DEVELOPMENT OF THE BANANA TRADE 157 



In order to show how enlightened and advanced the 

 general policy of a large company must be if they intend 

 to command success, reference may be made to the Medical 

 Department of the United Fruit Company. Since its organi- 

 zation it has maintained hospitals at various places for the 

 care of its employes, and it has created a department to have 

 charge of these hospitals and of sanitary work at the tropical 

 divisions, and of the medical staff upon the steamships, 

 and the supervision of quarantine matters. The activities 

 of this department involve an outlay of several hundred 

 thousand dollars annually. As a result, in large measure, of 

 its work, the localities in which the company operates have 

 been relatively free from dangerous contagions, and mutually 

 helpful relations are maintained with Government health 

 and quarantine authorities. 



In order to give some idea of the extensive operations 

 of the United Fruit Company, the following table is given 

 for the year ended September 1912 : 



Atlantic Fruit Company. The prosperity of the Boston 

 Fruit Company and 'the United Fruit Company which 

 absorbed it brought many imitators into the banana field, 

 one of the most successful of which has been the Atlantic 

 Fruit Company. This concern was originally formed by 

 Mr. Joseph Di Georgio in Baltimore in 1901 as the Di 



