of the board of directors), secretary of state John Foster Dulles (U.F. legal counsel at Sullivan & Cromwell), New Deal fixer Tom Corcoran (paid lobbyist), UN Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge (large shareholder), among others. By the 1950s, Cohen writes, “it was hard to tell where the government ended and the company began.” At its height, Cohen says, United Fruit was “as ubiquitous as Google and as feared as Halliburton.”
For anyone interested in business history, American politics in Central America or the development of the global fruit industry, “The Fish that Ate the Whale” is a book to own and savor.
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First, I love learning about different industries and commodities, how they developed over time, often over millennia, shaping world markets and modern political economies (e.g. cotton, gold, salt, cod, petroleum). “The Fish” provides a fascinating introduction to the world of bananas, a fruit that every American today knows and most of whom love on their breakfast cereal or as a mid-day, nutritious snack. Only, as I learned, bananas aren’t actually a fruit and little more than a century ago they were far from common, but rather quite exotic, a true luxury, displayed at the 1876 Centennial Exposition to crowds of gawking onlookers as if it came from another planet. Indeed, according to the author, a banana in 1900 was as unusual to the average American as an African cucumber is today.
There’s a lot about the very familiar banana that I never knew. For instance, Cohen explains that the banana tree is actually the world’s largest herb, and thus its offspring, the banana, are technically berries. Even more fascinating, bananas grow from rhizomes, not seeds. In other words, cut appendages continue to grow, replicating the original. As Cohen describes it: “When you look at a banana, you’re looking at every banana, an infinite regression. There are no mutts, only the first fruit of a particular species and billions of copies. Every banana is a clone, in other words, a replica of an ur-banana that weighed on its stalk the first morning of man.”
Believe it or not, the story of the banana gets even crazier. If you’ve ever wondered why old black-and-white films joked about slipping on a banana peel even though the banana peel that you’ve long known doesn’t feel particularly slippery, that’s because we have completely different bananas today. In the early nineteenth century, Americans were introduced to the “Big Mike,” a variety of banana that went extinct in 1965. It was bigger, tastier and more robust than the bananas we have today, according to Cohen, and their peels were far more slippery. The bananas we eat today are known as “Cavendish,” their primary benefit being immunity to the Panama disease that wiped out the Big Mike. Again, because bananas are all exact genetic copies, they are highly susceptible to rapid eradication from disease.
Second, I’m a sucker for a great rags-to-riches story. The tale of Samuel Zemurray delivers that in spades. He arrived in America in 1891, a penniless Jew from what today is Moldova, and settled in the Deep South. (It may surprise many Americans but the South was far more hospitable to Jews for most our history. For instance, Jefferson Davis had two Jews in his Cabinet; Lincoln had none.) While still in his teens Zemurray recognized a business opportunity where other only saw trash: the ripe bananas that Boston Fruit discarded along the rail line in Mobile, Alabama before shipping off to Chicago and other northern metropolitan destinations. Zemurray was a natural entrepreneur; he had no particular affinity for bananas, it was just the opportunity at hand. “If he had settled in Chicago,” Cohen writes, “it would have been beef; if Pittsburgh, steel; if L.A., movies.” Zemurray quickly turned one man’s trash into cash, renting a boxcar to carry the castoff bananas along the slow rail route through the South, selling his cargo to local merchants at each Podunk rail stop until either his inventory ran out or spoiled. From such humble beginnings did a great international trading company eventually take root, Cuyamel Fruit, named after the river separating Honduras and Guatemala, the heartland of banana growing.
By 1925, Cuyamel Fruit Company, the creation of an upstart Jewish immigrant banana jobber, had emerged as a serious threat to United Fruit, the undisputed king of the industry, a company that was led by Boston’s best, the sons of Brahmins. The threat was not because of Cuyamel’s size. In most ways United Fruit still dominated its aggressive rival (i.e. United Fruit was harvesting 40 million bunches a year with 150,000 employees and working capital of $27m, compared to Cuyamel’s 8 million bunches, 10,000 employees and $3m in working capital). The threat was that Cuyamel was a better run business and more innovative, leading the way with selective pruning, drainage, silting, staking and overhead irrigation. “U.F. was a conglomerate, a collection of firms bought up and slapped together,” Cohen writes. Cuyamel, by contrast, was a well-oiled machine, vertically integrated and led from the front by Zemurray, the ultimate owner-manager-worker.
Cuyamel’s success was certainly no accident. It was the product of hard work, an obsessed owner-operator who understood his business at a visceral level, a skill earned over decades of hard, unglamorous work. Zemurray adhered to his own, classically American immigrant code of conduct: “get up first, work harder, get your hands in the dirt and the blood in your eyes.” Cohen describes his commitment and ultimate advantage this way: “Zemurray worked in the fields beside his engineers, planters, and machete men. He was deep in the muck, sweat covered, swinging a blade. He helped map the plantations, plant the rhizomes, clear the weeds, lay the track…unlike most of his competitors, he understood every part of the business, from the executive suite where the stock was manipulated to the ripening room where the green fruit turned yellow…By the time he was forty, he had served in every position from fruit jobber to boss. He worked on the docks, on the ships and railroads, in the fields and warehouses. He had ridden the mules. He had managed the fruit and money, the mercenaries and government men. He understood the meaning of every change in the weather, the significance of every date on the calendar.” Indeed, dedicated immigrants like Sam Zemurray have made America great. There’s nothing wrong with doing grunt work. In fact, it’s essential.
United Fruit bought out Cuyamel in the early days of the stock market crash of 1929, when the former had a market share of 54% to the latter’s 14%. United Fruit’s profit was some $45m and its stock price $108. By 1932, profit was down to $6m and the stock languished at $10.25. “The company was caught in a death spiral,” according to Cohen. By January 1933, Zemurray used his massive stake and proxy votes to take over the company, claiming “I realized that the greatest mistake the United Fruit management had made was to assume it could run its activities in many tropical countries from an office on the 10th floor of a Boston office building.” The immigrant with dirt under his nails and a rumbled jacket knew the business better than the Ivy Leaguers with manicures and pinstriped suits. Indeed, the fish (Cuyamel Fruit) was swallowing the whale (United Fruit). Zemurray would run the company until 1951, arguably the most successful years of its history. In 1950, the company cleared $66m in profit. By 1960, profits would fall to just $2m. United Fruit collapsed, eventually restructuring and reinventing itself as Chiquita Brands, based in Cincinnati.
When Zemurray started in the industry at the turn of the century, bananas were curiosities, a sidebar trade, something for the rich. By the time he retired, bananas were part of the daily American fabric, the interests of the industry consistent with that of political leadership in Washington. Indeed, some of the most illustrious and powerful men in government had close connections to United Fruit during the Zemurray era: CIA director Allen Dulles (member of the board of directors), secretary of state John Foster Dulles (U.F. legal counsel at Sullivan & Cromwell), New Deal fixer Tom Corcoran (paid lobbyist), UN Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge (large shareholder), among others. By the 1950s, Cohen writes, “it was hard to tell where the government ended and the company began.” At its height, Cohen says, United Fruit was “as ubiquitous as Google and as feared as Halliburton.”
For anyone interested in business history, American politics in Central America or the development of the global fruit industry, “The Fish that Ate the Whale” is a book to own and savor.
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