El Paso herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1901-1931, 1910-10-22
DAN PATCH FAMOUS RACER
IS To BE At Ell PA50'5 F
STRONG ARM Of UNCLE SAM
IS MAKING NICARAGUA GOOD

! time this week by the Pan-American
| company-a<K kansas City and st! Louis
| concern. There are half a dozen small
! companies beginning operations and
within six months fully 100000 to 3OO,-
! 900 acres of bananas will have been
! planted along that river, which is said
| to be the best for the culture of this
particular fruit of any in the republic.
The bananas-abOUt 5000 stems-ship-
ped this week. were the finest taken
into the port of New Orleans.
Fruit Pays Best.
Mining throughout the country,
while being pushed, is not bringing
the money returns of fruit. Many men,
however, have struck it rich in the
mining region. a Canadian by the
name of McGinnis. a carpenter by
trade, located in the north of the re-
public and founded the Lone Star mine
Today he is several times over a mil
lionaire. Joe LaPere. a French Cana
dian. discovered the Bonanza mine.
from which millions in gold have been
taken. The Topaz Mining company is
another paying venture. The chief diff
ficulty with the mining is the matter
of transportation.
While the earnings of the various
mines have proven satisfactory. vet it
is in the banana business that the fig
ures presented by American experts
prove amazing; they show payment for
land, cost of clearing, planting and
harvesting al the end of the second
year, with an additional profit Of so
percent on the investment. They are
indeed startling, but the met who
make them point to the United Fruit
company, having started business on
a shoestring, so to speak a few years
ago, and being worth a few dozen mil
lions today.
They have tried rubber down here.
and made a failure, cocOanut p1anta-
tions bring forth fruit slowly, pineap-
pies grow large, as do grape fruit and
oranges, but they ripen so quickly and
the import duty is so heavy that expor-
tation under present conditions is hard
~ to be considered. Rice does fairly
well, while coffee on the west coast
reaches high grade of perfection. The
coffee, diplomatic and other officials
assert, is the finest in the world.
The chief trouble.
The chief trouble on the east coast
is finding a hillside. level enough to
stand on and cultivate the product.
The labor question in Nicaragua has
the servant girl issue in the United
States beaten a nautical mile. One
man will tell you he has no trouble in
there is plenty to be done, but from
tEe standpoint of the employer. the
task is no easy one. Money means |
nothing to the average native. One |
plantation manager told your CORES
pendent he had 60 men working for !
him and that he transacted business on /
500 sOls-mOnkey money they call it
a year. This plantation conducts a I
store. as do the majority The men
are paid in the national currency which (
just as steadily comes back into the /
store. Paying off labor in Nicaragua |
is much like taking a dollar from one !
pocket and putting it into the other.
That's all right, so far as it goes, but
when the laborer-generally an indian !
or Jamaican-thinks he has too much
to do, he quits. He can live without
work, and works merely to please his
foreman. The foreman who can get the
good will of the indian is the valuable
man. The superintendent OF coffee
plantation has been trying to get 500
men TO work for the last two years. At
one time he had 13O-and he is man
the natives like too.
LabOrers Want Homes.
The manager of a big banana PLAN
-atiOn is having the same trouble. A
month or two is frequently spent get
ing half hundred men together. In
1ians stay close to their villages and
he hope of the planter is the building
IF these cOnglomeratiOn of huts. Give
he worker a bamboo covered shed in
which to live, build them a church of
he same material and secure for them
preacher. even though their morals
seem lax, and the natives will probably
spend their lives on the plantation
working when they feel so inclined.
Vow and then they want to wander
lway and get on the outside of all the
,ad whisky they can buy, but they re-
urn, in time, to again take up the
nachet. Good treatment appears to be
he only secret, If there be any secret,
# getting labor in Nicaragua