The Itasca Item. (Itasca, Tex.), Vol. 27, No. 37, Ed. 1 Thursday, August 6, 1914 Page: 1 of 12
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M. S. WOOD
Atty at Law-Notary Public
THE 1TA5CA ITEM
FIRE INSURANCE
W. H. COFFMAN, A^ent.
VOL. 27.
ITASCA. HILL COUNTY. TEXAS. THURSDAY. AUGUST 6. 1914.
NO 37
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A
BANK ACCOUNT' means
more than the accumulation of
money. It builds character, strengthens
determination and establishes prestige.
ITASCA (iATIONAll BAM
Itasca, Texas
W. H. Coffman, President W. J. Buchanan. Vice-President
N. S. Rees, Vice-President. H. E. Chiles, Cashier.
R. M. Gaulding, Assistant Cashier
COUNTRY EDITOR IN PANAMA
Strange Lands and People Meet on Voyage to the Isthmus as Re-
corded by the Special Correspondent of The Item.
(Copyrighted)
RESOURCES OF
TROPIC ISLANDS.
One of the things to be consid-
ered is the resources of the is-
lands on the way to the JPanama
Canal, as well as the main lands
and the lands to the south. There
is no denying the advantages of
inter-commerce, so far as the
United States is concerned, but
that is not the only thing to con-
sider. The United States is well
taken care of in the matter of in-
ternal railroads, but our foreign
commerce is one that can yet be
developed. To the south of us
and coming nearer every day, as
faster boats $re built, are large
areas of undeveloped land, capa-
ble of producing food stuffs which
will go to feed us as we become
more densely populated. Our land
is practically all taken and as
manufacturing increases and pop-
ulation becomes more dense we
will have to turn to outside
sources for a portion of our food.
Undiscovered Lands.
As yet we have not discovered
South America. England, Ger-
many^and other Europeau coun-
tries are more closely acquainted
than we are. I shall have some-
thing to say later on this subject.
Just now I wish to speak of the
one industry which we have de-
veloped, both as promoters and
consumers, and that is the bana-
na industry.
The Banana Industry.
About forty yfears ago a tramp,
ichoooner loaded with fish poles
came into Boston harbor with a
few bananas on board. They
sold so easily that the captain
resolved to bring in a whole car-
go. It was two years before he
got around to it but this time he
loaded with green fruit allowing
the fruit to ripen on the way.
The market thus created has
never been supplied. The Island
of Jamaica alone sends sixteen
million bunches principally to
this country and other Central
American countries send as
many more. The Jamaican ba-
.nana is the sweetest and most
palatable fruit, while the Central
American ports export the larg-
est. The industry is mainly in
the hands of the United Fruit
Company, although a rival con-
cern, the Atlantic Fruit Co..
have tnade considerable headway
in the last few years. The great
problem on the start was to con-
vince the natives of the desira-
bility of cultivating the fruit.
A fruit so common that it grew
wild, and only was utilized in a
limited way as food and to fat-
ten hogs, seemed utterly unfit
as a marketable product. Final-'
ly the United Fruit Company
went into the matter of buying
their own lands and developing
their own plantations. As time
went on they grew in importance
and branched out into owning
railroads and hotels and in fact
whole countries. The United
Fruit Co. are in these latitudes
what the Standard Oil is at
home.
The banana industry has the
first call in the Island of Jamai-
ca. They have the advantage
of being two days nearer New
York than Central America,
their rivals, and they further
have the most palatable fruit
although as above met.tioned
thev are not as large owing to
the tighter rainfall. A bunch of
bananas when shipped is as
green as Irish grass. It looks
like a dream of the chlorea mor-
bus germ. But when it reached
New York it has already begun
to turn yellow and in a few days
it becomes the banana of com-
merce. Figured on paper ba-
nana culture is one of the most
profitable games in the tropics
and one has merely to turn to
the marvelous success of the
United Fruit Company for veri-
fication. Also thex*e are individ-
uals in the Island of Jamaica
and in all the ports in the trop-
ics who are rolling in wealth and
who made their pile out of ba-
nanas. Figure from seven hun-
dred to 900 banana trees to the
acre and figure the average yield
to the tree at from three bunch-
es to five according to the rain-
fall. There you have a radius
of two to four thousand bunches
per acre. In Honduras where
the rainy season is prolonged it
is expected that a banana tree
will yield five bunches per year.
But take the smaller figure.
The perfect bunch of bananas,
the nine hand bunch, now brings1
fifty cents at the wharf, so that
figuring the modest yield of two
thousand bunches to the acre
the revenue is a thousand dollars
a year per acre. The item of
labor is the -best part of it.
Wages are from five English per
week up to fifty cents per day,
this latter being considered
high. They will figure your
cost of production all the way
from six to twelve cents' per
bunch and the beauty of the
whole scheme is that in eleven
months from the time you lay
the jungle and plant your first
crop you will begin to cut your
fruit and one planting lasts from
twenty to forty years.
Looks Good on Paper.
There is the banana scheme as
it appears on paper and there
are plenty of successful planters
in the island to whom you can
refer for verification. The ba-
nana plant is not a tree, it is a
perennial, growing from a bulb,
like a giant tulip. When the
stalk bears its fruit it dies like
the blackberry. This *is cut
away and another shoot is allow-
ed to bear. These shoots come
up from the bulbs and grow to a
height of fifteen or twenty feet.
The leaf is something like In-
dian corn only cross ribbed and
growing to a great length giving
the plant the appearance of a
palm. The suckers are cut back
at the roots and only three to
five are allowed to live, accord-
ing to the strength of the soil
and the amount of rainfall, for
the banana is a water plant and
thrives best where the precipi-
tation is greatest as in Hondu-
ras wTiere in the course of a
year the rainfall is over a hun-
dred inches.
The Fly in the Ointment.
But there is another side to
this picture. There always is.
In the first place no northern
man can stand the climate, and
even if he can, he cannot work
under the tropic sun. Another
thing and paralelling the last
statement, nobody else will
work. Labor is cheap and the
quality cheaper. Again, one
must have a care in selecting
banana land, not only for its
quality but for accessibility to
the railroad or wharf.
Enterprising promoters have
sold thousands of acres of the
richest kind of banana land to
northern suckers, land that for
growing purposes could not bp
surpassed, but, unfortunately
for the investors, was lying back
of strips owned by rival fruit
companies and no right-of-way
obtainable. In Jamaica, land
f. m. PILES president
J. M. COFFIN, Vice-President
JNO. R GRIFFIN, vlce-pre8u>rxT
PAT E. HOOKS, CAsMiER
R. W. COFFIN, Ass't Cashier
H.J. BARTON Ass'T. Cashier
G. I. CARLISLE Ass't. Cashier
Of ITASCA, TEXAS
Capital, Surplus and Undivided Profits $130,000.00
We Want Your Business
DIRECTORS
j. M. COFFIN j. FILES
MRS JULIA O. MoCORD
R. B. BROWN
JOHN R. GRIFFIN
F. M. FILES
;PAT. E. HOOKS
can be bought for a song, and
the reason is that it costs more
than the bananas are worth to
get them to the wharf. Again
the bulbous nature of the plant
does not admit of its rooting
deeply, and thousands and
thousands of acres have been
destroyed by hurricanes after all
tha labor of bringing them to
bear. Another fly in the oint-
ment is the banana disease
which has made its appearance
lately in Costa Rico, and the
United Fruit Compapy have lost
thousands of plants on that ac-
count. Still another draw back
is the enormous waste. We per-
haps never stop to think that we
buy more bananas in the sum-
mer time when we see a lucious
bunch hanging in front of a
fruit store, but the tropical
planter knows this and the Unit-
ed Fruit Company also know it.
They buy on a contract from the
planter, taking so many bunches
per year, but they take more in
the summer than in the winter.
The only party to the whole
transaction who knows the dif-
ference is the banana plant. It
goes on cheerfully bearing fruit
at about the same ratio, year af-
ter year, in season and out. The
loss is enormous.
I believe if we had a problem
of that sort we would figure out
some way to take care of the
waste, but as yet little has been
done in the tropics. There is
some talk of a banana fiour and
banana vinegar, but if such
things exist they are in small
quantities and cut no figure as a
commercial possibility.
Diversity of Products.
Rerurning to Jamaica we will
briefly review her varied pro-
ducts before crossing the Blue
Carribean to Panama. The di-
versity of production in this
island is surprising. For in-
stance, in the public market we
find peas, beans, corn, Iri«*h po-
tatoes. sweet potatoes, string
beans and many other products
with which we are familiar.
Side by side with these we find
grape fruit, oranges, breadfruit,
yams, ginger, sugar cane, tobac-
co, cocoa nut, pine apple, casa-
va, mangoes, pawpaw, and a
hundred other fruits and vegta-
bles which we never heard of.
Cotton, coffee, logwood and bee
keeping are among the profitable
products. A growing industry
is the manufacture of Jippa Jap-
pa hats, which is another name
for the Panama hat, which is
made from a variety of palm.
All these things grow in Ja-
maica, an island little in itself,
but big in its range of products
and bigger in it? opportunities.
They raise cattle, hogs, goats
and sheep, and the growing in-
dustry is more or less profitable.
Milk retails for 12 cents a quart,
while beefsteak sells for only
12c a pound. Eggs were 81
cents a dozen on the market on
the 17th of March. I am told
the price ranges from 25 to 50
cents a dozen.
Crude Methods of the Island
But to northern eyes there is
something ludicrous in the way
tbey go at things in Jamaica, al-
though they themselves are ser-
ious enough. The primitive
weapons with which they attack
the soil would give the northern
husbandryman the heart-ache.
They would rather carry a wheel-
barrow on their heads than to
propel it. They would prefer a
five pound grub hoe with a crook-
ed helve to a plow. They would
prefer a single acre and carry all
J they raise to market on their
heads, than an estate of larger
I magnitude which might require
some effort to cultivate. The
land is either owned in immense
tracts, plantations, or in little
patches by natives. But in either
case they only work enough to
settle their meals.
The Woman's Inheritance
Jamaica is a land of woman's
rights. That is, the woman is
born to an inheritance. She in-
herits all the wtrk, and the older
she gets the more they pile on
her. I once asked a native to
show me the hardest, toughest
job on the island.
"What do you want to see it
for?" he said.
"I want to see the oldest wo-
man on the island," I told him.
While waiting for a man in a
down town office I saw across the
street a new building going up.
A woman was mixing the mortar
and another was carrying the
hod, on her head of course, and
on the walls a woman was laying
the brick.
Overhead Transportation
One of the sights in Jamaica is
the morning visit of the women
from the country districts bear-
ing produce to market. It all
comes in on their heads, some-
times from a distance of ten
miles. How these women over-
come the laws of gravitation is a
mystery. They never spill any-
thing and yet thev swing along
with burdens that seem to be
dangerously near the falling
point. This meanest kind of
drudgery has one advantage.-
The women of Jamaica have a
physique and a grace of carriage
unsurpassed by any country on
earth. The free, swinging, ath-
letic strides of these ebony crea-
tures is a delight to the eye. No
curvature of the spine here, and
and no flat chests; no hobble
skirts, nor tango steps needed.
In the matter of skirts, there is
little to be said and the same ap-
plies to sleeves. Bare footed,
bare armed, balancing a burden
which would make a man stag-
ger, they swing into market with
the early morn, and at night they
return. The long, graceful strides
seems easy and tireless, but I
don't want the task of attempt-
ing to keep up under the glaring
rays of their tropic sunshine.
Next week we will be in Colon,
the American entrance to the
Panama Canal, and so we will
have to leave Jamaica, although
somewhat reluctantly, for to me
at least it is the most interesting
island in the West Indes, and the
most desirable.
Lou D. MacWethy.
Three motorcycles, quick sale
for cash, two Harley Davidson's
$26.50 and $100, one other ma-
chine for $75. Wm. H. mas8ey
Jr. It.
My Grateful Acknowledgements.
Notwithstanding I was defeat-
ed in the primaries by the very
narrow margin of six votes, I
want to express to my numerous
friends my grateful appreciation
of the loyal support accorded me.
It is very gratifying to me when
I reflect upon the fact that the
returns reveal that I have many
steadfast friends. And I am
comforted by the additional
though that many persons who
are yet my warm personal friends
did not vote for me for the single
reason that they were inclined to
support my leading opponent on
the ground that in accordance
with a well established Demo-
cratic usage, he was entitled to a
second term. I, myself, have
only that one circumstance to
which I may attribute my defeat.
Otherwise, I feel confident i
would have won over all oppoai-
sition.
I feel no disappointment or
discouragement over the result,
for I see much in it to afford me
satisfaction. The knowledge
that I posses so many tried and
true friends compensates me ful-
ly for the office I barely failed to
obtain. Very gratefully,
L. C. Underwood.
G. W. Summerhill, who has
been suffering from pressure on
the brain for two or three weeks,
the result of being injured in a
runaway many years ago, was
carried to Dallas and a small
piece of the skull removed by
surgeons. The operation waa
successful and Mr. Summerhill
will be able to return heme in a
short time. Miss Mattie Sum-
merhill went to Dallas yesterday
to be with her father.-Grand-
view Tribune.
P ■
•y %
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Green, Joe T. & Green, Mrs. Joe T. The Itasca Item. (Itasca, Tex.), Vol. 27, No. 37, Ed. 1 Thursday, August 6, 1914, newspaper, August 6, 1914; Itasca, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth235587/m1/1/: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History.