Panama and the canal in picture and prose .. . bananas and to place them on sale at points where they were never before seen. The banana has not participated in the high cost of living nor has one company monopolized the market, for the trade statistics show 17,000,000 bunches of bananas imported by rival companies in 1912. As for its stimulation of the business of the ports of New Orleans, Galveston and Mobile, and its revivifying of trade along theCaribbean,both are mat-ters of commonknowledge. The bananathrives best inrich soilcovered withalluvial depos-its and in aclimate ofgreat humidityw
Panama and the canal in picture and prose .. . bananas and to place them on sale at points where they were never before seen. The banana has not participated in the high cost of living nor has one company monopolized the market, for the trade statistics show 17,000,000 bunches of bananas imported by rival companies in 1912. As for its stimulation of the business of the ports of New Orleans, Galveston and Mobile, and its revivifying of trade along theCaribbean,both are mat-ters of commonknowledge. The bananathrives best inrich soilcovered withalluvial depos-its and in aclimate ofgreat humiditywhere thetemperaturenever falls be-low 75 degreesFahrenhe i estab-lished the plan-tation needslittle attention,the plant beingself-propagat-ing from suckers which shoot off from the mat,the tangled roots of the mother plant. It begins tobear fruit at the age of ten or eleven months, andwith the maturing of one bunch of fruit the parentplant is at once cut down so that the strength of thesoil may go into the suckers that succeed it. Per-. THE CHIRIQUI VOLCANO GETTING THE BANANAS TO MARKET 297 haps the most technical work of the cultivator is toselect the suckers so that the plantation will notbring all its fruit to maturity in one season, butrather yield a regular succession of crops, monthafter month. It was interesting to learn from arepresentative of the United Fruit Company atBocas del Toro, that the banana has its dull season—not in pro-duction but inthe demand forit which fallsoff heavily inwinter, thoughone would sup-pose that sum-mer, when ourown fruits arein the market,would be theperiod of itseclipse. While mostof the fruitgathered in the neighborhood of Bocas del Toro is grown onland owned and tilled by the Company, thereare hundreds of small individual growers withplantations of from half an acre to fifty acresor even more. All fruit is delivered alongthe railway lines, and the larger growers
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Keywords: ., bookauthorabbotwil, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookyear1913
