After more than 10 years in Mexico and Central America, E. Lee Winslow of Hertford has returned to his old home town, bought himself a home and expects to live a white man’s life from now on. Mr. Winslow tells this newspaper that he likes Central America, but it’s no place for a married man. He explains that white women do not thrive well in the tropics and a man who loves his wife and wants her to live should not settle in the land of jungles, jungle insects and jungle fevers.
Mr. Winslow has spent nearly 14 years in Cuba, Mexico, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Columbia and Guatemala. For the past 10 years he was chief engineer of railroad construction for the United Fruit Co. The average man who buys a banana, a cocoanut or pineapple from his grocer or the corner fruit stand, has little conception of the magnitude of the operations of one company that is engaged in bringing these tropical fruits to the North American consumer, says Mr. Winslow.
To begin with, the United Fruit Co. owns millions of acres in Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Coast Rica, Columbia, Guatemala and Panama. To get its products to the coast, the company has built upwards of a thousand miles of railroad. And to bring its products to market, a fleet of a hundred steamers is employed. The company has one of the largest sugar plantations in the world, 100,000 acres in extent. In one division of its operations in Honduras alone the company employs 10,000 persons.
From the front page of The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Oct. 27, 1922. Coconut was spelled “cocoanut” in the 1920s.
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