CHAPTER XXni. 



THE COFFEE TEADE. 



Between the producers and consumers of coffee stands the 

 trade which handles the article, taking it from the former and 

 distributing it to the latter. The statistical data which are pre- 

 sented in other chapters sufficiently illustrate the importance of 

 this branch of the commerce of the world — the coffee crop — which 

 amounts in round numbers to eleven hundred million pounds, 

 being worth from first hands not less than $135,000,000. 



Coffee as a commercial staple is naturally inseparable from 

 coffee as a popular beverage. Increased consumption at the 

 breakfast-table leads to higher prices in the market, which in turn 

 must stimulate production in the field. This extended production 

 reacts on the value of the commodity and brings it again to a 

 more accessible level, when, as experience has shown, consumption 

 resumes its onward march and the rotation of cause and effect 

 begins anew. But this general law of supply and demand, so 

 easily stated, is in reality very coinplex in its workings. Conse- 

 quences often apparently belie premises, or are so long postponed 

 as meanwhile to puzzle or to injure. 



Amsterdam was for many years the centre of the coffee trade, 

 and it will not be amiss to study the earlier fluctuations of coffee in 

 that market. One of the effects of the great European wars at 

 the beginning of this century was to so entirely shut out the supply 

 of coffee from the Continent that the price was forced up to almost 

 fabulous figures. In Amsterdam, good ordinary Java sold in 1810 

 at from 105 to 115 Dutch cents * (about 42 to 46 cents, gold, in 



* In all that pertains to the Amsterdam market, the cents are the Dutch 

 cents, unless otherwise specified. Two and one-half Dutch cents are about 

 equivalent to one American cent. 



