302 



COFFEE. 



for each year. Prior to 1865 quotations are in currency, from 

 that date in gold ; the Appendix furnishes a table showing the 

 fluctuations in gold during the existence of a premium on the 

 same : 



Is the present valuation of coffe^ to be maintained, or are we 

 to look forward again to an era of low prices ? 



To this interesting question very different answers are returned. 

 Some predict that the range of low prices of former years has 

 passed away forever, while others will only see in the rise of 

 coffee since 1871 a gigantic manipulation of the staple. The ad- 

 vocates of the first-mentioned theory argue that in past years the 

 consumption of coffee has increased in a greater ratio than the 

 productive area under cultivation ; that in the most important 

 coffee-producing country — Brazil — the supply of labor has become 

 insufficient ; and that, besides, the Brazilian planters, enriched by 

 their profits, can now afford to hold off from an unfavorable 

 market and command their own terms. It is retorted from 'the 

 opposite camp that general production has already received a 

 powerful development from the high prices of the last five or six 

 years — a development visible in the increased yield of the "West 

 Indies, and of Central and South America ; and that with regard 

 to Brazil, the newly-acquired wealth of the planting class must 

 necessarily tend to counteract the scarcity of labor by facilitating 

 the introduction of improved machinery in its stead. If it was 

 profitable, they say, to raise coffee years ago, when it could be 



