COFFEE. 



123 



from Colombia, which was less than half our im- 

 ports for the corresponding year from Venezuela. 

 Mexico came next on the list with nearly 27,250,- 

 000 pounds, and then Costa Rica with a little 

 more than 10,500,000, and Guatemala with near- 

 ly 15,000,000 pounds. The average price of these 

 coffees a pound was: Brazil, 5.6 cents; Venez- 

 uela, 7.7 cents; Colombia, 8.6 cents; Mexico, 9.8 

 cents; Costa Rica, 14.5 cents; Guatemala, 12.1 

 cents. These figures, taken from the Commerce 

 and Navigation volumes of the United States, 

 indicate that there is a good deal of truth in the 

 statement made by the Brazilian minister. 



Until the acquisition of the Hawaiian Islands, 

 Porto Rico, and the Philippines no coffee was 

 produced in any territory under the control of 

 the United States. The fact that a superior qual- 

 ity of coffee has long been produced in these 

 islands, and that their conditions are eminently 

 favorable for its production, coupled with the 

 fact that it has always been the policy of the 

 United States to protect her own industries, 

 whether agricultural or industrial, makes the 

 question of coffee production doubly interesting. 

 Porto Rico has produced coffee in large quanti- 

 ties, that being her principal export for many 

 years, the bulk of it going to Spain, where it has 

 long been considered the finest coffee in the 

 world. Her exports of coffee have amounted to 

 30,000,000 pounds per annum for many years. 

 The Statesman's Year-Book for 1902 gives 200,- 

 000 acres under coffee cultivation in the island, 

 which now produce 60,000,000 pounds of coffee 

 annually. The Division of Insular Affairs gives 

 the exportation of coffee from the island from 

 the date of our occupation in October, 1898, to 

 the end of April, 1900, as a little more than 

 (52,000,000 pounds, of which 23,500,000 went to 

 Prance, 9,000,000 to Cuba, nearly as much to 

 Spain, 7,500,000 to Italy, a little more than 

 5,000,000 to Austria-Hungary, and a little less 

 than 5,000,000 to Germany, this country receiv- 

 ing only a little more than 2,250,000 pounds of 

 the product. 



The Philippine Islands are said to be pecul- 

 iarly adapted for the production of coffee, but the 

 Division of Insular Affairs gives for the years 

 1899, 1900, and 1901 but small amounts exported 

 from Manila, the amount for 1899 being 73,500 

 pounds; in 1900 only 24,500 pounds left that 

 port; but in 1901 the shipments rose to 65,000 

 pounds. 



Coffee appears as a natural product in the 

 Hawaiian group, growing in many of the islands 

 in a x wild state; but as yet it is not produced on 

 an extensive scale. It is said that there are 

 more than 200 small plantations in the islands, 

 and the exports given for 1897 were 337,158 

 pounds, worth $99,696. It is said that the area 

 in these islands in which coffee can be success- 

 fully grown is small, but the quality of the 

 product is excellent. 



The Coffee Conference. Owing to the low 

 pi-ice obtainable for coffee in the producing coun- 

 tries, it was proposed by Mr. Lazo Arriaga, 

 delegate for Guatemala at the Pan-American 

 Congress held in the city of Mexico last winter, 

 that a commission be convened within one year 

 in the city of New York, to be composed of one 

 or more delegates from each of the American re- 

 publics, to study the causes of the low price, 

 which was producing a crisis in the producing 

 countries, and to devise some means of remedy- 

 ing it. He called attention to the fact that 15 

 of the nations represented at the congress were 

 producers of the precious bean, while the 4 re- 

 maining nations were consumers of it. He further 



ANTONIO LAZO ARRIAGA. 



said that the low price had affected the treasury 

 receipts of some of the producing countries to such 

 a degree that perhaps for this reason, some of 

 them were in a state of revolution, owing to the 

 misery and pov- 

 erty caused by 

 the low price of 

 their chief prod- 

 uct. All the coun- 

 tries entered in- 

 to the project 

 through their 

 delegates, who 

 signed the reso- 

 lution, with the 

 exception of 

 Chile, which de- 

 clared itself as 

 being exclusively 

 a coffee - consu- 

 ming country, 

 with no interest 

 in a congress the 

 avowed object of 

 which was to 

 study a means 

 of raising the price of a product which she pur- 

 chased in considerable quantities at a price al- 

 ready sufficiently high. 



Owing to the foresight of Mr. Lazo Arriaga, 

 in placing the details of convening the proposed 

 Coffee Conference in the hands of the Bureau of 

 American Republics, it was one of the first, if not 

 the first, of the many resolutions adopted by the 

 Pan-American Congress to be acted upon. The 

 conference met at the New York Coffee Ex- 

 change on Oct. 1, and was composed of delegates 

 from all the producing countries with the excep- 

 tion of Colombia, Hayti, and Bolivia. Two of 

 the non-producing countries Ecuador and Uru- 

 guay were represented at the conference, so 

 that only 6 of the American republics were un- 

 represented at the conference. The sessions of 

 the conference were presided over by Percy B. 

 O'Sullivan, a delegate of the United States and 

 president of the Coffee Exchange, and were held 

 throughout October. 



Papers were presented upon the production, 

 distribution, consumption, and causes of the low 

 price of coffee by representatives of the eoffee- 

 producing countries. It was generally agreed 

 that the cause of the low price was overproduc- 

 tion, and to remedy the evil it was proposed by 

 the committee charged with the study of the 

 subject, of which Senhor J. F. de Assis, Brazilian 

 minister at Washington, was chairman, that the 

 coffee-producing countries enter into a combine 

 to hold lack a sufficient percentage of their entire 

 crops to reduce the supply to the limit of con- 

 sumption, and that in case no demand should be 

 created for the surplus so held back by increa>fd 

 consumption, the surplus should be ultimately 

 destroyed .by fire. This proposition met with a 

 vigorous protest from the delegate from Porto 

 Rico, who demonstrated that his country was in 

 no wise to blame for the overproduction, the 

 cyclone of 1899 having destroyed more than half 

 of the plantations on the island, and that the 

 present Porto-Rican crop would hardly equal 40 

 per cent, of the crop of former years. He pointed 

 to Brazil as the country responsible for the over- 

 production, and said there was where the rem- 

 edy should be applied. Of course the United 

 States could not enter into any such radical proj- 

 ect to raise the price of any product in which 

 it was interested either directly or indirectly, 

 and consequently its delegation abstained from 





