_Bananas and Plantains._—No export from Guatemala has increased more rapidly in value than have the products 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 companies, the producer sells his bananas at 50 cents a bunch (of not less than eight hands) during five months of the year, and for 37½ cents the rest of the year. The cost of production may be placed at 12½ 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 hundred 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 American 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 insignificant 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. If the planting of bananas is to profit the grower, he must raise enough—say twenty thousand bunches a month—to freight his own steamer, and be independent of the present monopolies of the Italian fruiterers. The extent of this business is seen in the fact that from Livingston in 1883 were exported 29,699 bunches, and in 1884, 54,633, or nearly double the amount. [Illustration: Bunch of Plantains (young).]