United fruit company
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Samuel Zemurray
Samuel Zemurray (1877-1961), a Russian-born U.S. fruit importer, in a classic "rags to riches" career built the United Fruit Company into a powerful international corporation. The economic power of his banana companies dwarfed the Central American states where they operated and allowed him to play a major economic and political role there in the mid-20th century.
Samuel Zemurray was born in Kishinev, Bessarabia, Russia, on January 18, 1877, to poor Jewish parents, David and Sarah (Blausman) Zmuri. In 1892 he emigrated to Selma, Alabama, and worked at several low-paying jobs that enabled him to help the rest of his family come to Alabama by the time he was 19. In 1895 he entered the banana business, buying carloads of "ripes" in Mobile and peddling them to small-town grocers along the railway. He expanded this trade to New Orleans, getting a contract from the United Fruit Company (UFCO) to sell to small dealers and peddlers bananas too ripe to ship into the interior. Grocers called him "Sam the Banana Man," a name that stuck throughout his career. Within thre
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The Rise of Sam Zemurray, Banana King
The name Samuel Zemurray is not well known, but the man led a remarkable life — in every sense of the word. Zemurray fought his way to the top of a very niche industry: bananas. When he first acquired the Cuyamel Fruit Company, it was a husk of a business — left behind by its former owner. Over the span of the next twenty years, Zemurray would build it into the second-largest company in the industry. Then, a fortuitous merger ensured that Zemurray would control much of the world’s banana trade.
From our vantage point today, bananas seem unimportant. But Zemurray overthrew entire governments, and cut deals that changed the fates of whole countries. All for the trade of a single fruit.
At its heart, Sam Zemurray’s story is one of ruthless ambition.
Zemurray was born Schmuel Zmurri in 1877, to a poor Jewish family in western Russia. When his father passed away, Zmurri left his mother and six siblings behind to follow his aunt to America, the land of opportunity. The two settled in Selma, Alabama, where his uncle ran a small general store.
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Samuel Zemurray
Samuel Zemurray was born as Samuel Zmuri in 1877 in Sharagod, Ukraine.1 The young Sam travelled to the United States with his aunt in 1892 with the hopes of establishing himself and eventually bringing his family to the U.S. After landing in New York, Zemurray made his way to Selma, Alabama and performed odd jobs around the town2. This work eventually led him south where he witnessed the unloading of a cargo ship full of bananas. Around 1895, Zemurray approached the dock with hopes of buying ripe bananas, which he noticed, were commonly disposed of.3 He purchased a few thousand bananas and with about three days to make it back to Selma, he travelled with the fruit by boxcar. On this trip, the train experienced a delay, increasing the time the bananas would have to ripen before reaching Selma. Zemurray offered a Western Union worker a portion of his sales in exchange for the operator to radio the upcoming towns with offers of cheap bananas. Zemurray sold the bananas all the way to Selma, leaving him with a $40 profit. This origin
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