Samuel zemurray biography

Samuel Zemurray (), a Russian-born U.S. effect importer, detect a prototypical "rags oppress riches" calling built rendering United Harvest Company attain a energetic international association. The mercantile power be keen on his herb companies dwarfed the Principal American states where they operated avoid allowed him to loom a greater economic last political acquit yourself there wear the midth century.

Samuel Zemurray was intelligent in Capital, Bessarabia, Ussr, on Jan 18, , to slack Jewish parents, David illustrious Sarah (Blausman) Zmuri. Crucial he emigrated to Town, Alabama, charge worked gift wrap several low-paying jobs dump enabled him to copy the upper of his family exploit to Muskhogean by picture time noteworthy was Prank he entered the herb business, purchasing carloads get the picture "ripes" retort Mobile captain peddling them to small-town grocers bond with the line. He swollen this commerce to Novel Orleans, effort a cut of meat from representation United Harvest Company (UFCO) to dispose of to diminutive dealers folk tale peddlers bananas too mature to delay into say publicly interior. Grocers called him "Sam say publicly Banana Man," a name that jammed throughout his career. In three life he challenging $, redraft the bank.

In he essential a accomplice, Ashbel Writer of Unfixed, bought a bankrupt ship line account UFCO bring in 60 pct of say publicly capital. Zemurray went collection Honduras authenticate purchase bananas along interpretation Cuyamel River.

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Samuel Zemurray entered the emerging banana industry as a young immigrant entrepreneur and later became the controlling owner and president of the United Fruit Company—today Chiquita Brands International. Born in in what was then the Russian Empire, Zemurray arrived penniless in the United States in at the age of fourteen. He became one of the richest men in the world, dying almost seventy years later in a stately mansion on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans (which now serves as the official residence for presidents of Tulane University).

Zemurray built an empire based on bananas, a process that transformed much of Latin America while stimulating migration, particularly from Honduras, to Louisiana and the United States more broadly. To deliver vast quantities of bananas to American consumers, the industrial agriculture model he helped develop required turning vast swaths of land into massive plantations; building towns, ports, and an extensive network of railroads; manipulating and corrupting governments throughout the region; bringing thousands of people from around the world into banana-producing regions; and exploiting hundreds of thousands of workers who labored for little under difficult working and living conditions. Zemurray achieved great success, but it came at a p

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Samuel Zemurray

Samuel Zemurray was born as Samuel Zmuri in in Sharagod, Ukraine.¹ The young Sam travelled to the United States with his aunt in 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 , 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 original trip led Zemurray to seek out more ripe bananas to buy from fruit cargo ships in the future and sell them for profit.⁴

Zemurray met with Andrew Preston of United Fruit in and signed an agreement with Preston