VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL PRODUCTIONS. 351 
Bananas and Plantains. — No export from Guatemala 
lias increased more rapidly in value than have the pro¬ 
ducts under this head. The permanent establishment of 
lines of steamers between New Orleans and Livingston, 
and the bounty offered by the Government, stimulated the 
planting of many small fincas along the shores and on 
the river-banks. Under contract with the steamship com¬ 
panies, the producer sells his bananas at 50 cents a 
bunch (of not less than eight hands) during five months 
of the year, and for 37^- cents the rest of the year. The 
cost of production may be placed at 12J cents per bunch. 
All these prices are in silver currency of the value of the 
sham dollar of the United States. Plantains are sold at 
25 cents a bunch of twenty-five, sometimes commanding 
$1.25 per hundred. The profits of this business go, as 
usual, not to the producer, but to the middle-man or the 
steamer-companies. For example, a man raises a hun¬ 
dred bunches of good fruit; the cost to him is $12.50 
delivered on board the steamer. He is paid in the best 
season $50 in silver, for which he can get $40 in Amer¬ 
ican gold. The steamer people, after a voyage of four 
days, during which all their expenses are paid by the 
passenger-list and the Government mail-subsidies, sell the 
bananas on the wharf in New Orleans for $125 in gold, 
or its equivalent, — clearing $85 ; while the planter, for 
a year’s labor put into the bananas, gets $30. I have 
put the price paid the planter at the highest, and the 
sales in New Orleans at the lowest. The loss is insignifi¬ 
cant at these figures, and it is not uncommon for the 
profits of a single round trip of two weeks to exceed 
$40,000. Half this shared with the planter would make 
him rich. 
