122 



COFFEE. 



increasing. Plans for the liquidation of the debt 

 of Elon College, the establishment of an orphan- 

 age, and the raising of a twentieth-century offer- 

 ing of $20,000 have been pushed with vigor. 



COFFEE. Coffee forms the largest single 

 item of our imports. For years the United 

 States have been the largest coffee-importing 

 country in the world, and our purchases have 

 steadily increased. For the last crop year, end- 

 ing June 30, 1902, the imports into the United 

 States were 7,905,815 bags of 132 pounds each, 

 or 1,043,567,580 pounds. It is now estimated 

 that we consume a little more than 12 pounds 

 of coffee per capita annually. While Great Brit- 

 ain consumes less than | of a pound per capita 

 annually, some of the other northern countries 

 of Europe consume considerably more. Denmark 



is given by M. 

 Lecomb, in his 

 Geography for 

 1901, as the larg- 

 est coffee-consu- 

 ming country in 

 proportion to its 

 population, the 

 average con- 

 sumption being 

 5.07 kilograms, 

 or 15.72 pounds 

 to each inhabit- 

 ant. Norway 

 and Sweden are 

 next on his list; 

 their average 

 consumption is 

 4.63 and 4 kilo- 

 grams respective- 



ty > but, for SOme 

 Unknown reason, 



Holland, which 

 consumes more coffee than either, is not men- 

 tioned. A parliamentary paper recently issued 

 contains an official document entitled Tea and 

 Coffee in 1900, which gives the consumption of 

 coffee in that country per capita as 16.57 pounds 

 annually, which makes Holland the largest coffee- 

 consuming country in proportion to its popula- 

 tion. 



The steady increase of our coffee consumption 

 may be judged by our importations; those for 

 the fiscal year 1898836,528,352 pounds were 

 nearly 20 per cent, greater than our importations 

 of the previous year, 50 per cent, greater than in 

 1893, about double those of 1880, and more than 

 three times those of 1874. Our importations fell 

 off in 1899 and 1900. The importations for 1899 

 fell off more than 38,500,000 pounds, and for 1900 

 they fell off 43,500,000 pounds from those of the 

 previous year. The statistics of the Treasury 

 Department for the fiscal year 1901 give the sum 

 total of coffee imported into the United States 

 as 967,969,585 pounds, valued at $63,773,423. But 

 in 1892 we paid a great deal more money for 

 coffee; our importations for that year, though 

 only 640,211,000 pounds, were worth $128,042,000. 



The years from 1888 to 1893 were prosperous 

 for the coffee-growers; the average price, which 

 was 7 and 10 cents a pound in 1886 and 1887, 

 jumped to 20 cents in 1892, the highest price 

 ever paid for coffee in our history. The price 

 fluctuated between 7 and 9 cents in the fifties, 

 rose to 12 cents in the sixties, took a sudden 

 drop in 1865 to 6 cents, jumped again in 1866 

 to 11 cents, and then went down to 9 cents, fluc- 

 tuating between these figures till the seventies, 

 when it began to rise steadily, reaching 19 cents 

 a pound in 1874. This stimulated the coffee- 



PEUCY B. O'SULLIVAN, PRESIDENT OF 

 THE NEW YORK COFFEE EXCHANGE. 



growers all over the world, and with the increased 

 production the price gradually fell till 1886, 

 when it was down to about 1\ cents. As it costs 

 much more than this to grow and market coffee 

 in many of the coffee-producing countries, the 

 planters were obliged either to go out of business 

 or to use their estates for some other crop. Con- 

 sequently, with the ever-increasing demand, the 

 price went up again till it reached 20 cents in 

 1892. The following year it fell to 14 cents, and 

 then it rose to 16 cents, since which time it has 

 been steadily going down till the present year, 

 when coffee was sold on the exchange in New 

 York as low as 5J cents. 



In a paper before the Chamber of Commerce 

 at Rio de Janeiro last year, on the consumption 

 of coffee in the United States, by the Brazilian 

 minister to this country, he says this fluctua- 

 tion in the wholesale market affected the retail 

 price of coffee but little. The price of a cup of 

 coffee in the United States, he says, is the same 

 as when a pound of the product cost in the 

 wholesale market three times what it is sold for 

 at the present time. He further said that the 

 price of roasted coffee has remained about the 

 same; that five-sixths of all the coffee consumed 

 in the United States is imported from Brazil; 

 and he intimated that it was sold to the con- 

 sumer as Java and Mocha and brought the aver- 

 age price of 25 cents a pound. Thus the people 

 of the United States, he says, pay $165,000,000 

 yearly for Brazilian coffee, less than a quarter 

 of which is paid for the coffee in the wholesale 

 market. He further declared that Mocha coffee 

 is scarcely more than a myth, as Brazil supplies 

 nearly the whole of Arabia with coffee; and as 

 for Java, the entire production of the Dutch East 

 Indies for 1898 was but 430,901 bags. 



This statement of the Brazilian minister re- 

 garding the substitution of Brazilian coffees for 

 Mocha and Java has been denied by some of the 

 coffee dealers in this country; but the official 

 figures show that in 1900 we imported 133,182 

 bags of coffee direct from the Dutch East Indies, 

 and from Holland 23,104 bags, making a total 

 of 156,286 bags, while for the year 1901 we im- 

 ported only 72,338 bags direct, and 12,198 bags 

 via Holland, which was only a little more than 

 half of the previous year's importations. From 

 Aden we receive our Mocha coffee, and in 1901 

 we imported 12,276 bags. These figures show the 

 relatively small quantity of Mocha and Java 

 coffees received in this market, and form the 

 basis of the Brazilian minister's statement to 

 the effect that these coffees are hardly more than 

 a myth. According to the official publication of 

 our Commercial Relations with foreign coun- 

 tries (1902, Vol. I), of the coffee imports of 1901 

 nearly 80 per cent, (by weight) came from Brazil, 

 about 8.8 per cent, from other South American 

 countries, a little more than 6 per cent, from 

 Central America, and more than 2 per cent, from 

 Mexico. There remains, therefore. 1.3 per cent, 

 representing the coffee bought by the United 

 States in the rest of the world. The Coffee K\ 

 change gives our imports of coffee from Brazil 

 for the crop year 1902 as 6,738,656 bags, aguin-i 

 1.167,159 bags from all other countries. On .July 

 1, 1902, the world's visible supply in this coun- 

 try and Europe and the chief primary markets 

 had increased to 11,261,331 bags, a quantity suf- 

 ficient for the world's consumption for one year. 



The country that supplies us with coffee next 

 to Brazil is Venezuela, our imports of the prod- 

 uct from that country equaling about one-tenth 

 the amount imported from Brazil. In 1899 we 

 imported a little more than 28,000.000 pounds 



