In 1870, Captain Lorenzo Dow Baker sailed the fishing schooner Telegraph from Jamaica to Jersey City, with a load of 160 bunches on speculation, he stowed them on deck and waited for fair winds. His luck held, and he arrived in New Jersey 11 days later, where he sold them for a profit of $2.00 per bunch.
The high profits Baker made from this first shipment made him get in touch with Bostonian entrepreneur Andrew Preston. In 1885, Lorenzo Baker and Preston convinced eight partners to each contribute $2000, with which they incorporated the Boston Fruit and Steamship Company. By reinvesting their returns into business expansion, the company was valued at $531,000 five years later.
It became highly successful. Baker spent much of his time overseeing operations in Jamaica, and directed the company’s expansion into Cuba and the Dominican Republic. The Boston Fruit Company eventually bought a large number of ships creating that would eventually become the largest private fleet in the world, the Great White Fleet.
In 1899 on the 30th of March, Minor C Keith and his railroad companies merged with the Boston Fruit Company to create the United Fruit Company.
Keith had built railways in Central America and Colombia, owned lands in those countries, and was also involved in the banana export business. They agreed, and on March 30th, 1899 the United Fruit Company was born.
Incorporation brought together a vast production and distribution network, with authorized capital of $20 million; holdings including 212,394 acres (61,263 acres in production) throughout Central and South America and the Caribbean; and control over most of the railroads in Latin America’s banana zones. At this point, the three men controlled 75% of the banana market in the United States.
Lorenzo Dow Baker died in 1908.
Lorenzo Dow Baker: Founder of United Fruit Company
