914 
HOW THE BERRIES ARE PREPARED 
It is customary to classify the methods 
of preparing coffee for market into the 
wet and the dry. They are alike, after 
a certain stage, and there is disagreement 
among experts as to the relative merits 
of the two in producing the best coffee. 
In the dry process the berries are dried 
before the pulp is removed, and then 
outer covering, pulp, and inner coverings 
are removed together. In the wet pro- 
cess the pulp is first removed in water, 
and the drying and removal of the inner 
envelopes come later. 
There is no absolutely hard and fast 
rule, invariably followed on all fazendas 
alike, in the preparation for market of 
the coffee beans. At the two fazendas 
visited by the writer most of the coffee 
was treated by the wet method, the bulix 
of the crop being ripe and therefore in 
a condition to be pulped easily. In case, 
however, the berries were over-ripe, and 
therefore dry, or under-ripe, and there- 
fore green, so that they could not be 
pulped, they were dried directly after 
being washed, and went through the so- 
called dry process. The following ac- 
count therefore deals chiefly with the 
wet method. - 
A considerable water supply and a 
carefully planned system of small canals 
and of basins is needed in the wet 
method, and it is partly for this reason, 
as well as because of the preference of 
some fagendeiros for the dry method, 
that the wet method is not everywhere 
in use. 
THE QUESTION OF LABOR 
The harvest begins in May and lasts 
into August, or even September. ‘This is 
the dry season, so that the weather con- 
ditions are very favorable, not only for 
the harvest itself, but for drying and 
transporting the crop after it has heen 
gathered. In picking the coffee, the 
boughs are pulled down with the left 
hand and held at the outer end, while the 
right hand is run along the bough froin 
the base to the tip, thus stripping off the 
berries as well as many leaves and twigs. 
For the upper branches rude step-ladders 
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 
are used, but these are generally not al- 
lowed to rest against the trees. 
In this work of harvesting all the 
laborers on the fazgenda take part—imen, 
women, and children—except those who 
are too old, or too young, or who are ill. 
Several hundred, or even thousand, pairs 
of hands are thus busy for weeks on 
each large fazenda gathering the precious 
crop. 
Most of the laborers are now Italians, 
many of whom make a contract to stay 
for a year; but some are permanent set- 
tlers.. There is a considerable amount of 
migration going on all the time to and 
from Italy and to and from Argentina. 
Immigration under contract has been 
done away with, so far as the Italians 
are concerned, and these people now 
come and go of their own initiative. In 
many cases the children who have been 
born on the fazendas stay permanently as 
laborers. 
Following the custom of the old slay- 
ery days, the laborers (colonists they are 
called) live all together in small one or 
two-family cottages in a certain portion 
of the fazenda, which is walled or fenced 
off from the rest. Here they have their 
chapel, and can keep their own goats and 
pigs, and near by they cultivate their 
own fields of corn, or mandioc, or beans, 
The owner of the plantation provides 
medical attendance and a hospital, a 
corn-mill, sugar-mill, etc., but there 
seems to be no general organized system 
of schooling for the children. 
As the work is usually done at 
considerable distances away from the 
“colony,” the colonists start out early 
in the morning and do not return until 
darkness prevents further labor. They 
take their food with them and eat it 
under the coffee trees. The curfew rings 
at 8:30 or 9 p. m., and after that all must 
be silent in the colony. 
The colonists are paid in various ways. 
At Santa Veridiana they are paid by the 
number of bags of coffee berries which 
each family picks, the bags being num- 
bered and counted as they are brought in. 
Other laborers are paid by the day. 
Others, again, are paid so much for tak- 
ing care of a certain definite number of 
