13. FRUIT TRADE OF LATIN AMER ICA. The most impressive fact in the history of the cultivation of valuable fruits in the Latin American tropics is not that so much has been accomplished but that so much still remains to be achieved. The past success amply justifies a confident outlook for the future in this great industry. The true propor tions of the opportunity presented are brought out more clearly by reversing the ordinary arrangement of statistics, and beginning with the smaller items. Thus, a study of imports into the United States during the fiscal year ending 30 June 1916 shows: Value of oranges imported from Costa Rica $4,343; from Honduras $1,495; from Panama $914; from Jamaica $43,843; from 'Cuba $9,826. Value of lemons imported from Mexico $239• from Cuba $1,800; from Brazil $33. Value of pineapples imported from Cuba $960,832; and of preserved pineapples from Cuba $35,867; from Haiti $300; from Guatemala $1,901. Value of all other fruits (with the exception of bananas) imported from tropical or sub tropical America: Costa Rica $810, dutiable; Guatemala $240, free; Honduras $5,142, free, and $48, dutiable; Mexico $3,113, free, and $16,532, dutiable; Jamaica $1,301, free, and $29,272, dutiable; Cuba $63614, free, and R 701, dutiable; Dominican Republic $127, free; Haiti, $644, free, and $280, dutiable; Brazil $272, dutiable; Colombia $4,122, free; Vene zuela $75, free.
The quantities and values of the bananas imported during the same period of 12 months into the United States from the new world's tropics were given as follows by the Depart ment of Commerce of the government of the United States: From Costa Rica 4,058,000 bunches, valued at $2,268,844; from Guatemala 3,811,750 bunches, valued at $958,189: from Honduras 9,702,791 bunches, valued at $1,964, 822; from Nicaragua 1,548,500 bunches, valued at $250,883; from Panama 4,516,307 bunches, valued at $2,113,855; from Mexico 1,527,025 bunches, valued at $424,631• ' from Jamaica 4,926,944 bunches, valued at $1,445,392; from Cuba 2,859,021 bunches, valued at $1,072,035; from the Dominican Republic 289,091 bunches, valued at $140,264; from Colombia 2,710,047 bunches, valued at $1,264.992. And in the short month of February 1917, imports of •bananas into the United States were: 1,527,620 bunches, valued at $519,489, from the Central American states and British Honduras; 48,017 bunches, valued at $18,026, from Cuba; and from South America 226,000.bunches, valued at $113,000.
In Porto Rico (which we include in the present survey, although that island can no longer be called strictly "Latin the successful cultivation of grapefruit, oranges and pineapples attracts attention. In the year 1916 shipments from Porto Rico to the United States included 296,613 boxes of grapefruit, valued at $836,932, and 404,367 boxes of oranges, valued at $790,667; pineapples valued at $1,176, 319 and canned pineapples $122,858, etc. Porto Rico's experience demonstrates the possibility of expanding the fruit industry by diversifying the products; there is no practical limit to the varieties of valuable fruits that the Latin American tropics can produce; and "In the Caribbean fruit trade the United States' mar ket is, with a trifling exception, the only prof itable one? (Consult Jones, C. L., 'Caribbean Interests of the United States,' New York 1916.) The records of achievement recorded in the first paragraph as "justifying a confident out look)) relate principally to a single species, the Masa sapientium or banana the fruit of which was not produced on a large scale in the Latin American tropics until citizens of the United States had established the banana trade, in 1866,— at first importing from Colon only—and then had developed the industry during years and decades of unremitting effort.
Many groups of citizens of the same country have been actively engaged in this work of development and share the credit accorded to all for the successful application of northern initiative, enterprise and capital to the prob lems of tropical agriculture. It is especially important to remember and register the circum stance that such efforts have been in a wide sense constructive or well nigh creative; that northern commercial methods have supplied new transportation and communication facili ties, and (taking in their stride obstacles that for centuries had been regarded as insur mountable) have expelled tropical fevers from their strongholds. As Mr. F. U. Adams writes in his 'Conquest of the Tropics' (New York 1914) : "In 1871 there was not a mile of rail road in all of Central America [the Republics of Guatemala, Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica] with the exception of a short line having its terminal at Puerto Cortez, Hon duras. There were no dependable foot or wagon roads from its capitals. . . There was no steamship service from the United States or from any part of the world. . . . There probably was no inhabited spot on earth more isolated. These republics were cut off not only by the sea but also by barriers of pestilential lands, which the natives dreaded to cross and which the outside world could not enter. To-day these former wildernesses con stitute one of the most productive agricultural sections of the globe. To-day the ships from all the world enter the beautiful harbors of Central America and land their passengers in ports which are as sanitary as those of Massa thusetts. To-day most republics of Central America are served with well-managed and modernly equipped railway lines. . . . Who performed these miracles ?)) His answer is that they were wrought by citizens of the United States "who had the imagination, the courage and the ability to attack and conquer)) the prob lems of tropical wildernesses; and he adds that when actual results had demonstrated to the world that the industrial and commercial con quest of the tropics waspossible, this should have proved to the United States that it was the bounden duty of its people, its press and its government to encourage and foster the speedy. development of those regions, not for the mere purpose of obtaining money rewards, but with the larger, broader and truly states manlike object of "obtaining from the tropics such of its other products as would add to the happiness and raise the standard of living of the people of the United States? And in other passages of the same book the benefits accru ing to the citizens of the Latin American republics are discussed with equal interest. Under the command of a single northern com pany 60,000 trained men are working in the Latin American tropics at the present time. Tens of millions of dollars have been ad vanced to those who otherwise would not have been able to use their lands for banana cul tivation—such loans having been made, at reasonable or relatively low rates of interest — much lower than the prevailing rates for similar advances in the same localities — to residents in or citizens of Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Guatemala and other Caribbean re gions that have become important sources of fruit supply. The problems of tropical sanita tion have been attacked and mastered — not less vigorously attacked and not less thoroughly mastered on the extensive banana plantations than in the Canal Zone, Panama, or in Havana and Santiago de Cuba.