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His business was to speak of the curing and packing of produce. 

 The first great essential in handling any crop was absolute cleanliness. 

 Many products depended very largely for their selling price upon 

 their aroma, which would be lost if any dirt or rubbish were mixed 

 with them. Therefore, all storehouses, barbecues, packages, etc., 

 should be kept scrupulously clean. He sometimes heard it said that 

 people did not trouble to cure their produce well because they found 

 that the same prices were paid for good and bad produce coming from 

 the same district. It might happen that a merchant bought a large 

 quantity of badly-cured coffee from a district, together with a few 

 pounds well cured. The small parcel of good stuff was of no us i to 

 him ; he could not sell it separately, and it therefore had to go in with 

 the inferior stuff. It would thus be seen that a man who cured his 

 produce badly harmed his neighbours as well as himself, and helped 

 to get his district a bad name. Co operation among the people could 

 do a great deal to remove this danger and get a good reputation for a 

 district. The commercial world was constantly disturbed by over- 

 production, but very seldom indeed did it witness over-production of 

 the best qualities of goods. If a man had a specialty that was really 

 good, he could readily find a good market for it. They saw that in the 

 case of coffee ; when the price of the product dropped it affected the in- 

 ferior qualities very seriously indeed, but the price of Blue Mountain 

 coffee had practically not been affected at all. It was as high to-day as 

 ever. He desired to make his remarks specially applicable to small 

 settlers, and it might at first sight seem impossible for that class to 

 reach the same degree of agricultural perfection with their products as 

 large cultivators with plenty of capital at their command. But while 

 absolutely the same degree of perfection might perhaps not be reached, 

 it was yet within the power of the small cultivator to attain very nearly 

 to it by means of co-operation. In the case of coffee, the peasant pro- 

 prietor was in the same position as the largest proprietor — nay, he 

 was even in a better position, for on account of the smaller extent of 

 his operations he could give much closer personal supervision to the 

 details. One of the essential features of good coffee was to secure a 

 large bean. That was to be arrived at by attention to proper pruning 

 and manuring. It might be urged that the rich man could buy 

 manures and the poor man could not, but his hearers were being 

 taught by their instructors that proper manures lay ready to the 

 hand of the small settler, and were to be had for a little time and 

 trouble. The system of curing coffee followed for the most part in the 

 lowlands of Jamaica — which produced what was known as " double- 

 husk" coffee — was quite wrong, and ought to be improved without de- 

 lay if Jamaica was to successfully compete with her rivals. A very 

 important point was only to pick each day such berries as were quite 

 fit. The plantation should be gone through contantly, for this pur- 

 pose ; people should not through pure laziness, want to pick a lot 

 of berries at once, whether fit or not. After a start had been made to 

 dry the coffee, it should never be allowed to get wet again under any 

 circumstances. The " double-husk" method was to dry the coffee 

 in the berry. That was a bad system, because it produced coffee 

 which was poor in quality, discoloured, and deficient in aroma. It 

 was much better to pulp the berries, but of course many settlers had no 



