Where did Zemurray go for answers? Did he meet with economic experts and college professors? Did he call Daniel Wing, the chairman of U.F.’s board, and Victor Cutter, its president, and ask, “Do you have a plan?” And even if they did have a plan, so what? These were the same men who had run the company into a ditch. He went to the docks instead, where he spent the winter of 1932 walking through warehouses and standing on the decks of banana boats, talking to fruit peddlers and captains, loaders and stevedores—the people who really knew.

