Sunday Snapshots (15th December, 2019)
Sam Zemurray, Twitter, Oceans, and my trip to India
Hey everyone,
Greetings from 40,000 feet!
I’m currently on my way to India for the first time in more than a year. I’m excited to see my parents, grandparents, and extended family. I’m also excited to share my trip with you.
I wrapped up my finals this week and while they can be a bit stressful, I feel like I’ve figured out how to go through them unscathed. With those out of the way mid-week, I got some time to read and dive into everything that I’d missed over the last week.
In this issue of Snapshots, I want to talk about:
Sam Zemurray and The United Fruit Company
Using Twitter effectively
The unexplored ocean
And more!
Book of the week
I want to resurface one of my favorite books of all-time – The Fish That Ate The Whale by Rich Cohen.
It is the quintessential American immigrant story. Sam Zemurray – a Russian Jew – comes to New Orleans in the early 1890s before the age of 14. Before he turned 40, “Sam the Banana Man”, was worth almost half a billion dollars today. His company, Cuyamel Fruit (the fish), made life difficult for United Fruit (the whale), the largest banana importer into the US at the time. He sold his company to United Fruit and soon after became its CEO.
Beyond being a successful businessman, Sam supported philanthropy causes, provided a livelihood to hundreds of thousands in Central America (though under questionable conditions at best), and helped stabilize the Jewish community after the Holocaust.
Naturally, his life raises interesting themes. Let’s explore them.
Ends and Means: Sam Zemurray believed that he could be both triumphant and loved. In practice, this is exceedingly rare. For all his contributions, the original sin of the Banana industry contaminated him – Central America was just a resource to be squeezed out. Because marginals were slim, trade depended on these conditions. Even the whiff of tariffs would throw banana men into chaos. In the sleepy and boozy tropics, Sam reportedly imported boa constrictors so that his men would be alert and not get too drunk.
At the same time, he had what Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls “skin in the game”. If his workers were in fields surrounded by boas, he was there with them. He believed in the power of physical labour and looked at executives who made decision from the company’s Boston boardroom with disdain. He had a saying, “Don’t trust the report.” Find out the truth yourself. If someone is growing through hell with you, it’s difficult to complain to them. No wonder his workers adored him.
But the question remains – how do you reconcile the two parts? There are his many contributions to the Jewish community and his philanthropy (specially in education). On the other hand, he ran tropical sweatshops.
I would argue that this is a false dichotomy. When you were in the banana industry with slim margins, you did what you had to do to stay in business. You can chose a different set of principles to live with, and Zemurray chose his. This idea of looking at historical figures, especially businessmen, as one-dimensional robber barons is dangerous not only because it is unfair to the businessmen, but also because it groups those who shared the risks and tribulations with their works along with those who didn’t. When you share skin in the game, you’re on much better moral ground.
Using the government for his ends: The term “Banana Republic” was coined in Zemurray’s time. It referred to the complete control that the banana industry – spearheaded by Sam’s United Fruit – had over the republics of Guatemala, Nicaragua, and pretty much all of Central America. These corporations could overthrow governments at will. This was the rise of the multi-national corporation.
How did he achieve this? Every demand, every piece of land, every transaction of the United Fruit Company was backed by the military might of the United States of America. Using the context of the Cold War, he aligned the interests of the American governments with the interest of United Fruit. Lobbyists, congressmen, senators greased the wheels of the machine to employ organizations like the CIA to overthrow Central American governments inconvenient for United Fruit.
There is so much to say here, but ultimately it serves as a reminder of how small groups of people can control the national agenda.
Chutzpah: Perhaps out of all of Sam Zemurray’s traits, the one that is most impressive to me is his “chutzpah” or audacity. When Sam was the owner of Cuyamel fruit, he was thinking about helping to overthrow a Honduran government because of their intention to put up tariffs. Honduran owed the US a lot of money, so the US government did not want to risk destabilizing the country by a coup. So Secretary of State Philander Knox summoned Sam to warn him not to help the rebels. So do JP Morgan – arguably the most powerful man in the country.
What does Sam do? He went ahead with the coup. Note that this is before he has the cocoon of wealth and myth around him – he’s a moderately successful businessman. Imagine the audacity!
Every problem could be solved. There was not a job in his business he could not do, nor a task he could not accomplish.
Cohen describes it best:
He wanted to win. For every move, there was a countermove. For every disaster, there is a recovery. He never lost faith in his own agency.
Out of all the lessons we can take from his life, his complete faith in his ability to solve a problem is perhaps the most important.
Resource of the week
The Holloway Guide to Using Twitter
I love Twitter because it allows me to see what some of the smartest people in the world are thinking. It’s sometimes difficult for me to articulate how exactly I use it.
I don’t have to worry about that anymore. Holloway guides wrote an amazing piece on exactly that. Check it out and let me know your thoughts.
Random corner of the week
We know more about the surface of the moon than our oceans. You’ve probably heard that phrase before. But have you ever wondered why?
Here is Columbia University’s Pierre Dutrieux on why:
The main reason for our lack of direct observations of our ocean floor is technological. The surface of the Earth, the Moon andor Mars are directly illuminated by light and radio waves. So we can either use passive systems (e.g. our eyes or microscopes) or active systems like radars installed on satellites to look at the echo generated by these surfaces. Satellites can move very fast and cover very large distances very quickly, and so can map the Earth or other planetscelestial objects in just a few weeks or hours, depending of the size of the object. Liquid water is a much different medium than air or space, and it is much more difficult for electromagnetic waves (light, radio) to transmit through water. That is why, for example, the deep ocean is completely dark.
I came across this website where you can see what we do know about the ocean and the creatures that inhabit it. Be careful though – it can take a while to scroll all the way down!
Meal of the week
To celebrate the end of my finals, I went to Duck Duck Goat in West Loop. It’s an amazing Chinese restaurant where I had the Shrimp dumplings, the Duck Fried Rice, and some fried chicken. Definitely worth a visit if you’re in Chicago.
That wraps up this week’s Sunday Snapshots. If you want to discuss any of the ideas mentioned above or have any books/papers/links you think would be interesting to share on a future edition of Sunday Snapshots, please reach out to me by replying to this email or sending me a direct message on Twitter at @sidharthajha.
Until next Sunday,
Sid