Sam the Banana Man is an unlikely alias for a business titan or a man that conspires to overthrow governments to protect his business but truth is often stranger than fiction and Sam Zemurray is certainly one American who's colorful life seemed to know no rules.
On the outset, Zemurray seems an odd subject matter for a book but his legacy in the southern states is one that has come to play a large role in many lives, particularly those whom have attended and graduated from Tulane University.
Rich Cohen often chooses his subjects for their success gained at unlikely odds and lives lived large. With Zemurray's biography he doesn’t disappoint. As a long time fan of Cohen's writing, we caught up with him to ask about his Zemurray book and what else he gleaned from Zemurray's life well lived.
IBR: Firstly, where does the title "The Fish That Ate A Whale" come from?
Rich Cohen: It actually comes from the New York Times. It's what the obit writer called Zemurray when he died. Of course, it was also, and more importantly, Zemurray's nickname in the banana trade. He started as a small time player, a runt, a tadpole, a pee wee who operated a boutique fruit business, then went on to fight and eventually devour his main competitor, one of the biggest companies in the world, United Fruit. In other words, Zemurray was the fish, the small fish, who ate the whale. It remained his point of view till the end, which explains his best and worst qualities. He became the most important player in the trade, but kept the mentality of the outsider.
IBR: What was the genesis of your interest in Zemurray, when did you decide you wanted to write his biography?
Rich Cohen: I went to Tulane. Zemurray really built Tulane. The president of the university's house, the official residence, was the Zemurray mansion. You can still see it on St. Charles Avenue. Some people consider it the most beautiful house in New Orleans. If you were at that school, you were inside the old man's brain, even if you did not realize it. He tried to remain hidden, which is why he is unknown in much of America, but in New Orleans he is something like John D. Rockefeller and John Gotti rolled into one. Wasn't it Rockefeller who said every great fortune begins with a great crime? Well, even if it wasn't Rockefeller, it still got said, and still applies.
IBR: Overthrowing governments to preserve your profits is capitalism in its extreme. Was Zemurray and man of his time or was he an anomaly in the business world?
Rich Cohen: He was both. A man on his time and an anomaly. Or maybe an anomaly of his time. He was, in many ways, the best of his time. He was fair, even honest. He was not a racist in the way of his competitors and predecessors. He was a light year ahead of and more progressive than the people whom he bested at Untied Fruit. And he was a genuine progressive, backed FDR and the New Deal and, if you worked in the fields on Central America, he was the best possible boss. And yet, and still. It was an ancient age in American capitalism, and all the banana companies behaved like Conquistadors, and he ran the biggest and baddest of them. He did not found UF, however. He took it over, which meant taking possession of the legacy, as well as the outbuildings and ships.
IBR: Was bananas just by chance, a random item that was an opportunity for an 18 year old Zemurray, or was there a little more to it?
Rich Cohen: He grew up on a wheat farm in present day Moldavia. His father was a farmer, and he considered himself a man of the soil. He saw his first banana among the wares of a cart pusher in Selma Alabama in circa 1890 and recognized it as a miracle. So, no--it could not have been anything. I'm sure he could have built a fortune on other products, but the banana was special. The fruit of paradise, the land of plenty. Sam Zemurray and the banana ... it was a love story.
IBR: What about his early life, he wasn’t a farmer nor were his family an agricultural family?
Rich Cohen: His father was a farmer. And he was the son of a farmer. It was in his blood, and how he always saw himself, even when being a farmer meant employing 100,000 workers, commanding a navy on 100 plus ships, working a million acres and battling Castro. He begins and ends with the soil.
IBR: Did his lack of experience with agriculture present challenges when trying to establish plantations in South America?
Rich Cohen: He did lack experience in this sort of farming. But he made up for it by living on the land and clearing the jungle that made way for his first plantations with his own hands. A banana does not seem like the sort of product you can improve--it's sort of perfect, as designed by God--but his company quickly became known for growing the biggest, tastiest most consistently excellent banana in the Isthmus.
IBR: How was he able to capture such a large part of the US banana trade?
Rich Cohen: Big became the working model for the business. Because banana fields were uniquely vulnerable. To hurricanes, droughts, high wind and war. Even before Zemurray entered the trade, the richest companies learned to deal with this by spreading their fields over a vast terrain. This eventually mean huge holdings all across the world, private navies and compounds, top down organization. The companies became akin to nations, or kingdoms. By 1925, there were three main banana companies. United Fruit was the biggest by far. Zemurray's was two. When those companies combined, you had the colossus that the local literati referred to as El Pulpo, the octopus. Zemurray did not intend such vastness. He fell into in backwards. To quote Johnny Cash, it just happened that way.
IBR: What was Zemurray’s quid pro quo on generous donations to Tulane University, was it driven predominantly by the fact he was not himself formally educated?
Rich Cohen: His work was done in Central America, which, now and then, was swept by epidemics of Yellow Jack and Yellow Fever. Some years, New Orleans itself was devastated. In 1905, the city fathers blamed an bad outbreak on the banana firms; there was talk of outlawing the trade. Which would have been a disaster for the Sam the Banana Man. His earliest donations to Tulane were to the department of tropical diseases. In a way, it was self interest. If he helped the school develop a treatment or cure the diseases, it would be a great benefit to the banana business. Thus Zemurray got to know and like the people who ran the school, and his contributions grew. Later, both his daughter and son attended Tulane, drawing him still more closely into its orbit.
IBR: What was one of the more surprising aspects of Zemurray discovered about in your research?
Rich Cohen: The amount of good work he did in Central America. For example, he built the Zamorano in Honduras, still one of the best agricultural schools in the world. There is no tuition, only condition being graduates do not work in the banana business. He was trying to diversify the economies of the region. Since my book was published, I've received dozens of letters from graduates of the school telling me they almost forgive all Zemurray's sins for the school alone.
IBR: What do you enjoy more, writing about people from history or historical events or books about subjects whom are still very much alive - is one easier than the other?
Rich Cohen: Each is a challenge in its own way. And, since we're all flying towards death at warp speed, it really amounts to the same thing. I think of myself as a writer in the spirit of Einstein. I compose from outside and beyond and above history. Death and the clock cannot touch me.
IBR: You have a enormously wide range of subjects that you have covered in your books, how do you going about finding that story or character that inspires you to sit down and write?
Rich Cohen: It always seems to happen by accident, then, years later, when I look back, I see that it was in fact another version of the same story, that it's been the same story again and again. The little guy who becomes the big guy, what happens when your dream comes true, how do you carry on after the big moment has come and gone.
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