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June 14, 2012
The Great Gringo
Even before he took over United Fruit, he’d made his career out of upending the Establishment. A poor Russian Jew who moved to Selma, Ala., in 1892, Zemurray began selling bananas off the side of a boxcar at rail stations and over time graduated to plantations in Honduras. “Sam Zemurray was without precedent,” writes Cohen. “The schnorrer, the pushcart nebbish, the fruit jobber from the docks. He came from nowhere to create not just a fortune but an archetype, the gringo in platonic form.” -- 'The Fish That Ate the Whale,' by Rich Cohen
Posted by gerardvanderleun at June 14, 2012 9:00 AM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.