Eli Black’s Grand Ambition

In recent years, corporations have increasingly sought to build their brand by aligning themselves with popular social movements. America’s largest corporations, such as Coca-Cola, Apple, and Target, routinely tout their support for social causes like environmentalism, gay pride, and racial equity and donate to left-wing organizations like Black Lives Matter and the Sunrise Movement. However, while Apple trumpets its donations to environmental groups, the raw materials used in the iPhone are often extracted through child labor, revealing that companies promote “social justice” and corporate social responsibility to draw the public’s attention away from their unethical business practices. 

For a long time, however, corporations such as America’s infamous United Fruit Company did little to hide their unethical business practices. Although the United Fruit Company had a reputation for interfering in Latin American politics and abusing the human rights of its workers, American consumers reluctantly enjoyed the corporation’s Chiquita brand products. Facing increased competition from its rival Standard Fruit, the United Fruit Company sought to rebrand as an ethical fruit supplier. 

In his book, Eli and the Octopus, Dartmouth Latin American Studies professor Matthew Garcia examines the efforts of one Eli Black (whose son established the Black Family Visual Arts Center at Dartmouth) to bury the United Fruit Company’s reputation for unethical business practices. Black sought to do so by introducing substantive reforms to the business’s labor practices and relations with Latin American governments.

Garcia begins his biography of Eli Black, born Eliasz Menasze Błachowicz, by discussing Black’s early life as a Jewish Immigrant from Lublin, Poland, who arrived in the United States in 1925 at the age of four. Black spent much of his youth following the conservative Jewish movement while studying at Yeshiva University to become a rabbi. However, after being ordained at age 20, Black soon lamented the position’s “scarcity of such opportunities to engage the community on matters of social importance.” Attending classes at Columbia University exposed Black to the Jewish business community and imparted to him the belief that ethically managed corporations could prove a strong force for good. Black quit his job as a Rabbi and took a position in investment banking at Lehman Brothers. 

At Lehman Brothers, Black worked with the bottle-cap manufacturer American Seal-Kap (AMK) on financing and was ultimately hired by AMK as the company’s CEO in 1954. Black soon utilized his control of AMK to finance a series of corporate “coups” or acquisitions of other, larger companies. Kicking off the conglomerate-building trend of the 1960s, Black leveraged the Kennedy administration’s economic deregulation to purchase the John Morrell & Co. meatpacking company, which was plagued by conflicts between corporate management and labor unions, especially at its slaughterhouse and meatpacking plant in Ottumwa, Iowa. After introducing efficiency-focused reforms to the workplace and reaching a favorable settlement with the meatpacking union, Morrell reported a substantial increase in profits, garnering bright headlines in the national media. Black, who was portrayed as a “hard-working immigrant who made good and took nothing for granted,” rose to prominence as an effective businessman who refused to engage in the extravagances of other Wall Street millionaires.

Black soon turned his sights to the United Fruit Company, seeking to implement ethical labor practices to restore the company’s reputation. After acquiring the company as part of the AMK, Black gave in to many of the Honduran banana workers union’s demands, announced a policy of political indifference towards Central American governments, and released a film that documented United Fruit’s actions promoting social responsibility. 

Black also acquired the Nunes Bros. lettuce company, which was struggling with strikes and boycotts from the United Farm Workers (UFW) and its leader Cesar Chavez. Black ultimately became friends with Chavez, capitulating to many of the United Farm Workers’ demands, including the ability to control hiring at the plant. However, the UFW’s hiring practices proved inefficient, and Black’s capitulation to the demands of the UFW without considering the demands of the lettuce shipping union led to underperformance and further labor conflict. 

At the same time, weather events throughout Central America, coupled with increased costs, rendered the United Fruit Company’s banana division unprofitable. As AMK’s profits slumped, Black was drawn to increasingly dire business decisions to finance his revival of United Fruit’s reputation, including closing down Morrell’s Ottumwa plant and bribing the Honduran government to lower its banana tax. On February 3, 1975, after having suffered mounting strains on his mental health, Black committed suicide by jumping out of his office window on the 44th floor of the Pan Am Building in Manhattan.

Throughout Eli and the Octopus, Garcia presents Black as a sympathetic figure who dedicated his career to “doing good by doing business,” attributing Black’s demise to a “misappropriation of wisdom” and the inherently exploitative structure of the banana business. While Black may have held social responsibility in high esteem during his management of AMK, he hardly applied his principles consistently. For instance, while Black funded large social benefits programs in Honduras and capitulated to the Honduran banana workers union’s demands, he laid off American workers in Ottumwa while refusing to grant them full pensions. 

Rather than holding a commitment to social responsibility, it appears that Black’s primary goal was to change the public perception of the United Fruit Company by siding with unions and propagandizing its reform efforts. As his corporate empire began to crumble, Black sold many of his successful businesses to keep the unprofitable United Fruit Company running, revealing his commitment to successfully rebranding United Fruit at any cost. Even so, Black’s decision to engage in bribery to keep United Fruit afloat suggests that the business executive cared most about the company’s perception rather than genuine social responsibility.

The story of Eli Black, as Garcia tells it, is not the story of a man’s futile attempt to rail against oppressive American corporate imperialism by promoting social responsibility. Rather, it is the story of a business executive who believed that he could achieve the unachievable by applying the same strategy to a variety of markets in which he lacked expertise. Rather than demonstrate a commitment towards social responsibility in a landscape of corporate greed, Black’s capitulation to the Honduran banana workers union and the UFW resulted in worse outcomes for the workers of both unions and revealed Black’s declining business sense as he grew older. 

Black’s hardline negotiations with the meatpacking union, which would have caused Morrell to collapse if it had gotten its way, resulted in increased profits and worker benefits. Contrasting this success with the failure of his capitulation to the UFW and banana workers union serves as a cautionary tale against giving unions too much sway in labor negotiations. 

Although many will conclude that Black’s life suggests that the capitalist system inherently opposes efforts to promote social responsibility, a critical examination reveals that Black’s efforts neither represented a genuine attempt to promote social responsibility nor succeeded in making any long-term improvements in the lives of workers. Instead, it was when Black sought to generate large profits to fund his acquisition of new companies that his workers benefited the most, demonstrating that seeking to make a profit can serve to contribute to social responsibility on its own.