Minor Cooper Keith
Minor Cooper Keith (January 19, 1848 – June 14, 1929) was a U.S. railroad, fruit, and shipping magnate whose business activities had a profound impact in Central America and in Colombia.
Early life
Keith was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Minor Hubbell Keith, a lumber merchant, and Emily Meiggs, who was the sister of railroad builder Henry Meiggs. After being educated in private schools, at the age of sixteen he went to work as a store clerk in Broadway, a position which he left after several months to become a lumber surveyor. Having amassed $3,000 in a year, he bought a cattle ranch on an island near the mouth of the Rio Grande, in southern Texas. He administered the ranch until 1871, when he accepted an invitation from his brother Henry M. Keith to help build a railroad in the Central American nation of Costa Rica.[1]
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Banana trade
The railroad was completed in 1890, but the flow of passengers and cargo proved insufficient to finance Keith's debt. As early as 1873, however, Keith had begun experimenting with the production of bananas grown from roots he had obtained from the French. To market the bananas, Keith began running a steamboat line from Limón to New Orleans, in the United States. The resulting banana trade proved extremely lucrative.
Keith then established banana plantations in Panama and in the Colombian Magdalena Department. He eventually came to dominate the banana trade in Central America and Colombia. In 1899, he was forced by a financial setback to combine his venture with Andrew W. Preston's Boston Fruit Company, which dominated the banana trade in the West Indies. The result of the merger was the powerful United Fruit Company, of which Keith became vice-president.[2]
Other activities
Keith also invested in gold mining in Abangares, in the Costa Rican province of Guanacaste.[3] In 1912 he returned to railroad building, organizing the International Railways of Central America and eventually completing an 800-mi (1,287-km) railway system, but died before realizing his dream of a line from Guatemala to the Panama Canal. His work profoundly altered the economic life of Central American countries.[4]
Keith married Cristina Castro Fernández, daughter of former President of Costa Rica José María Castro Madriz. He founded a chain of general stores and owned one of the largest poultry farms in the United States. He left his collection of ancient Indian gold to the American Museum of Natural History in New York.[5]
Minor Keith died of pneumonia in his home in West Islip, at the age of eighty-one.
References
- ^ Obituary in the New York Herald Tribune, 15 Jun. 1929, p. 13
- ^ United Fruit Co. Historical Society
- ^ Costa Rica Nature Adventures (retrieved September 8, 2007), "Costa Rica History: Post Independence History", To Enjoy Nature. com
{{citation}}: Check date values in:|date=(help); Text "author2-" ignored (help) - ^ The Columbia Encyclopaedia
- ^ "The Economic Empire of the Tropics," by Mark Whitis
