It was not long before Mr. Keith, who struggled for 20 years to complete his line from the coast to the capital of Costa Rica, came into contact with Mr. Preston. These captains of industry realized the advantages of co-operation, and in a very short time organized the United Fruit Company, which is probably the greatest agricultural transportation company in the world to-day. Its various plantations include lands in Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala and Jamaica. Large plantations of bananas belonging to the company were until recently on the harbors of Banes and Nipe, on the north coast of Oriente, in the Island of Cuba, but these were subjected to strong breezes from the northeast that whipped the leaves and hindered their growth. Then too, it was soon discovered that these lands were better adapted to the cultivation of sugar cane, hence bananas of the United Fruit Company disappeared from the Nipe Bay district, to be replaced by sugar plantations that to-day cover approximately 37,000 acres and in 1920 will reach 50,000 acres. Over 200,000 acres on the coast of the Caribbean are devoted to the cultivation of bananas. About 30,000 head of cattle are maintained as a source of food for the thousands of laborers, mostly Jamaicans, who are employed in the fields of the United Fruit Company, which comprise an aggregate of 1,980,000 acres; while 743 miles of standard gauge railway, together with 532 miles of narrow gauge roads, are owned and operated throughout the various plantations. In the year 1915, 46,000,000 bunches of bananas were shipped by the United Fruit Company from the shores of the Caribbean to the United States, while the sugar plantations owned by the Company on the north coast of Oriente Province, in Cuba, produced sugar in 1918 that yielded a net return of $5,000,000. In order to provide transportation for this enormous agricultural output this company to-day owns and operates one of the biggest fleets of steamships in the world. Forty-five of these ships, with tonnages varying from 3,000 to 8,000, especially equipped for the banana trade, and with the best of accommodations for passengers, have an aggregate tonnage of 250,000; while 49 other steamers were chartered by the company before the war, making the total tonnage employed in the carrying trade approximately half a million. Nearly all these steamers, which connect the coast of the Caribbean with New York, Boston and New Orleans, touch, both coming and going, at the City of Havana, thus giving that port the advantage of unexcelled transportation facilities, and connecting Cuba not only with the more important cities of the Gulf of Mexico, New York and New England, but also with Jamaica, Caribbean ports, and the South American Republics lying beyond the Isthmus of Panama, along the western shores of that continent.