By 1933, with the company on the brink of financial disaster, Zemurray collected enough proxy votes from board members to install himself as the head of United Fruit, where he would remain until 1948. Two months after the 1929 stock market crash, United Fruit and Cayumel merged, with the smaller firm becoming a unit of the larger parent. By 1928, “what began as a corporate rivalry had turned into a open conflict, with soldiers in the field and ships on the sea.’’ Both sides sought an end to the fight. The rivals jockeyed for power in the 1920s and the much smaller but better-run Cayumel locked in a “banana war’’ with United in Honduras. When the Honduran government tried to impose taxes on Cayumel’s land, Zemurray engineered a regime change in 1911 that shook up the State Department.Īs the upstart company’s fortunes rose, United Fruit fixed its sights on Cayumel. Zemurray led United Fruit back into the black. Zemurray also kept Central American dictators in his hip pocket. He staged a boardroom coup and installed himself as chief executive, prompting The New York Times to call him the fish that swallowed the whale. In billowing khakis and a pith helmet, he cleared fields with a machete, drank with workers, planted banana trees, and brought innovations that improved yield and produced fatter fruit. He spent much of his time in Honduras finessing his image as the banana man who crossed the country by mule.
Where the patrician officers of the United Fruit counted their earnings in Boston, Zemurray was on the ground in Latin America. He also forged a new model of the chief executive. By 1905, Zemurray followed the banana import action and moved to New Orleans where he established the Cayumel Fruit Co.
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