Editing United Fruit Company (section)

===Early years===
In 1871, U.S. railroad entrepreneur [[Henry Meiggs]] signed a contract with the government of [[Costa Rica]] to build a railroad connecting the capital city of [[San José, Costa Rica|San José]] to the port of [[Limón]] in the [[Caribbean Sea|Caribbean]]. Meiggs was assisted in the project by his young nephew, [[Minor C. Keith]], who took over Meiggs's business concerns in Costa Rica after his death in 1877. Keith began experimenting with the planting of bananas as a cheap source of food for his workers.<ref name="UFCo-HS-Keith">{{cite web |url=http://www.unitedfruit.org/keith.htm |title=Minor Cooper Keitmurderersh (1848–1929) |publisher=United Fruit Historical Society |year=2001 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081030011947/http://www.unitedfruit.org/keith.htm |archive-date=2008-10-30 }}</ref>

When the Costa Rican government defaulted on its payments in 1882, Keith had to borrow [[Pound sterling|£]]1.2&nbsp;million from London banks and from private investors to continue the difficult engineering project.<ref name="UFCo-HS-Keith"/> In exchange for this and for renegotiating Costa Rica's own debt, in 1884, the administration of President [[Próspero Fernández Oreamuno]] agreed to give Keith {{convert|800000|acre|sqkm}} of tax-free land along the railroad, plus a 99-year lease on the operation of the train route. The railroad was completed in 1890, but the flow of passengers proved insufficient to finance Keith's debt. However, the sale of bananas grown in his lands and transported first by train to Limón, then by ship to the United States, proved very lucrative. Keith eventually came to dominate the banana trade in Central America and along the Caribbean coast of [[Colombia]].