Birth of United Fruit Company

From Conquest of the Tropics by Frederick Upham Adams

Chapter VI – Birth of the United Fruit Company

Only those who have lived in the tropic and are familiar with the hazards which confront the cultivation and marketing of its fruits can readily understand the motives which impelled a union of the interests of the Boston Fruit Company and those headed by Minor C. Keith.  It was not a move calculated to control competition or to rear a monopoly; it was the business step imperatively required to secure the permanency of the banana industry. 

 In 1898, the year preceding the organization of the United Fruit Company, the total importation of bananas from the American tropics did not exceed 12,000,000 bunches, or about one-fourth of those imported in 1913.  It is doubtful if any food product has shown a similar increase in any equal period in the world’s history.  The sole reason why the year 1913 did not exceed the figure of 50,000,000 bunches of imported bananas is that no more were available for shipment to the consuming sections of the United States and Europe.

 The problem in 1898 was to produce more bananas for a steadily mounting popular demand. That is the problem to-day.  The field was open to all comers in 1898.  It is open to all who care to enter it to-day.  Under such conditions the presumption that a banana monopoly ever existed, now exists, or is possible cannot be entertained by those who understand the first rudiment of the laws of business and commerce.

At the time of the organization of the United Fruit Company the following firms, corporations, and persons were engaged in importing bananas into the United States:

  •  Boston Fruit Company,
  • Tropical Trading and Transport Company, Ltd.,
  • Columbian Land Company, Ltd.,
  • Snyder Banana Company,
  • J.D. hart Company,
  • Orr & Laubenheimer Company, Ltd.,
  • Camors, McConnell & Company,
  • New Orleans Belize Royal Mail & Central American Steamship Company,
  • W.W. & C.R. Noyes,
  • John E. Kerr & Company,
  • J.H. Seward Importing & Steamship Company,
  • Aspinwall Fruit Company,
  • West Indian Fruit Company,
  • Monumental Trading Company,
  • West India Trading Company,
  • Henry Bayer & Son,
  • Camors-Weinberger Banana Company, Ltd.,
  • J.B. Cefalu & Brother,
  • S. Oteri,
  • The Bluefields Steamship Company, Ltd.,
  • W.L. Rathbun & Company.

There were undoubtedly other firms and individuals engaged in a small scale in the banana business, but the above list includes all those of consequence in the trade.  The first four were merged into the United Fruit Company.  Some of the others have retired, others have been absorbed by the companies which now compete with the United Fruit Company, but not a firm, corporation, or individual engaged in the banana business at the time of the incorporation of the united Fruit Company has failed because of the operations of that company.

Prior to 1899, the year of the formation of the United Fruit Company, there had been organized, according to the best available information, not less than 114 companies or firms which engaged in the importation of bananas to the United States.  Of this large list—as has been stated—only twenty-two of any consequence were still in existence when the United Fruit Company was formed.

Most of these banana companies were inadequately financed, and most of them were under the management of men who had no practical knowledge of the banana industry.  Few had been in business for as long a period as ten years, and most of them handled insignificant quantities of bananas.  With monotonous regularity these mushroom banana companies would spring into being, struggle along for a short time, and then drop out of existence, leaving behind no assets for their stockholders.

Such experimental banana companies still are founded, most of them with capital stock ranging from $50,000 to $200,000.  These amounts of money are sufficient to finance a banana plantation, but it is as idle to expect to become a producer, importer, and national distributor of bananas with such capital as it would be to expect to compete successfully with the Western Union and the Postal Telegraph with a new company thus financed.

When the banana industry was in its infancy there was a possibility of temporary success even with the most crude and wasteful of methods.  The cargoes were small, and it was not difficult to dispose of the fruit over the ship’s sides a few bunches at a time.  The market was largely confined to the port in which the ship docked, the prices were high, and the consumption small.

The fruit was generally secured by purchase from the native tropical planters, sometimes by contract, but more often in the open market.  Few companies, even in the late 90’s, grew any bananas on their own plantations, and when they did, these formed merely the nuclei of their cargoes, the remainder being secured by purchase.  Practically all of the importers of this early period looked to one source of supply and had only one port of entry in the United States.  In some instances, the importer simply chartered space on steamers and stored it with bananas; the more ambitious importers chartered ships, but these were of low speed and had a capacity for a comparatively small number of stem of bananas.

Arriving in the United States, the fruit was unloaded by hand, and in the early days the prospective purchasers would assemble on the wharves to secure their supplies.  Naturally, they chose their own fruit, buying as they did only a few bunches at a time. In later years, however, the importers adopted the custom of selling the fruit by “steamer run,” viz: as it came out of the steamer, declining to permit the buyer to pick out the best bunches.  Some importers had stores and ripening rooms where they could keep a portion of their fruit and sell it gradually.  What was left, after every possible local demand had been satisfied, was then shipped to various interior points usually consigned to some broker.  Sometimes the fruit was shipped a long distance, from New Orleans to Chicago, but it was not often necessary to assume such risks.

The importers knew little concerning the business as a whole; they were not familiar with the interior markets or how to reach them, and the industry in all of its departments was conducted in a wasteful and haphazard manner, the public paying their share of these blunders in high prices for bananas, and the importer paying their share in losses which generally ended in bankruptcy.

New Orleans took the first step for a business organization designed to secure a proper distribution of bananas in 1896, three years prior to the formation of the United Fruit Company.  In this year, four of the New Orleans companies formed the New Orleans Importing Company, a selling organization intended to dispose of the fruit imported by its members.  The New Orleans experiment was successful while it lasted, but jealousies and dissensions among the heads of the four companies requiring it services caused its dissolution after a few months.

 Another effort in the same direction was made early in 1899 when similar problems resulted in the formation of the Southern Banana Exchange.  Like its predecessor, it worked satisfactorily, but its usefulness was cut short in three or four months by the inability of its members to get along without friction.

The truth of the matter is, that the banana industry, prior to the formation of the United Fruit Company, had made sorry progress compared with other importing enterprises.  The Boston Fruit Company and those concerns headed by Mr. Keith were the most progressive in their methods, but they were handicapped by conditions which will now be considered.

The Boston Fruit Company and the Keith interest were the leading factors in the banana industry.  The Boston Fruit Company derived its product solely from the West Indies and confined its market to the Atlantic coast and to the northern sections of the interior of the United States.  The Keith interests cultivated bananas in Central America and Colombia and shipped them mainly to New Orleans and other Gulf ports, but lacked the facilities for reaching far into the southern and western territory naturally tributary to these shipping and railroad termini.  The competition between the Boston Fruit Company and the Keith interests, nor was there any prospect that their activities would conflict.

Neither of these interest had the capital with which to take advantage of obvious opportunities, but the time had arrived when moneyed men were willing to listen to the possibilities of the banana as an investment.  They still declined to class it as a conservative investment, and, such is the proverbial timidity of capital, it is not so considered to-day, as stock quotations eloquently testify.  Your cautious man of money seek investments which he can look at and study personally from day to day, the securities of which he can convert into cash almost at a moment’s notice, and the tropics—well, the tropics are far from New York and Boston.

Hence a tropical investment must prove and double prove itself before the average man of money will consider it, and then the lure must be attractive, in dividend per cents.  But in the years which had passed since Carl B. Franc, Captain Lorenzo D. Baker, Andrew W. Preston, Minor C. Keith, and others faced the hardships and risks of the pioneer, certain things had been proved beyond possibility of doubt.

The most favorable thing proved by these pioneers was that the people of the United States liked bananas and would eat them in unlimited quantities if offered at prices which would compete with such home fruits as apples, peaches, pears, and oranges.  The second favorable consideration proved was that bananas could be grown cheaply and in large quantities in certain tropical sections, provided weather condition continued favorable.

The disturbing and discouraging element was found in the fact that a flood, drought, or high wind would destroy a crop in a given section and eliminate it as a source of production for a year or more.  Capital pays more attention to one flaw in a new proposition than it does to ten of its glowing promises.  Possibly this is the reason why we have such a thing as capital.  In any event, capital in 1898 declined to enthuse over an enterprise which could not prove its ability to supply at all times the commodity in which a large investment was to be made.

There was ample justification for this attitude.  The Boston Fruit Company had learned by grim and expensive experience that the tropics could frown as well as smile.  Hurricanes leveled some of their best plantations in Jamaica.  The replanted tracts would later be swept away by roaring floods.  Drought shriveled the fronds of the banana plants in Cuba and San Domingo.  Nor was nature the only one strike blows.  Warring factions waged revolutions and counter-revolutions in Cuba and San Domingo.  There was no stability of governments, no assurance that the field workers of to-day would not follow some ambitious “general” on the morrow in the quest of “liberty” or loot.  The Boston Fruit Company did not have a source of banana supply which it could insure against sweeping disaster without warning.  Under the most favorable circumstances its total supply was insufficient to meet the rapidly increasing demand, and any curtailment meant not only money losses but damaged prestige as well.

The enterprises headed by Mr. Keith faced the same menace.  Terrific floods in Costa Rica and Panama Swept away the railroad tracks and bridges and overwhelmed the loaded plants in large districts.  In one year a protracted drought in the Santa Marta district of Colombia practically killed all the plantations.  Revolutions in some of the Central American republics played their part in determining whether crops would be harvested or not.

But luck, chance, or the law of average decreed that these disasters to the banana crops should be local, and that a large portion in the American tropics would survive in any year despite the rage of the elements and the fury of warring political factions.  The obvious remedy of a banana importing concern was to provide for sources of supply in many district scattered all over the America tropics.  This expedient was so obvious and so imperative that it should have suggested itself and been adopted years prior to the formation of the United Fruit company.  It was the natural, reasonable, sensible, and logical thing to do.

The consolidation of the interests of the Boston Fruit Company and the companies controlled by Minor C. Keith was brought about, as a matter of fact, not as the result of a carefully considered plan, but through a financial disaster which seriously threatened Mr. Keith.  In the latter part of 1898 the firm of Hoadley & Company failed.  Mr. Keith had drawn bills against this company to the amount of $1,500,000.  He was conducting extensive operations in many tropical sections, and this failure was serious blow.  For Year Mr. Keith had consigned his bananas to Hoadley & Company, through the port of New Orleans.  There was consequent shattering of his plans for the marketing of bananas.

I told in a former chapter of the time when 1,500 Jamaica negroes worked nine months for Mr. Keith without wages owing to the inability of the Government of Costa Rica to pay money due for railroad construction.  He failing of Hoadley & Company and the financial crippling of Mr. Keith gave Costa Rica a chance to prove that republics are not always ungrateful.  This crisis found Mr. Keith obligated to Costa Rica, which held his drafts in large amounts, but this made no difference.  The government officials of that republic promptly offered to lend Mr. Keith any reasonable amount of money to tide him over his difficulties, and he accepted their aid.  The Costa Rican banks and others cooperated, and two weeks after the failure Mr. Keith arrived in New York City and made a settlement in full with his creditors.

Mr. Keith, on account of the failure of his agents, was compelled to make new arrangements for the sale of his fruit and entered into negotiations with Andrew W. Preston, president of the Boston Fruit Company.  The latter organization had just formed the Fruit Dispatch Company for the purpose of expediting and extending the distribution and sale of bananas.  An arrangement was made by which a portion of the Mr. Keith’s product would be handled by the Boston Fruit Company or its branches, and it was in this manner that Mr. Preston and Mr. Keith came in closer business contact.  It has been explained that Mr. Keith took up banana cultivation and transportation as a means to supply freight for his tropical railroads, but in the years which had passed since 1871 his banana enterprises had progressed to a stage which demanded a large share of his time.  Instead of being a secondary interest, as mr. Keith had intended it to be, his banana enterprises threatened to divert his whole time from the railroad projects on which he had set his ambition.

Andrew W. Preston, president and directing spirit of the Boston Fruit Company and its branches, was anxious to secure new sources of banana supply, and was fully aware that some of these should come from Central and South America.

Under such conditions it was easy to initiate and conclude negotiations looking to the lawful consolidation of the properties of these two non-competitive groups of banana companies.  Mr. Preston, Mr. Keith, and their associates were also influenced by a hope that such an amalgamation would create an enterprise sufficiently conservative and devoid of risks to attract the outside capital required to place the banana business on a more secure financial foundation.

It had been obvious of years that the banana industry was one which must be conducted on a large scale.  It could be gambled in on a small scale, but there is a wide difference between rearing a conservative banana enterprise and taking a chance on the luck of a ship and a local banana plantation.  Most agricultural products can be raised on a small scale.  Wheat, corn, oats, barley, garden truck, apples, pears, grapes, and scores of other food and fruit products can be brought from the soil by individual of limited means, who can compete successfully with those who cultivate much larger tracts.  Cotton is in the same class, but sugar and bananas are in an entirely different class.

Sugar and bananas can be produced on a small scale, but their economical production positively demands vast acreage and vast expenditures for the complicated equipment of handling and transportation.  It was a demonstrated fact in 1899 that no banana enterprise could hope for permanent success unless financially equipped to insure a widely scattered source of supply, adequate means of transportation, and, finally, methods of distribution which would place bananas within speedy reach of all of the consuming centres in the United States.

Investors had never been offered a chance in a banana enterprise of this character.  Would it prove attractive?  Mr. Keith, Mr. Preston, and their associates discussed the question of a consolidation of interest and gave careful consideration to the various details.  It was found possible to enlist financial support for the organization of a properly equipped banana enterprise.  The United Fruit Company was not, strictly speaking, a consolidation of the interest of the northern and southern groups headed respectively by Andrew W. Preston and Minor C. Keith.  The United Fruit Company was incorporated on March 30, 1899, under the laws of New Jersey, as a single, individual corporation, with an authorized capital of $20,000,000.  Shortly thereafter, $1,650,000 was subscribed and paid for in cash at par, and during the first year $11,230,000 in stock was subscribed.  It was authorized under its charter to acquire, by purchase or development, banan and other properties and to conduct them in the manner provided by law.

Under this charter the United Fruit Company, on April I, 1899, offered to purchase all of the property, business, and shares of the Boston Fruit Company and of its associated companies of $5,200,200 cash.  This offer was later accepted and resulted in the acquisition by the United Fruit Company of the assets of the Boston Fruit Company, and its seven branch companies, viz: the American Fruit Company, Banes Fruit Company, Buckman Fruit Company, Dominican Fruit Company, Quaker City Fruit Company, and Sama Fruit Company, also the Fruit Dispatch Company.

These seven branches of the Boston Fruit Company were organized from time to time for business convenience, and were owned outright or largely controlled by the parent company.  This system of branch companies was the conventional expedient of the time and was not a subject of comment or criticism.

The Banes Fruit Company, Dominican Fruit Company, and Sama Fruit Company were companies organized and owned by the Boston Fruit Company, and were operated solely for the purpose of owning plantations and growing bananas in Cuba and San Domingo.  They were strictly agricultural propositions.   The American Fruit Company, Buckman Fruit Company, and Quaker City Fruit Company were organized by the Boston Fruit Company to transport bananas from Cuba, San Domingo, and Jamaica to the United States, and to sell them in different points in the northern and northeaster sections of the country.  The Boston Fruit Company imported bananas into the port of Boston;  the American Fruit Company imported bananas to New York City, the Quaker City Fruit Company to Philadelphia, and the Buckman Fruit Company to  Baltimore.  The Boston Fruit Company furnished to the American, Quaker City, and Buckman companies all of the bananas imported and sold by them.  In other words, all of these companies were merely branches of the Boston Fruit Company.

The Fruit Dispatch Company was organized and wholly owned by the Boston Fruit Company, and was a selling corporation only.  It still maintains a separate corporate existence, but is owned outright by the United Fruit Company.

To all intents and purposed the Boston Fruit Company and the branches organized and owned by it were one corporation in 1899.  The branches were organized and maintained for purposed of convenience and for conventional business reasons, mainly local.  It was within the power and the right of the Boston Fruit Company to absorb its branches at any time, or to make such other disposition of them as it saw fit.  Despite this obvious fact, it has been alleged that the United Fruit Company acquired these branch companies because they were competitive with the Boston Fruit Company—an absurd and utterly unfounded statement.  The source of banana supply did not extend south of Jamaica and there was no port of entry south of Baltimore.  So much for the northern or Boston group.

On April 5, 1899, the United Fruit Company purchased from Minor C. Keith and his associates all of the properties owned by the Tropical Trading and Transport Company, Ltd., the Colombian Land Company, Ltd., and the Snyder Banana Company, all three of which had been under the management and control of Mr. Keith.  These three properties were acquired for about $4,000,000.  The Colombian Land Company, Ltd., and the Tropical Trading and Transport Company, Ltd., were corporation whose operations were restricted solely to the cultivation of banana plantations in Colombia and Costa Rica respectively.  The Snyder Banana

Company owned plantations in Panama and chartered a few steamers which carried its fruit and other freight from Bocas del Toro to New Orleans and Mobile.  The width of the Caribbean separated this group from the one to which it had been united, and the ports of entry and distribution were no nearer than Baltimore and Mobile.

Such is the plain history of the organization of the United Fruit Company.  Its legal incorporation meant more than the birth of a corporation.  (It was the actual birth of the banana industry.)  It had taken thirty-four years of blunders, experiments, disasters, partial successes and assumption of the innumerable risks and hardships incident to a struggle with the virgin tropics to create an enterprise fit to take advantage of the experience which had so dearly been bought.  The great experiment of whether bananas could be produced and handled on a vastly larger scale had yet to be made, and there were many who did not hesitate to predict that the ambitions plans of the newly organized United Fruit Company would end in overwhelming failure.

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BILLESDEN COPLOW POEM

[From “Reminiscences of the late Thomas Assheton Smith, Esq”]

The run celebrated in the following verses took place on the 24th of February, 1800, when Mr. Meynell hunted Leicestershire, and has since been [...] Read more →

Seeds for Rootstocks of Fruit and Nut Trees

Citrus Fruit Culture

THE PRINCIPAL fruit and nut trees grown commercially in the United States (except figs, tung, and filberts) are grown as varieties or clonal lines propagated on rootstocks.

Almost all the rootstocks are grown from seed. The resulting seedlings then are either budded or grafted with propagating wood [...] Read more →

The Preparation of Marketable Vinegar

It is unnecessary to point out that low-grade fruit may often be used to advantage in the preparation of vinegar. This has always been true in the case of apples and may be true with other fruit, especially grapes. The use of grapes for wine making is an outlet which [...] Read more →

Chantry Chapels

William Wyggeston’s chantry house, built around 1511, in Leicester: The building housed two priests, who served at a chantry chapel in the nearby St Mary de Castro church. It was sold as a private dwelling after the dissolution of the chantries.

A Privately Built Chapel

Chantry, chapel, generally within [...] Read more →

A Crock of Squirrel

A CROCK OF SQUIRREL

4 young squirrels – quartered Salt & Pepper 1 large bunch of fresh coriander 2 large cloves of garlic 2 tbsp. salted sweet cream cow butter ¼ cup of brandy 1 tbsp. turbinado sugar 6 fresh apricots 4 strips of bacon 1 large package of Monterrey [...] Read more →

Copper Kills Covid-19 and the Sun is Your Friend

The element copper effectively kills viruses and bacteria.

Therefore it would reason and I will assert and not only assert but lay claim to the patents for copper mesh stints to be inserted in the arteries of patients presenting with severe cases of Covid-19 with a slow release dosage of [...] Read more →

Modern Slow Cookers, A Critical Design Flaw

Modern slow cookers come in all sizes and colors with various bells and whistles, including timers and shut off mechanisms. They also come with a serious design flaw, that being the lack of a proper domed lid.

The first photo below depict a popular model Crock-Pot® sold far and wide [...] Read more →

The First Christian Man Cremated in America

Laurens’ portrait as painted during his time spent imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he was kept for over a year after being captured at sea while serving as the United States minister to the Netherlands during the Revolutionary War.

The first Christian white man to be cremated in America was [...] Read more →

The Hatha Yoga Pradipika

THE HATHA YOGA PRADIPIKA

Translated into English by PANCHAM SINH

Panini Office, Allahabad [1914]

INTRODUCTION.

There exists at present a good deal of misconception with regard to the practices of the Haṭha Yoga. People easily believe in the stories told by those who themselves [...] Read more →

AB Bookman’s 1948 Guide to Describing Conditions

AB Bookman’s 1948 Guide to Describing Conditions:

As New is self-explanatory. It means that the book is in the state that it should have been in when it left the publisher. This is the equivalent of Mint condition in numismatics. Fine (F or FN) is As New but allowing for the normal effects of [...] Read more →

Blackberry Wine

BLACKBERRY WINE

5 gallons of blackberries 5 pound bag of sugar

Fill a pair of empty five gallon buckets half way with hot soapy water and a ¼ cup of vinegar. Wash thoroughly and rinse.

Fill one bucket with two and one half gallons of blackberries and crush with [...] Read more →

Cleaner for Gilt Picture Frames

Cleaner for Gilt Frames.

Calcium hypochlorite…………..7 oz. Sodium bicarbonate……………7 oz. Sodium chloride………………. 2 oz. Distilled water…………………12 oz.

 

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Why Beauty Matters

Roger Scruton by Peter Helm

This is one of those videos that the so-called intellectual left would rather not be seen by the general public as it makes a laughing stock of the idiots running the artworld, a multi-billion dollar business.

https://archive.org/details/why-beauty-matters-roger-scruton

or Click here to watch

[...] Read more →

The Effect of Magnetic Fields on Wound Healing

The Effect of Magnetic Fields on Wound Healing Experimental Study and Review of the Literature

Steven L. Henry, MD, Matthew J. Concannon, MD, and Gloria J. Yee, MD Division of Plastic Surgery, University of Missouri Hospital & Clinics, Columbia, MO Published July 25, 2008

Objective: Magnets [...] Read more →

Furniture Polishing Cream

Furniture Polishing Cream.

Animal oil soap…………………….1 onuce Solution of potassium hydroxide…. .5 ounces Beeswax……………………………1 pound Oil of turpentine…………………..3 pints Water, enough to make……………..5 pints

Dissolve the soap in the lye with the aid of heat; add this solution all at once to the warm solution of the wax in the oil. Beat [...] Read more →

Audubon’s Art Method and Techniques

Audubon started to develop a special technique for drawing birds in 1806 a Mill Grove, Pennsylvania. He perfected it during the long river trip from Cincinnati to New Orleans and in New Orleans, 1821.

Home Top of [...] Read more →

The Kalmar War

Wojna Kalmarska – 1611

The Kalmar War

From The Historian’s History of the World (In 25 Volumes) by Henry Smith William L.L.D. – Vol. XVI.(Scandinavia) Pg. 308-310

The northern part of the Scandinavian peninsula, as already noticed, had been peopled from the remotest times by nomadic tribes called Finns or Cwenas by [...] Read more →

Popular Mechanics Archive

Click here to access the Internet Archive of old Popular Mechanics Magazines – 1902-2016

Click here to view old Popular Mechanics Magazine Covers

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A History of Fowling – Ravens and Jays

From A History of Fowling, Being an Account of the Many Curios Devices by Which Wild Birds are, or Have Been, Captured in Different Parts of the World by Rev. H.A. MacPherson, M.A.

THE RAVEN (Corvus corax) is generally accredited with a large endowment of mother wit. Its warning [...] Read more →

The Racing Knockabout Gosling

The Racing Knockabout Gosling.

Gosling was the winning yacht of 1897 in one of the best racing classes now existing in this country, the Roston knockabout class. The origin of this class dates back about six years, when Carl, a small keel cutter, was built for C. H. [...] Read more →

The Real Time Piece Gentleman and the Digital Watch Vault

Paul Thorpe, Brighton, U.K.

The YouTube watch collecting world is rather tight-knit and small, but growing, as watches became a highly coveted commodity during the recent world-wide pandemic and fueled an explosion of online watch channels.

There is one name many know, The Time Piece Gentleman. This name for me [...] Read more →

Tobacco as Medicine

The first published illustration of Nicotiana tabacum by Pena and De L’Obel, 1570–1571 (shrpium adversana nova: London).

Tobacco can be used for medicinal purposes, however, the ongoing American war on smoking has all but obscured this important aspect of ancient plant.

Tobacco is considered to be an indigenous plant of [...] Read more →

On Bernini’s Bust of a Stewart King

As reported in the The Colac Herald on Friday July 17, 1903 Pg. 8 under Art Appreciation as a reprint from the Westminster Gazette

ART APPRECIATION IN THE COMMONS.

The appreciation of art as well as of history which is entertained by the average member of the [...] Read more →

A Few Wine Recipes

EIGHTEEN GALLONS is here give as a STANDARD for all the following Recipes, it being the most convenient size cask to Families. See A General Process for Making Wine

If, however, only half the quantity of Wine is to be made, it is but to divide the portions of [...] Read more →

Chinese Duck Cooking – A Few Recipes

Chen Lin, Water fowl, in Cahill, James. Ge jiang shan se (Hills Beyond a River: Chinese Painting of the Yuan Dynasty, 1279-1368, Taiwan edition). Taipei: Shitou chubanshe fen youxian gongsi, 1994. pl. 4:13, p. 180. Collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei. scroll, light colors on paper, 35.7 x 47.5 cm

 

The Human Seasons

John Keats

Four Seasons fill the measure of the year; There are four seasons in the mind of man: He has his lusty spring, when fancy clear Takes in all beauty with an easy span; He has his Summer, when luxuriously Spring’s honied cud of youthful thoughts he loves To ruminate, and by such [...] Read more →

Preserving Iron and Steel Surfaces with Paint

Painting the Brooklyn Bridge, Photo by Eugene de Salignac , 1914

 

Excerpt from: The Preservation of Iron and Steel Structures by F. Cosby-Jones, The Mechanical Engineer January 30, 1914

Painting.

This is the method of protection against corrosion that has the most extensive use, owing to the fact that [...] Read more →

Origin of the Apothecary

ORIGIN OF THE APOTHECARY.

The origin of the apothecary in England dates much further back than one would suppose from what your correspondent, “A Barrister-at-Law,” says about it. It is true he speaks only of apothecaries as a distinct branch of the medical profession, but long before Henry VIII’s time [...] Read more →

The American Museum in Britain – From Florida to Bath

Hernando de Soto (c1496-1542) Spanish explorer and his men torturing natives of Florida in his determination to find gold. Hand-coloured engraving. John Judkyn Memorial Collection, Freshford Manor, Bath

The print above depicts Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto and his band of conquistadors torturing Florida natives in order to extract information on where [...] Read more →

Clover Wine

Add 3 quarts clover blossoms* to 4 quarts of boiling water removed from heat at point of boil. Let stand for three days. At the end of the third day, drain the juice into another container leaving the blossoms. Add three quarts of fresh water and the peel of one lemon to the blossoms [...] Read more →

David Starkey: Britain’s Last Great Historian

Dr. David Starkey, the UK’s premiere historian, speaks to the modern and fleeting notion of “cancel culture”. Starkey’s brilliance is unparalleled and it has become quite obvious to the world’s remaining Western scholars willing to stand on intellectual integrity that a few so-called “Woke Intellectuals” most certainly cannot undermine [...] Read more →

Cocktails and Canapés

From The How and When, An Authoritative reference reference guide to the origin, use and classification of the world’s choicest vintages and spirits by Hyman Gale and Gerald F. Marco. The Marco name is of a Chicago family that were involved in all aspects of the liquor business and ran Marco’s Bar [...] Read more →

A General Process for Making Wine

A General Process for Making Wine.

Gathering the Fruit Picking the Fruit Bruising the Fruit Vatting the Fruit Vinous Fermentation Drawing the Must Pressing the Must Casking the Must Spirituous Fermentation Racking the Wine Bottling and Corking the Wine Drinking the Wine

GATHERING THE FRUIT.

It is of considerable consequence [...] Read more →

Arsenic and Old Lace

What is follows is an historical article that appeared in The Hartford Courant in 1916 about the arsenic murders carried out by Mrs. Archer-Gilligan. This story is the basis for the 1944 Hollywood film “Arsenic and Old Lace” starring Cary Grant and Priscilla Lane and directed by Frank Capra. The [...] Read more →

The Hoochie Coochie Hex

From Dr. Marvel’s 1929 book entitled Hoodoo for the Common Man, we find his infamous Hoochie Coochie Hex.

What follows is a verbatim transcription of the text:

The Hoochie Coochie Hex should not be used in conjunction with any other Hexes. This can lead to [...] Read more →

Indian Modes of Hunting – Setting Fox Traps

Aug. 13, 1898 Forest and Stream, Pg. 125

Game Bag and Gun.

Indian Modes of Hunting. III.—Foxes.

The fox as a rule is a most wily animal, and numerous are the stories of his cunning toward the Indian hunter with his steel traps.

A Summer Memory

 

Here, where these low lush meadows lie, We wandered in the summer weather, When earth and air and arching sky, Blazed grandly, goldenly together.

And oft, in that same summertime, We sought and roamed these self-same meadows, When evening brought the curfew chime, And peopled field and fold with shadows.

I mind me [...] Read more →

Bess of Hardwick: Four Times a Lady

Bess of Harwick

Four times the nuptial bed she warm’d, And every time so well perform’d, That when death spoil’d each husband’s billing, He left the widow every shilling. Fond was the dame, but not dejected; Five stately mansions she erected With more than royal pomp, to vary The prison of her captive When [...] Read more →

A Survey of Palestine – 1945-1946

This massive volume gives one a real visual sense of what it was like running a highly efficient colonial operation in the early 20rh Century. It will also go a long way to help anyone wishing to understand modern political intrigue in the Middle-East.

Click here to read A Survey of Palestine [...] Read more →

How Long is Your Yacht?

Dominion, Royal St. Lawrence Yacht Club,Winner of Seawanhaka Cup, 1898.

The Tail Wags the Dog.

The following is a characteristic sample of those broad and liberal views on yachting which are the pride of the Boston Herald. Speaking of the coming races for the Seawanhaka international challenge cup, it says:

[...] Read more →

Commercial Tuna Salad Recipe

Tom Oates, aka Nabokov at en.wikipedia

No two commercial tuna salads are prepared by exactly the same formula, but they do not show the wide variety characteristic of herring salad. The recipe given here is typical. It is offered, however, only as a guide. The same recipe with minor variations to suit [...] Read more →

Historic authenticity of the Spanish SAN FELIPE of 1690

San Felipe Model

Reprinted from FineModelShips.com with the kind permission of Dr. Michael Czytko

The SAN FELIPE is one of the most favoured ships among the ship model builders. The model is elegant, very beautifully designed, and makes a decorative piece of art to be displayed at home or in the [...] Read more →

English Fig Wine

Take the large blue figs when pretty ripe, and steep them in white wine, having made some slits in them, that they may swell and gather in the substance of the wine.

Then slice some other figs and let them simmer over a fire in water until they are reduced [...] Read more →

Public Attitudes Towards Speculation

Reprint from The Pitfalls of Speculation by Thomas Gibson 1906 Ed.

THE PUBLIC ATTITUDE TOWARD SPECULATION

THE public attitude toward speculation is generally hostile. Even those who venture frequently are prone to speak discouragingly of speculative possibilities, and to point warningly to the fact that an overwhelming majority [...] Read more →

Watch Fraud on eBay

EBAY’S FRAUD PROBLEM IS GETTING WORSE

EBay has had a problem with fraudulent sellers since its inception back in 1995. Some aspects of the platform have improved with algorithms and automation, but others such as customer service and fraud have gotten worse. Small sellers have definitely been hurt by eBay’s [...] Read more →

Guaranteed 6% Dividend for Life. Any takers?

Any prudent investor would jump at the chance to receive a guaranteed 6% dividend for life. So how does one get in on this action?

The fact of the matter is…YOU can’t…That is unless you are a shareholder of one of the twelve Federal Reserve Banks and the banks under [...] Read more →

Why Beauty Matters – Sir Roger Scruton

Roger Scruton – Why Beauty Matters (2009) from Mirza Akdeniz on Vimeo.

Click here for another site on which to view this video.

Sadly, Sir Roger Scruton passed away a few days ago—January 12th, 2020. Heaven has gained a great philosopher.

Home Top of [...] Read more →

The Character of a Happy Life

How happy is he born and taught. That serveth not another’s will; Whose armour is his honest thought, And simple truth his utmost skill

Whose passions not his masters are; Whose soul is still prepared for death, Untied unto the world by care Of public fame or private breath;

Who envies none that chance [...] Read more →

Clairvoyance – Methods of Development

CLAIRVOYANCE

by C. W. Leadbeater

Adyar, Madras, India: Theosophical Pub. House

[1899]

CHAPTER IX – METHODS OF DEVELOPMENT

When a men becomes convinced of the reality of the valuable power of clairvoyance, his first question usually is, “How can [...] Read more →