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Product details
File Size: 1132 KB
Print Length: 292 pages
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First edition (June 5, 2012)
Publication Date: June 5, 2012
Sold by: Macmillan
Language: English
ASIN: B0071VOLN8
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I loved this book. In fact, Rich Cohen’s “The Fish that Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King†just might make it into my non-fiction book Hall of Fame, an honored group of the best, most engaging pieces of history and biography that I’ve ever read.Why such high praise? Well, mainly because “The Fish†delivered and succeeded on multiple dimensions.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.â€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.â€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.
Several years ago, I flew into Detroit at night and caught a cab to my hotel in the city. The cab driver was from one of those countries in Africa described as “war-torn.†He told me about his odyssey moving through several countries to the United States. He proudly showed me the book he was studying to become an American citizen.I asked him why he didn’t stop in one of those countries along the way. At that, he waved his arm across the entire vision of the lighted city of Detroit in front of us. “Here,†he said, “you can do anything!â€I’d bet that by today he’s got his citizenship and started a business. It’s the great American immigrant story. It’s also the story of The Fish That Ate the Whale and Sam Zemurray. He arrived in the United States in 1891, from Russia. The Fish That Ate the Whale is the story of how he became the Banana King.One reason I love reading books of business history and biography is that they usually tell a rollicking story that also has lessons in it. Rich Cohen’s book is no exception.You’ll learn about things you may not have been curious about before. Cohen tells us a lot about the Jewish immigration to the American South in the early 20th century and how many great business empires started there. If you’re interested in something more scientific, there’s a lot of detail on the varieties of bananas and their characteristics and the entire banana business.Zemurray started out selling bananas he bought on the docks in New Orleans and had to transport quickly to other towns before they spoiled. He saw an opportunity in being quick with a product that other people thought was useless.The business was successful and Zemurray became an expert in the cultivation of bananas. Mostly, he became an expert in the banana business.This book has got lots of lessons about business strategy and negotiation. You’ll read about business cycles and how you prepare for them so they don’t ruin you. You’ll learn about the difference between an entrepreneurial, there’s always a solution, spirit, like Zemurray’s, and the caretaker second and third generations.I love the story of the way Zemurray “ate the whale†and took over the United Fruit Company. They had bought out his company to eliminate him as a competitor, but a generation of professional managers and trust fund kids was ruining the company, and it made Zemurray angry.First, he tried to help by offering suggestions. The professional managers ignored them. Zemurray was just an immigrant with a thick Russian accent.So, Sam Zemurray did something characteristic of his life. He looked for another way. He quietly gathered proxies. Then, he went to a shareholder’s meeting of United Fruit. He calmly waited for his turn to speak. When it came, he offered suggestions on making the company better, and the directors ridiculed him. They even made fun of his accent. One of them said, “I can’t understand a word you’re saying.â€Zemurray left the room and got the proxies he’d accumulated. Then, he stormed back in to the meeting room, threw the proxies on the table, and looked at the people who had made fun of him. Then, still in a thick Russian accent, he said “You’re fired! Do you understand that?â€If you like a book that tells stories like that, The Fish That Ate the Whale is a book for you. As you read the story, you’ll pick up lessons in business. You’ll learn about an incredible period in American and business history that hasn’t received much coverage. You’ll get great quotes and a few oddities, like how William Sydney Porter came up with the term “banana republic.â€The story does not have a happy ending. You’ll read about how the company went downhill, how the CIA used it as a tool of policy in Central America, and how Zemurray, who could solve any problem, couldn’t solve the problem of succession.There are some things you may not like about this book. If you don’t like long digressions into details, like the history of bananas or the history of Jewish shopkeepers in the American South, you probably won’t like this book very much. If you’re looking for clearly-articulated business lessons, this isn’t the book for you, either. With a few exceptions, Cohen embeds the lessons in the story.Bottom LineThe Fish That Ate the Whale is a great book about the United Fruit Company, Sam Zemurray, and American business and foreign policy in the early 20th century.
The story of Zemurray is an interesting one and in most parts of the book is well told and enjoyable. However, in addition to clearly being infatuated by Zemurray and giving a biased view of the man, the author injects his own baseless feelings and opinions of Zemurray and speculates as to what drove him constantly. Specifically, he continually talks about Zemurray being ethnically Jewish and spends pages upon pages attempting to make his story one of race and religion when as far as we can tell from all the facts he presents in the book the man could have cared less that he was Jewish and it did not seem to influence him in the least; Zemurray did not practice religion or follow Jewish traditions as the author notes. Despite having no evidence to suggest race or religion were important to the man, no first hand accounts, interviews with people close to him, or written words by Zemurray, he dedicates paragraphs throughout the book trying to make it a story of a 'Jewish immigrant' rather than just an 'immigrant' which distracts and disorients the reader from an otherwise fine book.
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