Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1909-09-14
IN THE LAND OF BANANAS.

Don't Believe Get-Rich-Q uick Stories
of Promoters, Grower Says.
When you see bananas in store
window the fruit hangs downward
from the stem. and person naturally
supposes that they grow that way, but
they don't. When growing on a tree
every banana points toward heaven
said r. F. Harrison, a banana planter
of Boscos del Toro, Panama, who is
at the Savoy Hotel, the Kansas City
Times says, Mr.. Harrison was former
ly resident of Kansas City, mem
Der of the class of 1898 of the Central
high school. Five years ago he went
to Central America and became fruit
raiser. He was secretary of the Hon
duras commission to the st. Louis
Worlds Fair and is now manager and
part owner of banana plantation Of
1910 acres.
People in the United States are
letting great business opportunities go
by when they fail to make an attempt
to sell American goods in Central and
South America" continued Mr.. Harri-
son. Americans in the tropics wear
English clothes, English hats, and use,
for the most part, German-made tools.
This is not on account of any lack of
loyalty to their native land, but it is
because no one in South America ever
sees goods bearing Uncle Sans trade
mark. Some day they will realize
what an opportunity they are miss
ing. That will be when the Panama
canal is finished and the eyes of the
world are opened to the great opportu-
mites of the American tropics.
THE Panama canal may be finished
before the people here expect it, too.
My plantation is only sixty miles
away from the canal and I go over
there quite often. The rumor is now
current that night shift of men will
be put to work and an attempt made
to finish it in President Taft's admin
istration.
1.-THE most harmful thing to the
fruit or rubber grower of Central
America, however, is not the lack Of
American goods nor the lack of a
canal by which to ship their products
but 1t is the numerous fake adver-
tisements which state that the annual
profit on one acre of land planted in
bananas is 500, and that the yield on
an acre a year Is 500 punches. Such
advertisements are as false and mis-
leading as the get-rich-quick mining
Of ho VII lie
$35 worth of fruit year the owner
makes a profit of 60 per cent, which
Is considered a good return on an
investment even in Panama. When a
planter cuts 240 punches of bananas
from one acre in a year 1t is consid-
cred an enormous cutting.
"The problem of getting good la
borers in South America is not as
great as one would think. The ia
maica negro, who is worthless at any
kind of work, seems to have been
born to be a banana picker. He starts
out early in the morning armed with
Jamaica beefsteak,' as the sugar cane
is called, and a machete. Between
chews on the sugar cane he cuts down
the banana trees Early In the after
noon he comes back from the fields,
his work for the day over.
1.-THE humidity of Central America
causes sickness among the people, but
does good to the crops A planter puts
the banana bulbs in the ground be-
fore he takes the timber from the
land. Then he fells the trees, and in
a few months they are decayed by the
dampness of the air and are good
fertilizer for the growing banana
plants. In eight. months the one
bunch that each plant bears is cut off
and the main stalk is also chopped
down, to grow and bear another bunch
in another eight months"