coffee dates back to the years 1908 to 1910, when the German Kosmos Line
was fighting the Pacific Mail for the Central and South American
shipping business. W.R. Grace & Co., at that time, were already the
heaviest shippers of American merchandise to the Latin-American
countries; and while their own steamers were not touching at Central
American ports, they were handling merchandise from the United States
and nitrates from the South American countries in their own bottoms, and
were also engaged as general carriers for that trade. The fight directed
by the Kosmos Line against the Pacific Mail, which at that time was
under the control of the Southern Pacific Company, was accordingly
directed against the Grace interests also, so far as South American
countries were concerned. The fight was long and bitter, and costly to
both sides. At times, the contenders offered to take freight, not only
without charge, but to pay the shipper a premium for the privilege of
carrying his freight.
Differences were finally settled in conference; but the experience
taught the American interests that they could survive in any territory
only if at all times they were able to provide their own cargoes for
their own boats, as had been accomplished with nitrate in South America.
J.H. Rosseter, the Grace manager, who later became well known as
director of operations of the United States Shipping Board during the
war, undertook an extended trip to Central America in 1912 to study the
situation at close range. There was only one product of Central America
that was available in cargo quantities, namely coffee; and naturally his
attention was drawn to the possibility of carrying coffee to San
Francisco to provide return cargoes for ships of the Pacific Mail, or
associated lines, carrying merchandise for the Central American
countries.
While in Guatemala, Mr. Rosseter outlined a future policy in regard to
Central American coffees; the basis being his firm determination that
coffees grown in Central America, and logically and geographically
tributary to San Francisco distribution, should come to San Francisco in
largely increasing quantities.
Up to that time San Francisco had received, on an average, only 200,000
bags of Central American coffee annually for the ten preceding years;
while Europe had received about 1,500,000 bags a year. The quantity
necessary to make San Francisco a factor would call for an importation,
on an average, of 750,000 bags--a quantity almost four times as large as
then established.
This was an extremely ambitious undertaking, considering the conditions
then prevailing in Central America. European countries were firmly
entrenched in the coffee business in Central America, with Germany
leading in Guatemala, France in Salvador and Nicaragua, England and
France contending for superiority in Costa Rica, and the United States
getting only the leavings.
The European countries held their position in the Central American
Coffee trade by liberal financing, and a thorough knowledge of the
varying qualities of coffee produced on the different plantations. San
Francisco, the only important port in the United States dealing in
Central American coffees, had neither strong financial entrenchment in
Central America nor expert knowledge of coffee quality. Year after year,
San Francisco merchants had depended on consignments chosen by the
consignors. This rendered quality selection of coffees by the importers
impossible.
Rosseter, being primarily a steamship man, tackled the proposition from
the standpoint of transportation, figuring that if he could establish
and maintain preferential steamer service to San Francisco, and steady
freight rates, a great step would be accomplished toward the desired
end. This led to his interest in the Pacific Mail Company, of which the
final outcome was his present position as vice-president of the
reorganized Pacific Mail Company. In that capacity he maintained,
practically throughout the entire period of the World War, freight rates
on coffee from Central America to San Francisco that gave that Pacific
port an immediate and definite advantage.
This gave merchants in San Francisco the chance to build up a steady
trade, and prevented other ports in the United States from entering into
serious competition with San Francisco as a distributing point for
Central American coffees. The view taken by Rosseter was as far-sighted
as it was broad. He argued that with the end of the war there would be
no strength in a scattering distribution of Central American coffees by
New York, New Orleans, and San Francisco; and the only promise of
maintenance of the business for the United States would be in
maintaining unity of distribution in one port of the United States,
namely San Francisco.
The first year open to European competition after the war showed that
San Francisco was well able to maintain its lead in Central American
coffees. Today, the mortgages formerly held by European merchants on the
native coffee plantations, and the control thereby of the produce of
these plantations, are in the hands of American merchants; and what is
more, out of general merchandising and importing by merchants of San
Francisco there have developed expert coffee departments in all of the
larger houses. The years of the war brought the product of virtually all
plantations in Central America to the intimate knowledge of these expert
coffee departments; and today the advantage that Europe formerly had--of
knowing exactly what a specific plantation produced--is possessed by
San Francisco merchants.
This is no small advantage when we consider that in Guatemala and Costa
Rica, qualities vary from plantation to plantation, and that often on
adjoining plantations there is from three to five cents a pound
difference in quality, from the standpoint of cup merit.
One can not buy coffee in Central America as in Brazil, as these
countries are not highly organized commercially, and the importers here
are forced to assume the rôle of the Brazilian _commisario_ and banker.
The crop has to be financed from six to nine months before it is brought
to the port; and the securities covering such advances are at best of
questionable value, on account of political insecurity, and the
ever-threatening earthquakes, and the uncertainty of the elements.
Distribution of the coffee after it has been brought to San Francisco
also involves many difficulties, notwithstanding that the demand is
good. This will be better realized when we consider that the Pacific
coast, from Alaska to Mexico, and eastward as far as the Rocky
Mountains, embraces a population of about 8,000,000, whose annual
consumption is estimated at 400,000 bags; and that, as already stated,
treble that quantity was imported to San Francisco in 1919.
In 1900, ninety-nine firms were engaged in the green coffee importing
business (some were roasters also) in New York; six in Philadelphia;
twenty-eight in San Francisco; twelve in New Orleans. In 1920, there
were two hundred and sixteen in New York; thirty-one in San Francisco;
fifteen in New Orleans.
_Green Coffee Trade Organizations_
Previous to the organization of the roasters, the only kind of coffee
organization in this country of more than local importance was the New
York Coffee Exchange, which came into existence in 1881, the
organization meeting being held in the offices of B.G. Arnold & Co., at
166 Pearl Street, New York. The Exchange was incorporated December 7,
1881, the incorporators being Benjamin Green Arnold, Francis B. Arnold,
William D. Mackey, John S. Wright, William Sorley, Joseph A. O'Brien, H.
Clay Maddux, C. McCulloch Beecher, Geo. W. Flanders, and John R.
McNulty. B.G. Arnold was the first president. Soon afterward, rooms were
rented and fitted up for trading purposes at 135 Pearl Street, at the
junction of Beaver and Pearl Streets, and only two blocks away from the
more pretentious structure now housing the Coffee Exchange. Actual
trading operations did not begin until March 7, 1882.
The New York Coffee Exchange was the world's first coffee-trade
organization of national proportions. Havre's exchange was inaugurated
in 1882, under the name of the Coffee Terminal Market. Five years later,
coffee exchanges were opened in Amsterdam and Hamburg; while the
exchanges of London, Antwerp, and Rotterdam did not come into existence
until the year 1890. The exchange in Trieste, Italy, was organized in
1905; while the Coffee Trade Association of London was started in 1916.
The first exchange in Santos was started in 1914.
The success of the New York Coffee Exchange led to its imitation in
other coffee ports of the United States. Baltimore started a similar
organization, early in 1883, under the name of the Baltimore Coffee
Exchange; but after a short existence, it petered out. New Orleans
organized a green coffee trading association in 1889, as a coffee
committee of the Board of Trade. It is still active. The Green Coffee
Association of New Orleans, Inc., which is distinct from the Coffee
Committee, was established January 7, 1920. San Francisco did not have a
trading exchange until 1918, in which year the Green Coffee Association
of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce began operations.
_Growth of the Coffee-Roasting Trade_
The wholesale coffee roasting business in the United States seems to
have started in the closing years of the eighteenth century. In
February, 1790, a "new coffee manufactory" began business at 4 Great
Dock Street, New York, and the proprietor announced that he had provided
himself at considerable expense with the proper utensils "to burn, grind
and classify coffee on the European plan." He sold the freshly roasted
product "in pots of various sizes from one to twenty weight, well packed
down, either for sea or family use so as to keep good for twelve
months."
A second roasting plant started up at 232 Queen Street, New York, nearly
opposite the governor's house, toward the close of 1790. This second
coffee roasting plant was known in 1794 as the City Coffee Works. James
Thompson operated a "coffee manufactory" at 25 Thames Street in 1795. In
this year there was also the "Old Ground Coffee Works" in Pearl Street,
formerly Hanover Square, "three doors below the bank at number 110,"
operating "two mills, one pair French burr stones" but no orders were
accepted here for less than six pounds, at "two pence advanced from the
roasting loss."
Other coffee manufactories followed in the large towns of the new
states; and, always, the coffee was treated "on the European plan." This
meant that it was "burnt over a slow coal fire, making every grain a
copper color and ridding it all of dust and chaff." There was usually a
difference in price of three to four pence a pound between the green and
roasted product. Packages of roasted coffee under the half-dozen weight
were sold in New York in 1791 for two shillings and three pence per
pound, allowance being made for grocers at a distance. In those days,
the favorite container was a narrow-mouthed pot or jar of any size. This
was the first crude coffee package. In retailing the product,
cornucopias made of newspapers, or any other convenient wrapping, were
first employed; but, with the introduction of paper bags in the early
sixties, the housekeeper soon became educated to this more sanitary form
of carry package, and its permanence was quickly assured.
The following were listed in Longworth's _Almanack_ as coffee roasters
in New York in 1805: John Applegate; Cornelius Cooper; Benjamin Cutler,
104 Division Street; George Defendorf, 83 Chapel Street; William Green;
Cornelius Hassey, 14 Augustus Street; Joseph M'Ginley, 28 Moore Street;
John W. Shaw, 43 Oliver Street; John Sweeney, Mulberry Street; Patience
Thompson, 23 Thames Street.
Elijah Withington came from Boston to New York in 1814. He set up a
coffee roaster in an alley behind the City Hall and engaged a big,
raw-boned Irishman to run it. This was the beginning of a coffee
roasting business that has continued until the present day. Withington
dealt in Padang interiors, Jamaica, and West Indian coffees, and
numbered many society folk among his customers. Withington's business
removed to 7 Dutch Street in 1829: and the firm became Withington & Pine
in 1830.
The roasted coffee business in New York had grown to such proportions in
1833 and gave such promise, that James Wild considered it a good
investment to bring over from England for his new coffee manufactory in
New York a complete power machinery equipment for roasting and grinding
coffee. There was also an engine to run it. It was set up in Wooster
Street opposite the present Washington Square.
Samuel Wilde, son of Joseph Wilde, of Dorchester, Mass., came to New
York about 1840 to make his fortune. He was a young man with vision; and
first applied himself with diligence to the hardware and looking-glass
business. When he found that most of his customers were theaters and
saloons, his religious scruples bade him abandon it, which he did.
Meanwhile, in 1844, Withington's pioneer roasting enterprise had
admitted Norman Francis and Amos S. Welch as general partners, and
Samuel and Charles C. Colgate as special partners, under the style of
Withington, Francis & Welch. It so continued until 1848, when Samuel
Wilde--who had selected the coffee business as more honorable than the
one in which he started--was admitted, and the firm became Withington &
Wilde.
Mr. Withington retired in 1851, and Samuel Wilde associated with him in
the business his sons Joseph and Samuel, Jr., the title becoming Samuel
Wilde & Sons. Samuel Wilde, Sr., died in 1862. The title then became
Samuel Wilde's Sons. Joseph Wilde died in 1878, and Samuel Wilde, Jr. in
1890, the business being left to and continuing with a younger brother,
John, from 1878 to 1894, when John's son, Herbert W. Wilde, became a
member of the firm, which continues the old title at 466 Greenwich
Street, as Samuel Wilde's Sons Company, having been incorporated in
1902. John Wilde died in 1914.
Another grandson of Samuel Wilde is William B. Harris, who engaged in
the coffee roasting business in Front Street from 1904 to 1917. From
1908 to 1918 he acted as coffee expert for the United States Department
of Agriculture. William B. Harris is a son of Samuel L. Harris, who
married a daughter of Samuel Wilde, and who for a number of years was
connected with Samuel Wilde's Sons.
[Illustration: PIONEERS IN THE ROASTED COFFEE BUSINESS OF NEW YORK CITY
With approximate dates of their entry into the trade]
Although a number of roasters and grinders for family use were patented
in the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century, the
coffee merchants depended almost entirely on English manufacturers for
their wholesale equipment until 1846, when James W. Carter of Boston
brought out his "pull-out" roaster. This machine, and others like it,
encouraged the development of the coffee-roasting business, so that when
the Civil War came, coffee manufactories were well scattered over the
country. The demand for something better in coffee-machinery equipment
was answered by Jabez Burns with his machine for filling and discharging
without moving the roasting cylinder from the fire.
Among the early grocery concerns in New York that were also coffee
roasters were: R.C. Williams & Co., starting as Mott & Williams in 1811,
changing to R.S. Williams & Co. in 1821, to Williams & Potter in 1851,
and to its present title in 1882; Acker, Merrall & Condit Co., founded
in 1820; Park & Tilford, founded in 1840; Austin, Nichols & Co., founded
in 1855; and Francis H. Leggett & Co., founded in 1870.
There were twenty-one "coffee roasters and spice factors" in New York in
1848. Among them were: Beard & Cummings. 281 Front Street; Henry B.
Blair, 129 Washington Street; Colgate Gilbert, 93 Fulton Street; Wright
Gillies, 236 Washington Street; and Withington, Wilde & Welch, 7 Dutch
Street. In this year, two coffee importers, fourteen tea importers, and
forty-one tea dealers were listed in the _City Directory_.
The _Directory_ for 1854 listed twenty-seven coffee roasters and spice
factors, among them, in addition to the above, being Peter Haulenbeek,
328 Washington Street; Levi Rowley, 102 West Street; William J. Stitt,
159 Washington Street; and George W. Wright, 79 Front Street. In those
days not all the wholesale coffee factors were roasters; there was much
trade roasting by a few large plants.
While the coffee-roasting business of Samuel Wilde's Sons appears to be
the oldest in New York, having descended in a practically unbroken line
from 1814, several others continued considerably past the half-century
mark, and among them special mention should be accorded to: Levi
Rowley's Star Mills, dating back to 1823; Beard & Cummings, 1834; Wright
Gillies & Bro., 1840; Loudon & Son, the Metropolitan Mills, 1853; and
the Eppens Smith Co., present day successors of Thomas Reid's Globe
Mills of 1855.
The Star Mills in Duane Street became a real factor in the wholesale
coffee-roasting business on Manhattan Island about 1823. At a later
date, Levi Rowley secured control, and under his able direction the
business flourished. Benedict & Gaffney bought the Star Mills from
Rowley in 1885. A few years later the firm became Benedict & Thomas,
then Thomas & Turner, and finally the R.G. Thomas Co. R.G. Thomas sold
the equipment in 1920, ending the manufacturing end of the business just
about a century from the time it started. Mr. Thomas is now with Russell
& Co. Before being identified with the Star Mills, he was for twenty
years with Packard & James, 123 Maiden Lane.
While still a lad of nineteen, Wright Gillies came from a Newburgh farm
in 1838, and obtained a clerkship in a tea store in Chatham Street, now
Chambers and Duane Street. He branched out for himself in the tea and
coffee business at 232 Washington Street in 1840, removing in 1843 to
236, which had a courtyard where he installed a horse-power coffee
roaster. In the same building, over the store, lived Thomas McNell and
his wife. Mr. McNell afterward became a member of the firm of Smith &
McNell, proprietors of the Washington Street hotel and restaurant, for
many years one of New York City's landmarks.
The coffee business, thus started by Wright Gillies, is still conducted,
as the Gillies Coffee Co., by the same family and at practically the
same location; and it is interesting to note that the roasting room
still has the original arrangement, partly below the street level but
with the machinery in view from the sidewalk. This arrangement was
characteristic of the old roasting establishments.
[Illustration: GROUP OF OLD-TIME NEW YORK COFFEE ROASTERS, 1892
Standing, left to right, W.H. Eppens, Fred Reid, unknown, Julius A.
Eppens, Fred Eppens. Seated, left to right, John F. Pupke, Thomas Reid,
Henry Mayo, Fred Akers, Alexander Kirkland]
James W. Gillies, a younger brother, came from Newburgh in 1848 to
assist in the enterprise. Young Gillies superintended the horse-power
roaster and drove the light spring delivery cart. Soon the firm became
Wright Gillies & Bro. Fires visited the business in 1849 and in 1858;
but each time it arose the stronger for the experience. Wright Gillies
retired in 1884, and James W. Gillies assumed entire charge under the
name of the Gillies Coffee Co. He continued active until his death in
1899. The business was incorporated by his children under the same name
in 1906.
Edwin J. Gillies, son of James W. Gillies, started a separate coffee
business at 245 Washington Street, in 1882. In 1883 he admitted as a
partner James H. Schmelzel, a fellow Columbia alumnus. The enterprise
was successful for many years, being incorporated under the title of
Edwin J. Gillies & Co., Inc. It was consolidated in 1915 with the
business of Ross W. Weir & Co., 60 Front Street, Edwin J. Gillies
becoming a vice-president (with L. S. Cooper also vice-president) of the
corporation of Ross W. Weir, Inc.
Burns & Brown started in the coffee roasting business in 1853 in an old
building at the corner of Washington and Chambers Streets for which they
paid an annual rental of one thousand dollars. This was the beginning of
the Metropolitan Mills, opposite to the present location of Loudon &
Son, 181 Chambers Street, the latest successors to the business. Burns &
Brown continued for two years, when they failed, and Wright Gillies &
Bro. succeeded, and put in Ebenezer Welsh as manager. Later, Wright
Gillies & Co. sold out the plant to Capt. Edward C. Russell, who
associated with him his son-in-law, Edward A. Phelps, Jr. At the
dissolution of this partnership in 1870, the firm became Trusdell &
Phelps. Mr. Phelps succeeded Trusdell, and sold out to Loudon & Stellwag
in 1877. They were succeeded by Loudon & Johnson in 1879, and this firm
continued until 1910, when James D. Johnson retired, and the firm of
Loudon & Son took charge. These were J. Carlyle Loudon and his son,
Howard C. Loudon, who died in 1911. The firm name of Loudon & Son
continues.
One of the most vigorous personalities of the sixties, and one whose
influence extended well into this generation, was Thomas Reid. Born in
Bridgeport, England, he came to the United States as a boy, and started
his business career as a grocer's clerk in Brooklyn. Within three months
after landing, he bought out his employer. He entered the wholesale
coffee-roasting business at 105 Murray Street, New York, in 1855, in
partnership with a Mr. Townsend under the style of the Globe Mills,
which were the predecessors of the Eppens Smith Co. now in Warren
Street. Jabez Burns, inventor of the Burns coffee roaster, before this a
teamster for Henry Blair, was at one time bookkeeper for the Globe
Mills. In 1864, Mr. Burns sold to the Globe Mills the first roasters of
his manufacture--two one-bag, four-foot machines that were given a place
alongside of four of the old-style Carter pull-outs.
Mr. Townsend died the first year of the Globe Mills' existence; and
Thomas Reid continued without a partner until 1863, when he became
associated with John F. Pupke, as Pupke & Reid. The business was then at
269 Washington Street. Thomas Reid was resourceful and enterprising;
also he had vision. He saw the day of package coffee coming, and nearly
"beat" John Arbuckle to it. As early as 1861 we find him advertising in
the _City Directory_, "spices put up in every variety of package."
Lewis A. Osborn, 69 Warren Street, New York, and 81-83 South Water
Street, Chicago, was advertising "Osborn's Celebrated Prepared Java
Coffee--put up only by Lewis A. Osborn" in 1863-64. Thomas Reid appears
to have acquired this brand and to have begun its exploitation as
"Osborn's Old Government Java," a ground package coffee, and certainly
one of the earliest package coffees. However, this brand never attained
the national vogue achieved by John Arbuckle's package coffee, which
first appeared in 1865, although the name Ariosa was not given it until
1873.
Between 1855 and 1865 there were only half-a-dozen wholesale coffee
roasters on Manhattan Island, and Thomas Reid was their leader. Much of
his work was roasting for the trade, and this undoubtedly interfered
with the logical development of his package-coffee ideas.
The firm became Pupke, Reid & Phelps in 1882. In 1885, it became the
original Eppens-Smith Co.; later, the Eppens, Smith & Wiemann Co., and
lastly, the Eppens Smith Co. Thomas Reid was vice-president of the
Eppens, Smith & Wiemann Co., and continued in that position until his
death in 1902. Julius Eppens is the present head of the business.
Other package coffees of the sixties were Government coffee put out by
Taber & Place's Rubia Mills, 353-355 Washington Street, in "tin foil
pound papers," and L. Bruckmann & Co.'s London Club, packed at 107
Warren Street.
Another old-time New York coffee-roasting business is that of Samuel S.
Beard & Co. This business was founded in 1834 on Front Street by Eli
Beard (father of Samuel S. Beard,) and W.A. Cummings as Beard &
Cummings. In 1872, the firm moved to Duane Street, where it was joined
by Messrs. S.S. Beard and Cottrell, and the new firm became Beards &
Cottrell. Mr. Cottrell retired in 1883, and the firm became Samuel S.
Beard & Co. Upon the death of S.S. Beard in 1905, James H. Murray, who
had been with the concern for many years, became head of the house. Mr.
Murray died six months later. The business moved in 1913 to 92 Front
Street, where it continues as a stock company, with J.R. Westfal as
manager.
Austin C. Fitzpatrick, well known among New York coffee roasters, is a
graduate of the Thomas Reid school, having entered the business of this
pioneer roaster in 1865. He was western salesman for Pupke & Reid until
1871, when he became associated with Rufus G. Story under the firm name
of R. G. Story & Co. Later, he formed a partnership with Howard E. Case,
buying out the old house of Beard & Howell. When Mr. Case retired in
1887, the firm became A.C. Fitzpatrick & Co. This title continued for
twelve years, when the Knickerbocker Mills were taken over, and the
business was incorporated as the Knickerbocker Mills Co., with Mr.
Fitzpatrick as president. The Knickerbocker Mills, acquired by the
corporation, had been founded in 1842 and were for more than forty years
at 154-156 Chambers Street. The business is now at 196-198 Chambers
Street.
[Illustration: JULIUS A. EPPENS, NEW YORK]
Many of the pioneers in the coffee roasting business of this country
were men who came from the British Isles and Germany. A notable figure
from the latter country was Benedickt Fischer, who knew coffee in
Germany before coming to New York in his nineteenth year. He started at
323-329 Greenwich Street, near Duane Street, in 1859. His first roaster
was a primitive affair built under the E.J. Hyde patent by the Coffee
Roaster & Mill Manufacturing Co. of Philadelphia. It was turned by hand
by Fischer and his helper. This was about 1862. In 1864, the business
required larger quarters, and was removed to the corner of Duane and
Greenwich Streets. A new plant was erected at the corner of Beach and
Greenwich Streets in 1894, and the present plant was erected at the
corner of Franklin and Greenwich Streets in 1906. Upon the death of
Benedickt Fischer in 1903, the business passed under the control of
William H. Fischer, son of Benedickt, and Benedickt's son-in-law,
Charles E. Diefenthaler, for many years associated with the house. At
present, the company is a corporation, with C.E. Diefenthaler,
president; T.F. Diefenthaler, vice-president and treasurer; and T.O.
Budenbach, secretary.
Bowie Dash, a commanding figure in the New York green coffee trade,
founded the Holland Coffee Co., roasters, in 1885. He placed H. Bartow
in charge. Mr. Dash himself was never active in the affairs of the
company. J. Bowie Dash, son of Bowie Dash, entered the Holland Coffee
Co. as a boy. Bowie Dash died in 1894. Mr. Bartow left The Holland
Coffee Co. in 1897 and J. Bowie Dash became president. He sold the
company in 1917 to S.B. Morrison, who consolidated it with his Esperanza
Coffee Co. The business is still conducted as the Holland Coffee Co.,
with Mr. Morrison as president, at 162 Front Street.
George Fisher was a well known coffee roaster of the sixties. He began
in the old Hope Mills, 71 Fulton Street, and, at the age of thirty,
entered into partnership with D.C. Ripley, establishing the Hudson
Mills. The firm became Sanger, Beers & Fisher in 1868; Mr. Fisher
retired in 1882; and died in 1896.
Peter Haulenbeek began work as delivery boy in a grocery store. He
entered the coffee business in the sixties in the employ of Wright
Gillies, and went into the wholesale coffee-roasting trade under his own
name at 170 Duane Street in 1876. His son, John W. Haulenbeek, Sr., came
into his father's business in 1887. Peter Haulenbeek died January 15,
1894, and the firm name was changed to John W. Haulenbeek & Co. The
business remained in the same building up to 1916, when it was moved to
its present location at 393 Greenwich Street. John W. Haulenbeek, Jr.,
of the third generation, is now active in the business.
A leading figure in the sixties was James Brown, who started as an
engineer, rose to a partnership, and retired after the Civil War, a
wealthy man. He was a partner with Thomas Reid in the old Globe Mills.
He was also associated with B. Fischer in the firm of Fischer, Kirby &
Brown, and established the firm of Brown & Scott in Duane Street, where
Peter Haulenbeek succeeded to the business. Afterward, he continued in
the firms of Brown & Jones and Bisland & Brown, and died in 1898.
Van Loan, Maguire & Gaffney was a formidable combination in the
coffee-roasting business in its day. Thomas Van Loan was for thirty
years a partner in the firm of W.J. Stitt & Co. (William J. Stitt was in
business at 173 Washington Street in the fifties). Joseph Maguire was a
practical spice grinder. Hugh Gaffney was with Brown & Scott until the
firm retired in 1879, and for ten years thereafter he traveled for B.
Fischer & Co. Then he became a member of the firm of Benedict &
Gaffney. Ill health caused his temporary retirement; but he returned to
the business in 1897 when he organized the firm of Van Loan, Maguire &
Gaffney. Joseph Maguire died in 1904.
[Illustration: THOMAS VAN LOAN, NEW YORK]
Mr. Gaffney died on March 20, 1912, and the name of the business was
changed to Van Loan & Co., with Thomas Van Loan as the head of the
business, under which name and management it still continues at 64 North
Moore Street.
O'Donohue is a well known name in the development of both the green and
roasted coffee trade of New York City. John O'Donohue was a leader in
the green coffee business in 1830. It was John O'Donohue's Sons in 1873.
John B. O'Donohue, son of Peter O'Donohue and grandson of the original
John, after leaving John O'Donohue's Sons, formed a partnership with
Robert C. Stewart (the present head of R.C. Stewart & Co.) to engage in
the green coffee jobbing business as O'Donohue & Stewart. This
partnership was dissolved in 1893. For a few years, John O'Donohue was
associated with the coffee-roasting firm of Wing Bros. & Hart. About
1898, he formed the O'Donohue Coffee Co. at 284 Front Street. In 1910,
this was consolidated with the Potter Coffee Co. and Bennett, Sloan &
Co. to form the Potter, Sloan, O'Donohue Co. The firm dissolved in 1915.
Ellis M. Potter came to New York from the Potter-Parlin Spice Mills in
Cincinnati. Mr. O'Donohue died in 1918.
In the seventies Frederick Akers was proprietor of the oldest and best
known trade roasting establishment in New York. The plant was known as
the Atlas Mills, and was at 17 Jay Street. Mr. Akers died in 1901. The
same year, William J. Morrison and Walter B. Boinest, former employees
of Akers, formed a partnership to carry on the same kind of business at
413 Greenwich Street. It is still at that address under the name of
Morrison & Boinest Co.
Col. William P. Roome, a Chesterfieldian figure among New York coffee
roasters, came into the trade in 1876, when he established the firm of
William P. Roome & Co., with T.L. Vickers as partner. In the Civil War
that had preceded, young Roome (he was then nineteen) had distinguished
himself as a conspicuous hero of the Sixth Army Corps, having entered
the service as a second lieutenant in the Sixty-fifth New York
Volunteers.
William P. Roome & Co. first engaged in the importation of tea, but they
added coffee to the business in 1889. Col. Roome disposed of it in 1903
to assume charge of the tea and coffee department of the Acker, Merrall
& Condit Company, a position which he still holds.
Frederick A. Cauchois, another picturesque figure among New York coffee
roasters, entered the trade as a clerk in the New York office of Chase &
Sanborn in 1875. After further tutelage under Frank Williams in the
coffee brokerage business, he bought the old Fulton Mills (Colgate
Gilbert & Co., 1848), in Fulton Street, where he did some of the most
original advertising for coffee that the trade has seen. His Private
Estate coffee in little burlap bags, his donkey train that carried the
bags of green coffee through the streets of the metropolis, his system
of delivering fresh coffee daily to the grocery trade, and his Japanese
paper filter device to insure the proper making of the coffee, made him
famous. He brought something of the spirit of the old English coffee
house to America, and incorporated it in Keen's Chop House in New York.
He died in 1918.
The business of Russell & Co. was founded by Robert S. Russell & Frank
Smith at 107 Water Street in 1875. In 1895, S.L. Davis, one of the
present owners, formerly with Merrit & Ronaldson, became a partner. In
1900, Frank C. Russell, son of the senior member, was admitted to a
partnership; and upon the death of his father in 1904, he and Mr. Davis
became owners of the business.
Ross W. Weir, who, in addition to being a successful New York coffee
roaster, has also attained prominence as president of the National
Coffee Roasters Association and chairman of the Joint Coffee Trade
Publicity Committee, handling the million dollar coffee advertising
campaign, was born in New York in 1859, the son of J.B. Weir, one of the
pioneer forty-niners, who at one time was engaged in the export
commission business in San Francisco.
Mr. Weir began his business career as a general utility boy in the
jobbing grocery house of S.H. Williamson, 36 Broadway, New York, in
1875. Then he was a clerk for Park & Tilford, office man with Arbuckle
Bros, and with Geo. C. Chase & Co., tea importers, for two years,
afterward being admitted to a junior partnership. In 1886, the firm of
Ross W. Weir & Co. was formed to engage in the roasting of coffee and
importing and jobbing of teas at 105 Front Street. In 1887, the business
was removed to 58-60 Front Street. When the corporation of Ross W. Weir,
Inc. was formed in 1915 to take over the business of E.J. Gillies & Co.
Inc., Mr. Weir became president and treasurer of the combined
organization.
[Illustration: COL. WILLIAM P. ROOME, NEW YORK]
_Pioneer Wholesale Coffee Roasters_
A reference to other pioneers in the wholesale coffee-roasting trade may
not be amiss here, even though it involves a repetition of some names
that have been given special mention in the case of New York. In the
list that follows are included the most prominent firms and the best
known names that helped make roasted coffee history in the United States
in the nineteenth century, particularly from 1845 to 1900:
NEW YORK. The most prominent firms in the business in New York in the
sixties were: Thomas Reid & Co., Globe Mills; Geo. A. Merwin & Co.; Levi
Rowley, Star Mills; A.B. Thorn; Fischer & Lehmann, later Fischer &
Thurber, and Fischer, Kirby & Brown; Knickerbocker & Cooke; A.D.
Thurber; Wm. J. Stitt & Co.; Samuel Wilde's Sons.
In the seventies, in addition to most of the above list, there were:
Pupke & Reid; Arbuckle Bros.; Edward A. Phelps, Jr.; Bonnett, Schenck &
Earle; Fischer & Lansing; J.G. Worth; Jackson & Co.; Charles Conway;
Neidlinger & Schmidt; James L. Arcularius; S.M. Beard, Sons & Co.; H.K.
Thurber & Co.; Wright Gillies & Bro.; Bennett & Becker; Great American
Tea Co.; Brown & Scott.
Between 1876 and 1900 the following well known names appeared in the
trade: Frederick Akers; Eppens-Smith Co., afterward Eppens, Smith &
Wiemann Co., and later Eppens Smith Co.; B. Fischer & Co.; R.P. McBride;
Fitzpatrick & Case, afterward A.C. Fitzpatrick & Co.; Great Atlantic &
Pacific Tea Co.; Loudon & Johnson; Edwin Scott; Peter Haulenbeek,
afterward Haulenbeek & Mitchell, and Haulenbeek Roasting & Milling Co.;
Joseph Stiner & Co.; Austin, Nichols & Co.; Bennett, Sloan & Co.;
Gillies Coffee Co.; Benedict & Gaffney, afterward Van Loan, Maguire &
Gaffney; Ross W. Weir & Co.; Union Pacific Tea Co.; Hillis Plantation
Co.; Edwin J. Gillies & Co.; Jones Bros.; Holland Coffee Co.; Samuel
Crooks & Co.; Benedict & Thomas.
[Illustration: PIONEER COFFEE ROASTERS OF THE NORTHERN AND EASTERN
UNITED STATES
1--W.F. McLaughlin, Chicago; 2--J.G. Flint, Milwaukee; 3--Frank J.
Geiger, Indianapolis; 4--Samuel Mahood, Pittsburgh; 5--Henry A.
Stephens, Cleveland; 6--W.H. Harrison, Cincinnati; 7--Albert A. Sprague,
Chicago; 8--D.Y. Harrison, Cincinnati; 9--William Grossman, Milwaukee;
10--Edward Canby, Dayton; 11--Thomas J. Boardman, Hartford; 12--Francis
Widlar, Cleveland; 13--O.W. Pierce, Sr., Lafayette. Ind.; 14--A.M.
Thomson Chicago; 15--Samuel Young, Pittsburgh; 16--Alvin M. Woolson,
Toledo; 17--Martin Hayward, Boston; 18--George C. Wright, Boston;
19--William Boardman, Hartford; 20--James S. Sanborn, Boston; 21--James
Heekin, Cincinnati; 22--James F. Dwinell, Boston; 23--Caleb Chase,
Boston]
BOSTON. Among the pioneers in the coffee-roasting business in Boston
were: N. Berry & Sons; Blanchard & Bro.; Carter, Mann & Co.; Noah Davis
& Co.; Dyer & Co.; E. Emerson; Flint Bros. & Co.; J.T. & N. Glines;
Hayward & Co.; Geo. W. Higgins & Co.; Hill, Dwinell & Co.; H.B. Newhall;
Richardson & Lane; N. Robinson & Co.; Russell & Fessenden; Stickney &
Poor; E.H. Swett; the Tremont Coffee & Spice Mills; Swain, Earle & Co.;
and the Martin L. Hall Co.
Between 1876 and 1900 these names were among those added: Shapleigh
Coffee Co.; Gilman L. Parker; W.S. Quinby & Co.; Thomas Wood & Co.
Dwinell & Co. and Hayward & Co. both engaged in the coffee roasting
business about 1845. In 1876, they, James F. Dwinell, Martin Hayward,
and his brother-in-law George C. Wright, joined hands under the name of
Dwinell, Hayward & Co. In 1894, Mr. Hayward having previously retired,
the name of the firm was changed to Dwinell, Wright & Co. Mr. Dwinell
died in 1898; and in 1899, Mr. Wright formed a Massachusetts corporation
under the present name, Dwinell-Wright Co. George C. Wright died, 1910,
and his son, George S. Wright, who had been treasurer, became president.
A grandson, Warren M. Wright, and a nephew, G. E. Crampton, together
with R.O. Miller and Charles H. Holland, are active in the present
conduct of the business.
Caleb Chase with Messrs. Carr and Raymond founded the firm of Carr,
Chase & Raymond at 32 Broad Street in 1864. The name was changed to
Chase, Raymond & Ayer in 1871. James S. Sanborn, who had formerly been
in the coffee and spice trade at Lewiston, Me., with a branch office in
Boston, combined with Caleb Chase to form Chase & Sanborn in 1878.
Charles D. Sias was admitted to the firm in 1882. A Montreal office was
opened in 1884. Charles E. Sanborn, son of James S., was admitted in
1888. James S. Sanborn died in 1903, and Charles E. Sanborn died two
years later. Charles D. Sias died in 1913.
Swain, Earle & Co. were established about 1868. In the same year, Byron
T. Thayer entered the employ of the firm as a bookkeeper. He was taken
into partnership in 1884, and upon the death of Mr. Earle, became
managing partner. In 1915, he was the sole surviving partner of the
company. He died in the latter part of 1921; and the business was
absorbed by Alexander H. Bill & Co. in January, 1922.
PHILADELPHIA. The following were the most prominent Philadelphia coffee
roasters in 1861: Grever & Bro.; Henry Hinkle; William Johnston; George
Kelly; Thornley & Ryan; Thornley & Bro.; Vankorn, Guggenheimer & Co.;
D.J. Chapman; Bohler & Weikel; Charles Kroberger; and James R. Webb &
Son.
Later came: Robert J. Rule & Bro.; G. Boyd & Co.; Nutrio Mfg. Co.; C.J.
Fell & Bro.; R.R. & A. Deverall; C. Thomas; William H. Cheetham, Jr.;
Hill & Thornley; George Ogden & Co.; Weikel & Smith; and Alexander
Sheppard.
Between 1876 and 1900 these names appear; Henry A. Fry & Co.; Robert
Smith & Sons; B.S. Janney, Jr. & Co.; and Weikel & Smith Spice Co.
Robert Smith came as a country lad to Philadelphia, and drove a wagon
for Jesse Thornley, a coffee roaster. In a few years, he had secured an
interest in the firm; and in 1860, the name was changed to Thornley &
Smith. Mr. Thornley died in 1872, and Mr. Smith bought out the Thornley
interests and traded as Robert Smith until 1889. In that year, he
admitted his eldest son, Robert A. Smith, into the firm, which became
Robert Smith & Son. William T., another son, was admitted in 1889, the
firm name being changed again to Robert Smith & Sons. Robert Smith, Sr.,
retired in 1902. In the same year his youngest son, George H. Smith, was
admitted to the firm, and it became Robert Smith's Sons, the active
members being William T. and George H. Smith.
James R. Webb established the coffee roasting business of James R. Webb
& Son in 1833. It was taken over by Alexander Sheppard in 1870. Later it
became Alex. Sheppard & Sons, Inc. Mr. Sheppard died in 1916, and the
business has been conducted by a corporation in which his four children
are the principal stockholders.
CHICAGO. Some pioneers in the Chicago trade were: Alfred H. Blackall;
Excelsior Mills (Downer & Co.); Huntoon & Towner; W.F. McLaughlin;
Knowles, Cloyes & Co.; Thomson & Taylor; H.F. Griswold; G.M. Hall; John
L. Davies & Co.; Bell, Conrad & Webster; Sprague, Warner & Co.; Lee &
Murbach; A. Stephens & Co.; and Whiting, Goeble & Co.
In the period between 1876 and 1900 the following became well known:
Sprague, Warner & Griswold; Reid, Murdoch & Fischer; E.B. Millar Spice
Co.; Wm. M. Hoyt Co.; Franklin MacVeagh & Co.; Sherman Bros. & Co.; H.C.
& C. Durand; A.H. Pratt; McNeil & Higgins Co.; J.H. Bell & Co.; J.H.
Conrad & Co.; Steele-Wedeles Co.; Krag-Reynolds Co.; Arbuckle Bros., and
Puhl-Webb Co.
H.C. Durand organized the wholesale grocery house of Durand & Co. in
1851. Calvin Durand entered the firm in 1879, and the name was changed
to H.C. & C. Durand. Adam J. Kaspar began to work in a retail grocery.
In 1875, he went with the wholesale grocery firm of James Forsythe & Co.
and two years later with H.C. & C. Durand. In 1894, the name was changed
to Durand & Kasper. H.C. Durand died in 1901, and Calvin Durand died in
1911. Durand & Kasper merged, 1921, with Henry Horner & Co. and McNeil &
Higgins into the Wholesale Grocers Corporation.
Samuel A. Downer founded the Excelsior Mills (Downer & Co.) in 1853.
Sidney O. Blair entered the employ of the company in 1871. E.B. Millar &
Co. took over the business in 1878, incorporating under that name in
1882. Mr. Blair retired in 1913, and W.S. Rice was elected president. He
died in 1918, and Mr. Blair was re-elected president; with W.C. Shope,
vice-president; and C.S. Mauran, secretary and treasurer.
In the spring of 1862, Albert A. Sprague came to Chicago from Vermont.
With Z. B. Stetson he formed the firm of Sprague & Stetson, wholesale
grocers. Mr. Stetson retired the following year, and a new partnership
was formed with Ezra J. Warner, under the name of Sprague & Warner. In
1864, O.S.A. Sprague, a young brother of the senior partner, was
admitted to the firm, which was reorganized under the style of Sprague,
Warner & Co. Under this name it has since continued. About the year
1876, machinery was installed, and the roasting of coffee began. Oscar
Remmer entered the employ of the company in 1878 at the age of 16, and
became manager of the mill department in 1895. In 1912, he was made a
member of the board of directors, and was elected vice-president in
1919. O.S.A. Sprague died in 1909, Ezra J. Warner Sr. in 1910, and
Albert A. Sprague in 1915.
In 1865, A.M. Thomson, at that time a salesman for A.H. Blackall, owner
of the American Mills, arranged with a Mr. Berg and a Mr. Davis to go in
the coffee-roasting business with him as Berg, Thomson & Davis. After a
year, however, the name became A.M. Thomson. James Thomson, a brother,
came into the firm in 1868, and it was then called A.M. & James Thomson.
A year later, it became A.M. Thomson again. In 1872, immediately after
the fire, Mr. Taylor, a member of the firm of Whiting & Taylor, joined
Mr. Thomson under the firm name of Thomson & Taylor. They continued the
business under this name about ten years, until it was incorporated in
1883 under the name of Thomson & Taylor Spice Co. Among the wholesale
grocers who became stockholders at that time was W.S. Warfield, of
Quincy, Ill., who, in 1901, with his son, John D. Warfield, bought most
of Mr. Thomson's holdings and obtained a controlling interest. The name
was changed in 1920 to the Thomson & Taylor Co.
William F. McLaughlin founded the firm of W.F. McLaughlin & Co. in 1865.
He died in 1905; and the business was incorporated with his son, George
D., as president, and another son, Frederick, as secretary and
treasurer.
The Puhl-Webb Company, founded, 1882, as a partnership by Thomas J. Webb
and John Puhl, was incorporated in 1896.
ST. LOUIS. The following were among the pioneer coffee firms of St.
Louis, dating back to the 1860-70 decade: James H. Forbes; Flint, Evans
& Co.; Wm. Schotten & Co.; Fred W. Meyer; H. & J. Menown; Cavanaugh,
Rearick & Co.; and Frederick A. Churchill & Co.
From 1876 to 1900 there were added: Nash, Smith & Co.; Fink & Nasse Co.;
Hanley & Kinsella Coffee & Spice Co.; Flugel & Popp; C.F. Blanke Tea &
Coffee Co.; Steinwender, Stoffregen & Co.; David G. Evans & Co.; and the
Aroma Coffee & Spice Co.
David Nicholson established a tea and coffee business under the name of
the Franklin Tea Warehouse in 1853. A year later, James H. Forbes, born
in Kinross, Scotland, bought out Nicholson. In 1857, A.E. Forbes, his
son, came into the store after school hours, and was admitted to
partnership in 1870. The retail end of the business was dropped in 1880.
Robert M., the younger son of James H., was taken into the firm a few
years after A.E. Forbes. James H. Forbes died in 1890, and the business
has since been carried on by his sons as the James H. Forbes Tea &
Coffee Co. James H. Forbes installed the first Burns roaster in St.
Louis, and always claimed to have been the first man to roast coffee in
the middle west.
William Schotten began his roasting business in 1862, although he had
been in the grocery business since 1847. A short time later, a brother,
Christian Schotten, came to the United States from Germany and was
admitted to partnership, the firm becoming William Schotten & Bro.
Christian died in 1866, and a brother-in-law, Henry Verborg, was
admitted, the name being changed to William Schotten & Co. William died
in 1874, and the business devolved upon his eldest son, Hubertus. In
1878, another son, Julius J., was taken in at the age of 17. Hubertus
died in 1897, and Julius became manager and sole proprietor. He died in
1919. Since that time, his son, Jerome J., has carried on the business,
which continues under the name of the Wm. Schotten Coffee Co.
The firm of David G. Evans & Co. was founded in 1856 by David G. Evans
under the style of Flint, Evans & Co., changed in 1870 to David G. Evans
& Co. David G. Evans died in 1916, and the name of the company was
changed in 1917, to the David G. Evans Coffee Co., with Gwynne Evans, a
son of David G., as president of the corporation.
The George Nash Grocery Co. bought the Eagle Coffee and Spice Mills from
the estate of Mathew Hunt in 1870. About this time Michael E. Smith, who
had been with the concern for a number of years, was made a partner. The
firm was incorporated in 1887 as the Nash-Smith Tea & Coffee Co. George
Nash, Sr., died in 1910.
CINCINNATI. Among the pioneer coffee roasters in Cincinnati were: John
C. Appenzeller; Blook & Varwig; J. Brock; Cincinnati Spice Mills; Eagle
Spice Mills; Harrison & Wilson; Parker & Dixon; Kilgour & Taylor; J.M.
Krout; Succop & Lips; and H.R. Droste.
After the centennial year and previous to 1900, the following names were
added: Potter & Parlin; James Heekin & Co.; Flugel & Popp; Utter, Adams
& Ellen; J. Henry Koenig & Co.; F.W. Hinz; and the Woolson Spice Co.
D.Y. Harrison, then thirty-five years old, came from Newark, N.J., and
settled in Cincinnati in 1843, opening a coffee roasting business as
Harrison & Wilson. He used an old pull-out roaster with first a negro,
and then a horse-power tread-mill, for power. A few years later, W.H.
Harrison, a son of the founder, was admitted to the firm, the name at
that time being Parker & Harrison. D.Y. Harrison died in 1872. Fire
totally destroyed the plant in 1875. W.H. Harrison then formed a
partnership with J.W. Utter, and started in again. He sold out to his
partner in 1883 and went in business for himself as W.H. Harrison & Co.
D.Y. Harrison is said to have been the first man to roast coffee west of
Pittsburg.
The Heekin Company was established in 1870 by James Heekin and Barney
Corbett as a partnership under the name of Corbett & Heekin. In a short
time, Corbett died; and the name of the firm was then changed to James
Heekin & Co. Alexander Stuart was admitted to the partnership about
1883, and retired four years later. James J. Heekin, older son of James
Heekin, was admitted to partnership in 1892. Charles Lewis, after twenty
years' experience in the coffee trade in Louisville, Cincinnati, and New
York, was admitted to the firm in 1895. James Heekin died in 1904. Upon
his death, a corporation was formed under the name of the James Heekin
Company, with Charles Lewis as president, continuing until he retired in
1919. In this year a new corporation, called the Heekin Company, was
formed, taking over the business of the James Heekin Co. and the Heekin
Spice Co., the latter having been organized in 1899. James J. Heekin was
chosen president of the new company, with Albert E. Heekin,
vice-president; and Robert E. Heekin, secretary and general manager.
[Illustration: PIONEER COFFEE ROASTERS OF THE SOUTHERN AND WESTERN
UNITED STATES
1--J.B. Sinnot, New Orleans; 2--Julius J. Schotten, St. Louis;
3--Charles Stoffregen, St. Louis; 4--W.T. Jones, New Orleans; 5--J.A.
Folger. jr., San Francisco; 6--M.E. Smith, St. Louis; 7--A.E. Forbes,
St. Louis; 8--David G. Evans, St. Louis; 9--W.J. Kinsella, St. Louis;
10--James H. Forbes, St. Louis; 11--J.A. Folger, Sr., San Francisco;
12--Joseph Closset, Portland, Ore.; 13--J. Zinsmeister, Louisville;
14--Wm. Schotten, St. Louis; 15--A. Schilling, San Francisco; 16--M.J.
Brandenstein, San Francisco; 17--J.O. Cheek, Nashville; 18--A.H. Devers,
Portland, Ore.]
LOUISVILLE. Pioneers in this early center of coffee roasting in the
south were: Thornton & Hawkins; Charles J. Bouche; H.N. Gage; A.
Engelhard; and Jacob Zinsmeister.
R.J. Thornton & Co. were founded in 1837 by Richard J. Thornton and
Thomas Hawkins, as Thornton & Hawkins. Thornton died in 1860. His
interests remained, but the firm changed to Hawkins & Thornton. Hawkins
died in 1877, and Mrs. Thornton, having purchased the Hawkins interest,
ran the business as R.J. Thornton & Co. until her death in 1885. John
Hayes, her son-in-law, then bought the company; and when he died in
1904, his widow ran the business with Thomas A. Crawford as manager.
Mrs. Hayes, the last of the Thornton family, died in 1919, and her
interests were sold to Crawford and R.H. Dorn, an old employee. The firm
first roasted coffee about 1846. It is interesting to note that the
plant has occupied the present site since its founding, eighty-four
years ago.
Albert Engelhard, Sr., founded in 1855 a wholesale grocery house which
later became A. Engelhard & Sons, Inc. In 1879, George; in 1882, Victor
H.; and in 1883, Albert, Jr.; all sons of the founder, entered the
business. Upon moving into larger quarters in 1890, all of the sons were
taken in as partners. Albert Engelhard, Sr., retired in 1892, and the
management was assumed by Victor H. The business increased rapidly, and
in 1897 the firm moved to its present location. Incorporated in 1901,
the wholesale grocery end was abandoned in 1903, and the concern became
a strictly coffee, tea, and spice house. Victor H. Engelhard died in
1918; and his sons, Victor, Jr., and R.W. Engelhard, who had been in the
business for several years, assumed active management. Victor Engelhard,
Sr., was prominent in coffee affairs and in the early work of the
National Coffee Roasters Association.
Jacob Zinsmeister, of J. Zinsmeister & Sons, was another old-time
Louisville coffee man. Before he started roasting, he was a big factor
in the green coffee trade. The business was established in 1866 at New
Albany, Ind., by Frank Zinsmeister, Sr., but was later moved to
Louisville. Jacob Zinsmeister was taken into the business in 1872, and
the name was changed to Frank Zinsmeister & Son. He is still active in
business, although he has turned the management over to his three sons.
NEW ORLEANS. Men and firms active in early coffee roasting in New
Orleans were: Shaw's Louisiana Coffee and Spice Mills; Ruliff, Clark &
Co.; R. Poursini & Co.; and Smith & McKenna.
Between 1876 and 1900 were added: New Orleans Coffee Co.; Smith Bros. &
Co.; Southern Coffee Polishing Mills; and Cage & Drew.
Smith Bros. & Co. were organized in 1863 as Smith & McKenna. Mr. McKenna
died in 1872, and the firm name was changed to Smith Bros. & Co. The two
Smith brothers died in 1891, and 1892. About 1900, the name became Smith
Bros. & Co., Ltd., and J.B. Sinnot, who had been employed for a number
of years by the firm, gained control. The company failed in 1913. Mr.
Sinnot then entered the coffee brokerage business, in which he remained
until his death in 1917.
Born in New Orleans in 1865, Daniel H. Hoffman started work as a sample
clerk in the office of E.P. Cottraux, who was at that time the only
coffee broker in New Orleans. In 1887, Mr. Hoffman started in business
for himself. In 1894, he opened the Southern Coffee Polishing Mills,
which have since become the Southern Coffee Mills, Inc.
W.T. Jones, for many years in business as a coffee broker in Keokuk,
Iowa, founded the New Orleans Coffee Co. in 1890. He died in 1919.
R.H. Cage and J.C. Drew organized in 1898 the firm of Cage & Drew. In
1900, they established the Louisiana Coffee Mills, under the name and
style of Cage, Drew & Co., Ltd.
Ben C. Casanas joined the New Orleans Coffee Co. as a city salesman, and
later became a road salesman. He withdrew in 1901 to organize the
Merchants Coffee Co. of New Orleans, Ltd.
SAN FRANCISCO. Pioneer coffee roasters in San Francisco were: J.A.
Folger & Co.; Charles Berhard; H. Gates; D. Ghirardelli & Co.; E. Loeven
& Co.; Marden & Myrick; Maine & Eckerenkotter; G. Venard; and Charles
Zwick.
Between 1876 and 1900 the following were added: A. Schilling & Co.; W.H.
Miner; Siegfried & Brandenstein; George W. Caswell.
J.A. Folger & Co. were established in 1850 as Wm. H. Bovee & Co. A few
years later, the name became Marden & Folger, Mr. Folger having been
connected with the old firm. In the early sixties the name was changed
to J.A. Folger & Co. Two employees were taken into the firm in 1878.
These were A. Schilling and a Mr. Lamb. The company was now called
Folger, Schilling & Co. This partnership was dissolved in 1881, and the
business continued as J. A. Folger & Co. Mr. Folger died in 1890, and
the firm was then incorporated under the same name.
Shortly after Folger, Schilling & Co. was dissolved, A. Schilling and
George Volkman formed the firm of A. Schilling & Co. Mr. Schilling began
his career as an office boy with J.A. Folger in 1871.
M.J. Brandenstein and John C. Siegfried formed a co-partnership under
the name of Siegfried & Brandenstein in 1880. Mr. Brandenstein bought
out his partner in 1894, and took in his brothers, Manfred and Edward,
the firm name becoming M. J. Brandenstein & Co.
George W. Caswell started in the retail tea and coffee business in San
Francisco under his own name in 1885. In 1898, the business became
wholesale only. It was incorporated in 1901 as the George W. Caswell Co.
The company took over the brands and travelling organization of Lievre,
Frick & Co., which went into a dissolution of partnership in 1902.
MILWAUKEE. Prominent among early coffee roasters of Milwaukee were: W. &
J. G. Flint; James Ryan & Co.; J.B. Reynolds; Jewett & Sherman; and C.E.
Andrews & Co. Later we find added the Wm. Grossman Co.
J.G. Flint and Wyman Flint founded the business known as W. & J.G. Flint
in 1858. J.G. Flint bought out his brother in 1880 and continued as the
J.G. Flint Co., owner of the Star Coffee and Spice Mills. He died in
1896. The business was incorporated in 1901 as the J.G. Flint Co., with
W.K. Flint, a son of J.G., as president. The Jewett & Sherman Co. took
control in 1911.
Professor Milo P. Jewett, Professor S.S. Sherman, and his brother,
William Sherman, founded the firm of Jewett, Sherman & Co. in 1867, and
continued under that name until 1875, when it was incorporated as Jewett
& Sherman Co., with Milo P. Jewett as president, and Henry B. Sherman,
secretary and treasurer. Professor S.S. Sherman and his sons, Fred and
Henry B., sold out their interests in 1878 and formed a new business in
Chicago under the name of Sherman Bros. & Co. William M. Sherman then
became president of Jewett & Sherman Co., and Charles A. Murdock, a
nephew of S.S. and William Sherman, was made secretary and treasurer.
Mr. Murdock withdrew in 1881 and established the C.A. Murdock Mfg. Co.
in Kansas City. In that same year, William H. Sherman, another nephew,
became a stockholder and one of the directors of Jewett & Sherman Co.
Dr. Lewis Sherman succeeded his father as president of the company in
1891, and served in that capacity until his death in 1915, when he was
succeeded by his son, Lewis Sherman, who is president of the company at
the present time (1922). John Horter, who is now secretary, joined the
business in 1877.
William Grossman started in the wholesale grocery business in 1886. John
and Henry Dahlman were admitted to partnership in 1889. About three
years later, the latter closed out his interests to J.F.W. Imbusch. The
present corporation was established in 1892 as Wm. Grossman & Co. The
firm was incorporated August 1, 1916, as the Wm. Grossman Co., with Wm.
Grossman as president, George A. Grossman as vice-president, and Paul E.
Apel as secretary and treasurer.
Another old-time coffee man of Milwaukee was Charles A. Clark, who had
been in the coffee business for nearly twenty years before he organized
the present business of Clark & Host Co.
TOLEDO. The pioneer roasting firms here seem to have been: Warren &
Bedwell; and J.B. Baldy & Co. Later, after 1876, we find added the Bour
Company, and the Woolson Spice Co.
The latter company was founded in 1882 by A.M. Woolson, who up to that
time had conducted a successful retail grocery business for several
years. The Woolson Spice Co. was sold to H.O. Havemeyer of New York in
1896, the reputed sale price being $2,000,000. A.M. Woolson retired from
business at that time. Upon the death of Mr. Havemeyer, the company
passed into the hands of Hermann Sielcken; and when he died, an
American company secured control.
[Illustration: GROUND COFFEE PRICE LIST OF 1862]
The Bour Company was incorporated in 1892, following a partnership which
had succeeded to a small business concern under the name of the Eagle
Spice Company. The principal stockholders were: J.M. Bour, F.G.
Kendrick, and Albro Blodgett. Mr. Blodgett bought the Bour interests in
1909 and with S.W. Beckley, who had been sales manager for a number of
years, acquired practically all the other outside interests. The name
was changed in 1921 to the Blodgett-Beckley Co., the officers being
Albro Blodgett, president, S.W. Beckley, vice-president and manager, and
Henry P. Blodgett, secretary and treasurer.
CLEVELAND. Pioneers in Cleveland were: Smith & Curtis; A. Stephens &
Sons; John H. Ganse; and W.D. Drake & Co. In 1870, we find Edwards,
Townsend & Co.; Knight, Eberman & Co.; Talbot, Winslow & Co.; Williams &
Tait; and Lemmon & Son, added.
Beards & Cummings, coffee roasters of New York City, established a
branch in Cleveland under the management of Alvan Stephens in 1855.
Later, Stephens took over the business for himself and changed the name
to Frisbie & Stephens. In 1861 Alvan's sons, Henry A. and Samuel R.,
were admitted and the firm became A. Stephens & Sons. Alvan Stephens
died in 1873, and Samuel moved to Chicago to open a branch. He died in
1878. Henry A. continued the business until 1881, when Francis Widlar
was admitted to partnership, and the name was changed to Stephens &
Widlar. Henry A. Stephens died in 1897, and A.L. Somers, H.H. Hewitt,
and D.D. Hudson, all old employees, were admitted, and the firm name was
changed to F. Widlar & Co. Carl W. Brand, a nephew of Francis Widlar,
joined the company in 1898. Upon the death of his uncle, the business
was incorporated as the Widlar Co., and Mr. Brand became president in
1910.
PITTSBURGH. Next to New York, Pittsburg was one of the first cities to
forge to the front as a coffee-roasting center. These are the firms that
were among the leaders in the period between 1860 and 1870: Arbuckles &
Co.; W.T. Bown & Bro.; Dilworth Bros.; Rinehart & Stevens; T.C. Jenkins
& Bro.; Carter Bros. & Co.; J.S. Dilworth & Co.; Jesse H. Lippincott;
Shields & Boucher; and Haworth & Dewhurst.
Samuel Young, Samuel Mahood, and E. B. Mahood formed a partnership as
Young, Mahood & Co. in 1879. E.B. Mahood withdrew in 1890. Samuel Mahood
retired in 1906, and the company was incorporated as the Young-Mahood
Company, with Samuel Young as president, and W. James Mahood as
vice-president and general manager.
PORTLAND, OREGON. Early roasters in the trade of this city were: J.F.
Jones; H. C. Hudson & Co.; Marden & Folger; Verdier & Closset; and
Closset & Devers.
Joseph and Emile Closset formed a partnership as Closset Bros, in 1880.
A.H. Devers, who had been a salesman with Folger, Schilling & Co., San
Francisco, and later with A. Schilling & Co., bought out Emile Closset
in 1883, and the firm became Closset & Devers. Joseph Closset died in
1915.
BALTIMORE. Pioneer roasters in Baltimore were: Joseph Braas; Daniel
Many; George Pearson; Sylvester Ruth; and John G. Siegman. These were
quickly followed by Barclay & Hasson; Zoller & Little; Benjamin Berry;
Jesse Lazear; and others.
Later, after 1876, came: E. Levering & Co.; the Enterprise Coffee Co.;
C.D. Kenny; J.W. Laughlin & Co., now Le Morgan Coffee Co.; and the Saxon
Coffee Company.
DETROIT. In Detroit in 1860-70 were: Evans & Walker; Farrington,
Campbell & Co.; A.R. & W.F. Linn; J.H. Riggs; and Palmer, Warner & Co.
After 1876 were added Sinclair, Evans & Elliot; Huber & Stendel; and
J.A. Parent & Co.
OTHER CITIES. Names of pioneer roasters of other towns in 1860 and 1870
were: George Boardman, Albany, N.Y.; Chubuck & Saunders, Binghamton,
N.Y.; George W. Hayward, and P.J. Ferris, Buffalo, N.Y.; Lorimore Bros.,
and George R. Forrester, Elmira, N.Y.; Hatch & Jenks, Jamestown, N.Y.;
N.B. Beede, Newburgh, N.Y.; A.F. Booth, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.; Ethridge,
Tuller & Co., Rome, N.Y.; M.N. Van Zandt & Co., L.B. Eddy & Co., and
C.T. Moore, Rochester, N.Y.; Ostrander, Loomis & Co., and Jacob Crouse &
Co., Syracuse, N.Y.; C.H. Garrison, Troy, N.Y.; Hinchman & Howard, and
J. Griffiths & Co., Utica, N.Y.; B.F. Hoopes, Bloomington, Ill.; C.P.
Farrell, and Charles Richards, Peoria, Ill.; Slemmons & Conkling,
Springfield, Ill.; Henry Wales, Bridgeport, Conn.; A.B. Gillett, Wm.
Boardman & Sons, Hartford Steam Coffee & Spice Mills, and Park, Fellowes
& Co., Hartford, Conn.; Benj. Peck & Kellum, and Steele & Emery, New
Haven, Conn.; W.S. Scull & Co., Camden, N.J.; Theo. F. Johnson & Co.,
and the Pioneer Mills, Newark, N.J.; Charles A. Dunham, New Brunswick,
N.J.; James Ronan and Wm. Dolton & Co., Trenton, N.J.; Butler, Earhart &
Co., Columbus, Ohio; C.A. Trentman & Bro., and J.D. Beach & Co., Dayton,
Ohio; W. & S. Stevens, and F.C. Dietz, Zanesville, Ohio; J.E. Tone, Des
Moines, Iowa; H.P. Hess, Cornell & Smith, and E. Warne, Easton, Pa.;
E.S. Forster, Erie, Pa.; Haehnlen Bros., Harrisburg, Pa.; D.G.
Yuengling, Pottsville, Pa.; A. G. Zilmore & Co., Scranton, Pa.; Granger
& Co., Titusville, Pa.; Huestis & Hamilton, and B. Trentman & Son, Ft.
Wayne, Ind.; S. Hamill & Co., Keokuk, Ia.; H.H. Lee, and Maguire &
Gillespie, Indianapolis, Ind.; Joseph Strong, Terre Haute, Ind.; Curtis
& Burnham, Leavenworth, Kan.; Yates & Dudley, Lexington, Ky.; A. Turner,
Wheeling, W. Va.; Granger & Hodge, and Nathaniel Crocker, St. Paul,
Minn.; W.W. Totten & Bro., Nashville, Tenn.; Henry Burns, Savannah, Ga.;
A. McFarland, Springfield, Mass.; Alexander Wills & Co., Montreal,
Canada; and Peter Hendershot, St. Catherine, Canada.
Between 1876 and 1900, many other names came into prominence, and among
them mention should be made of: H. Hulman, Terre Haute, Ind.; A.B. Gates
& Co., and Schnull & Krag, Indianapolis, Ind.; O.W. Pierce Co., and
Geiger-Tinney Co., Lafayette, Ind.; Twitchell, Champlin & Co., Portland,
Me.; Nave-McCord Mfg. Co., Mokaska Mfg. Co., and the Midland Spice Co.,
St. Joseph, Mo.; Beaham-Moffatt Mfg. Co., and C.A. Murdock & Co., Kansas
City, Mo.; Clarke Bros. & Co., T. S. Grigor & Co., Consolidated Coffee
Co., and McCord, Brady Co., Omaha, Neb.; Dayton Spice Mills Co., and
Canby, Ach & Canby, Dayton, Ohio; Ohio Coffee & Spice Co., and Butler,
Crawford & Co., Columbus, Ohio; Bacon, Stickney & Co., Albany, N.Y.;
Charles R. Groff Co., St. Paul, Minn.; John G. Schuler, Covington, Ky.;
J.W. Thomas & Son, Nashville, Tenn.; Geo. F. Hanley & Co., Los Angeles,
Cal.; C.S. Morey Mercantile Co., Denver, Col.; and W.G. Lown Coffee Co.,
Washington, D.C.
William Boardman, founder of Wm. Boardman & Sons Co., Hartford, Conn.,
began roasting coffee at Wethersfield in 1841 with a hand-power roaster,
using wood for fuel. He moved his plant to Hartford in 1850. In the same
year, his son Thomas J., after serving a fifteen-year apprenticeship in
a country store, entered his father's employ. Three years later, he and
his brother, William F.J. Boardman, were admitted to the firm, the name
being changed to Wm. Boardman & Sons. Howard F. Boardman, a son of
Thomas J., began working in the business in 1880, and was admitted to
partnership in 1888. The same year, the founder died and William F.J.
retired. The business has since been conducted by Thomas J. and Howard
F. Boardman.
The company was incorporated in 1898, and John Pepion was admitted. The
president of the company, Thomas J. Boardman, is at the time of writing
ninety years old. He still takes a very active interest in the
business, and his "cup sense" is as acute as ever.
The O.W. Pierce Company, Lafayette, Ind. was founded in 1847 by Oliver
Webster Pierce, Sr. Except for three years in the fifties, when the firm
was known as Reynolds, Hatcher & Pierce, it has been known as the O.W.
Pierce Company since it was established. The company was incorporated in
1905 with O.W. Pierce, Jr. as its head. The senior Mr. Pierce died in
1921. The firm first roasted coffee in 1891. Prior to that time it had
been in the wholesale grocery business.
The William S. Scull Co., Camden, N.J., was established in 1858 by
William S. Scull, whose father had been in the retail tea and coffee
business. William Scull died in 1916. H. Newmark founded H. Newmark &
Co. in Los Angeles in 1865. He retired in 1886, and Maurice H. Newmark
was made a full partner. The present name is M.A. Newmark & Co.
In 1868, Major David B. Hamill entered, as junior partner, the firm of
S. Hamill & Co., Keokuk, Iowa, of which his father, Smith Hamill, was
the head. Smith Hamill died in 1890, and David B. became head of the
firm. He died in 1916.
William Tackaberry was a junior partner in the firm of S. Hamill & Co.,
Keokuk, Iowa. He began a business of his own in the same city in 1868.
Ten years later, he moved the company to Sioux City, and continued there
as the Wm. Tackaberry Co.
Joel O. Cheek began traveling for the wholesale grocery house of Webb,
Hughes & Co., Nashville, Tenn., in 1873. Later, he was admitted to
partnership, the firm becoming Webb, Cheek & Co., and then Cheek, Norton
& Neal. He formed the Nashville Coffee & Mfg. Co., in 1899. It was
merged in 1901 into the Cheek-Neal Coffee Co.
Jekiel and Isaac E. Tone began the business of Tone Bros. at Des Moines,
Iowa, in March, 1873, with one roaster and one spice mill. The business
was incorporated in 1897. Jekiel Tone died in 1900, and Isaac E. Tone in
1916. The business is now (1922) carried on by W.E. and Jay E. Tone.
Edward Canby began business in Dayton, Ohio, in 1875, succeeding the
firm of J.D. Beach & Co. He retired in 1886, and the business was left
in charge of Frank L. Canby and P.J. Ach. The latter had entered the
employ of Canby in 1877. He secured an interest in the business in 1882,
and became a partner in 1890. When the company was incorporated as
Canby, Ach & Canby in 1904, he was elected president. Mr. Ach has been
very prominent in the affairs of the National Coffee Roasters
Association since its organization.
Frank J. Geiger began in the tea, coffee, and spice business in
Lafayette, Ind., under the name of Culver & Geiger. Mr. Culver, who had
never been active, died in 1889, and in 1892 the Geiger-Tinney Company
was formed with F.J. Geiger as president. The plant was moved to
Indianapolis in 1901 with William L. Horn as vice-president, and Henry
C. Tinney as secretary and treasurer. The name was changed to the
Geiger-Fishback Co. in 1912, and Mr. Geiger retired. Frank S. Fishback
acquired all the stock of the company in 1918, and the name was changed
to the Fishback Co. with F.S. Fishback, president; John S. Fishback,
treasurer; and F. C. Fishback, secretary.
S. Holstad joined the Thomson & Taylor Spice Co of Chicago in 1892. He
left in 1901 and went to Minneapolis, where he became a member of the
firm of Atwood & Hoisted. He withdrew in 1908 to form the firm of S.
Holstad & Co., with Charles Ekelund and Alexander W. Kreiser as
partners. After the withdrawal of Mr. Holstad from Atwood & Holstad, Mr.
Atwood continued as Atwood & Co.
F.P. Atha began work as a coffee salesman with Holman & Co., Terre
Haute, Ind. He went to San Francisco in 1899 and entered the employ of
J.A. Folger & Co., and introduced Folger products east of the Rockies.
He opened the Kansas City branch in 1907; and a year later, he was
admitted to the firm and made vice-president and general manager.
_The National Coffee Roasters Association_
The first effort to organize the coffee roasters of the United States
dates back to 1885, when several St. Louis coffee roasters came together
in a kind of gentlemen's agreement not to cut the price of roasting
green coffee, which had declined, owing to ruthless competition, from
$1.00 to 10 cents a bag. The various parties to the agreement posted
$500 checks each as forfeits, not to violate the price as fixed. After
one year, a check was cashed; but the principal claimed his lapse was
clerical and not in violation of the agreement. However, as a result of
the argument that followed, the organization was disbanded.
[Illustration: MEMBERS OF THE ORGANIZATION CONVENTION OF THE NATIONAL
COFFEE ROASTERS ASSOCIATION, ST. LOUIS, MAY 26, 1911
Reading from left to right: W.B. Johnson, St. Louis; W.T. Jones, New
Orleans; George Schulte, St. Louis; C.F. Blanke, St. Louis; Ben Casanas,
New Orleans; Carl Stoffregen, St. Louis; Edward D. Hanly, Kansas City;
H.C. Grote, St. Louis; James Menown, St. Louis; Frank P. Atha, Kansas
City; Henry Petring, St. Louis; J.M. McFadden, Dubuque, Iowa; Joseph
Maury, Memphis; T.F. Halligan, Davenport; F.J. Ach, Dayton; Carl Brand,
Cleveland; Wm. Fisher, St. Louis; M.H. Gasser, Toledo; Julius J.
Schotten, St. Louis; E.W. Bockman, Paducah, Ky.; Louis Christopherson,
St. Louis; Felix Coste, St. Louis; W.E. Tone, Des Moines; Robert Meyer,
St. Louis; Fred Roth, St. Louis; M.E. Smith. St. Louis; J.B.
Dubrouilett, St. Louis; Floyd Norwine, St. Louis]
As early as 1900, leaders of the trade's best thought began to urge the
need of a national organization among coffee roasters.
As a result of informal meetings between men like Robert M. Forbes,
Julius J. Schotten, Robert Meyer, and Messrs. Roth and Homeyer, around
the luncheon table in St. Louis, to discuss trade abuses and bring about
better trade co-operation, the subject of a St. Louis organization of
coffee roasters began to be agitated about 1906. It was not until four
years later, however, that the idea took definite form.
On September 14, 1910, the Traffic Association of St. Louis Coffee
Importers was organized, starting out with a membership of ten firms,
its chief object being to obtain an adjustment of freight rates to and
from St. Louis as advantageous as those prevailing for Chicago and New
York.
This association--of which Robert Meyer was the first president, and
H.L. Homeyer, vice-president, J.S. Hartman, secretary, and G.H. Petring,
treasurer--was the forerunner of the National Coffee Roasters Traffic
and Pure Food Association organized in 1911 and now known as the
National Coffee Roasters Association.
At the organization meeting of the national association twenty-six
coffee-roasting establishments in the Mississippi Valley were
represented at the conference held May 26-27 in the Planters Hotel, St.
Louis. The objects of the new body were announced in the constitution,
as:
_First_: To foster and promote a feeling of fellowship and good
will among its members, and on broad and equitable lines to advance
the welfare of the coffee trade and the consumer.
_Second_: To eliminate or minimize abuses, methods and practises
inimical to the proper conduct of business.
_Third_: To assist in the enactment and enforcement of uniform pure
food laws which in their operations shall deal justly and equitably
with the rights of the consumer and the trade.
The association started with these officers: Julius J. Schotten, St.
Louis, President; M.H. Gasser, Toledo, vice-president; W.E. Tone, Des
Moines, treasurer, and W.J.H. Bown, St. Louis, secretary.
Meanwhile, as a result of an agitation started by _The Tea and Coffee
Trade Journal_, a meeting of New York and eastern coffee roasters was
called at the Fulton Club, New York, October 27, 1911, to discuss plans
for a national organization. M. H. Gasser attended this meeting, and
told of the plan of the western roasters to organize such an
organization at a meeting called for Chicago the following month. The
promoters of the eastern organization subsequently abandoned their
efforts in favor of the western group.
[Illustration: ROBERT MEYER, ST. LOUIS
First president of the Coffee Roasters' original organization]
At the first convention of the National Coffee Roasters Traffic and Pure
Food Association, held in Chicago, November 16-17, 1911, all the
foregoing officers were retained, the office of second vice-president
was created, and Frank R. Seelye was selected to fill it.
That the organization idea was popular among the roasters was evident
from the fact that at the close of the convention it was announced that
the membership was then seventy-one firms in cities as far east as
Virginia and as far west as Kansas City. The convention demonstrated
that the association was really a national organization, which quieted
suspicions prevalent in some quarters of the trade in the east that it
was chiefly a Mississippi Valley unit.
The first convention is remembered principally because of Hermann
Sielcken's defense of the Brazil coffee valorization plan, which was
then the big question of the coffee trade. The titles of some of the
other addresses will serve to indicate how the scope of the association
had enlarged since its organization a few months before: "An Attack on
Valorization" by Thomas J. Webb, of Chicago; "Uniform Food Laws", by
W.T. Jones, of New Orleans; "Penny-Change Systems," by R.W. McCreery, of
Marshalltown, Ia; "Traffic and Freight Abuses," by W.E. Tone, of Des
Moines; "Transportation Problems," by Carl H. Stoffregen, St. Louis;
"Coffee Publicity," by F.H. Henrici, of Chicago; "Coffee Roasters' Costs
and Accounting," by F.J. Ach, Chicago. The first convention proved a
success, and attracted attention.
The second annual convention, held in New York, November 13-15, 1912,
showed that the association had grown to a membership of 135 firms
located in all parts of the country, and that its influence had extended
throughout the whole trade. Valorization continued to be a much
discussed subject. Hermann Sielcken and others again defending it in
speeches; but the majority of the association seemed opposed to the
scheme. Probably the most important feature of the convention was the
report of the committee of nine men who had visited Brazil to
investigate conditions there and to interest the Brazilian coffee
growers in an advertising campaign. An address on this subject was made
by the editor of _The Tea and Coffee Trade Journal_, in which he
suggested a plan for propaganda and advocated scientific research to
find out the truth about coffee.
The election of officers resulted in the selection of F.J. Ach, Dayton,
as president; Frank R. Seelye, Chicago, first vice-president; Ross W.
Weir, New York, second vice-president; and Robert Meyer, St. Louis,
treasurer.
The 1912 convention changed the name of the association to the National
Coffee Roasters Association, dropping the words "Traffic and Pure Food"
from the original title.
[Illustration: JULIUS J. SCHOTTEN--1911-12]
[Illustration: F.J. ACH--1912-14]
[Illustration: ROSS W. WEIR--1914-16]
[Illustration]
[Illustration: FRANK R. SEELYE--1916-17]
[Illustration: BEN C. CASANAS--1917-18]
[Illustration: CARL W. BRAND--1918-21]
[Illustration: FORMER PRESIDENTS, NATIONAL COFFEE ROASTERS ASSOCIATION]
The third convention, which was held November 12-14, 1913, in
Cincinnati, demonstrated that the scope of usefulness of the association
was still growing, as shown by the resolutions which approved better
coffee-making publicity; favored a national coffee day; urged the
appointment of inspectors at ports of entry to prevent the importation
of green coffee under government standard No. 8; condemned the excessive
watering of coffee and all coffee coatings; and provided for the
appointment of an agent to visit Brazil to furnish members with
"reliable" reports on crop flowering.
F.J. Ach was re-elected president; Ross W. Weir succeeded F.R. Seelye as
first vice-president; W.T. Jones succeeded Mr. Weir as second
vice-president, and Robert Meyer was retained as treasurer.
Secretary G.W. Toms, who had been appointed in April, 1913, reported
that the association had made a net gain of thirteen members, bringing
the total up to 144.
The membership of the association had been increased by twenty names
when the fourth annual convention was opened in New Orleans, November
16-19, 1914, making the total 164.
Better coffee making, roasting economies, a national coffee week, and
improved methods of handling green coffee in ports and warehouses, were
the principal topics considered at the 1914 meeting. As a result of the
discussions, the association went on record in its resolutions as being
against the misbranding of both green and roasted coffee; favored the
creation of a United States board of coffee experts; and the
establishment of an association trade-mark bureau.
For the ensuing year Ross W. Weir, New York, was chosen president; J.O.
Cheek, Nashville, first vice-president; T.F. Halligan, Davenport, second
vice-president; and W.T. Morley, Worcester, treasurer.
The decision to get together on a comprehensive national publicity
campaign in the interest of coffee was the outstanding feature of the
fifth annual convention, which was held in St. Louis, November 8-11,
1915, in the same room in the Planters Hotel in which the association
was organized in 1911. From a body of twenty-six roasters, the
association had grown in five years to a membership of 201 firms and
individuals.
Among the more important things done at this convention was the decision
to undertake a practical publicity plan to advertise coffee; the
adoption of a uniform cost-and-freight contract; the proposal to prepare
educational matter on coffee for the schools; and the recommendation to
employ a chemist to carry on research work. There were spirited
discussions also on gas, coal, and coke as roasting fuels; on the best
way to get retailer co-operation, and whether it was advisable to
continue the national coffee week idea. President Weir, Vice-Presidents
Cheek and Halligan, and Treasurer Morley were re-elected.
The sixth annual convention, held in Atlantic City, November 14-17,
1916, placed emphasis on research into grinding and brewing; on plans
for doing something practical to help grocers regain their lost coffee
trade; and on an investigation into the scientific costs of roasting.
The admittance of green coffee and allied interests into the association
was also discussed, and it was resolved to make the subject an order of
business for special consideration at the next convention.
At this meeting Frank R. Seelye, Chicago, was elected president; Ben C.
Casanas, New Orleans, first vice-president; J.M. McFadden, Dubuque,
second vice-president; and M.H. Gasser, Toledo, treasurer. The
membership was reported as being 204, showing a net increase of three
during the year.
The seventh convention, held in Chicago, November 14-15, 1917, came when
the first movement of American soldiers to European battlefields was
begun, and patriotism was the keynote of the meeting. Because of the
stress of the times, the program was cut to two days, instead of the
three days of former meetings.
The outstanding features of the convention were: the decision not to
admit green coffee men to the association; the decision to establish a
permanent headquarters; the announcement that Brazil was then collecting
funds for its part in the national advertising campaign; and the
proposal by John E. King, Detroit, that the term "lead number" be used
instead of "caffetannic acid", which he asserted was a misnomer. The
executive committee was authorized to employ a secretary-manager. The
shorter terms and credits idea was endorsed by the association.
These officers were elected for the next year; Ben C. Casanas, New
Orleans, president; S.H. Holstad, Minneapolis, first vice-president;
Edward Aborn, New York, second vice-president; M.H. Gasser, Toledo,
treasurer.
The influenza epidemic, which swept the country the latter part of 1918,
caused the postponement of many business and public gatherings, and the
eighth annual roasters convention did not assemble until December 5-6,
in Cleveland--at only ten days' notice. Unlike previous occasions, this
was in reality a combined convention of all roasted and green coffee men
in the trade, both association members and non-members. No regular
program was followed, the meeting being somewhat in the character of a
trade conference.
The salient features of the convention were the decisions: to double the
annual dues, in order to provide for a paid secretary-manager and to
establish permanent headquarters; to organize a spice grinders' section;
and to ask the government to remove all restrictions on coffee trading.
The Food Administration's coffee regulations came in for severe
criticism.
The election of officers resulted in Carl W. Brand, Cleveland, becoming
president; Robert M. Forbes, St. Louis, first vice-president; J.A.
Folger, San Francisco, second vice-president; and Lewis Sherman,
Milwaukee, treasurer.
The ninth convention of the National Coffee Roasters Association was of
greater import to all branches of the coffee trade than any that had
preceded it. The results of the meeting showed the association had gone
far since the organization meeting in St. Louis in 1911. As in 1916, the
convention was held in Atlantic City, November 12-14, 1919, and drew
delegates from as far west as San Francisco and Seattle.
The most important subjects before the meeting were the reports of the
Joint Coffee Trade Publicity Committee, read by Ross W. Weir, chairman,
and Felix Coste, secretary-manager. The committee had been organized
during the year to carry on the national coffee-advertising campaign,
and announced at the convention its publicity plans for the next year,
which included a national coffee week, a national showing of the
committee's coffee film, and the issuance of several educational
booklets. Other outstanding features included the description of how the
association planned to conduct a research into the cost of doing a
wholesale coffee-roasting business, the investigation to be made by
Columbia University; addresses attacking the meat packers' invasion of
the coffee roasting and distributing field; a paper, and discussions, on
shorter terms and uniform discounts; the recommendation to employ a
traveling field secretary who would hold periodical meetings with local
branches; and the condemnation of guaranteeing prices against decline
and giving advance notices of changes of prices.
The convention unanimously agreed to the re-election of President Brand,
Vice-Presidents Forbes and Folger, and Treasurer Sherman.
The tenth annual meeting was held in St. Louis, November 10-12, 1920.
Scientific cost finding, short terms and discounts, the national
advertising campaign, the activities of the N.C.R.A. freight-forwarding
bureau, and laboratory-research were the main topics of this years'
gathering. The membership was reported to be 310. A feature of the
meeting was the first industrial exhibit by twenty-five supply houses.
Among the things accomplished were:
The recommendation that members co-operate in determining the invisible
supply of coffee in the United States at stated periods; increasing
annual dues from $50 to $60 for members having $50,000 or less
capitalization, and from $100 to $120 for firms having more than $50,000
capital; restricting membership to purely wholesale coffee roasters and
distributers; and offering co-operation to hotel-men and
restaurant-keepers in standardizing and improving their coffee
beverages.
The St. Louis meeting was notable in violating association precedent by
unanimously electing Carl W. Brand president for the third consecutive
term. Other officers were: J.A. Folger, San Francisco, first
vice-president, R.O. Miller, Chicago, second vice-president; Charles A.
Clark, Milwaukee, treasurer.
The eleventh annual meeting, held in New York, November 1-3, 1921, set
the high-water mark of the organization's record of achievement. This
convention took the first definite steps toward the amalgamation of the
green and roasted coffee interests in one association. Brazil sent a
delegation of coffee men to invite a similar delegation to pay a return
visit to Brazil. It was announced also that São Paulo was about to
double its tax contribution to the national advertising campaign. Among
other things done, were: the appropriation of $1500 to work out a
uniform cost-accounting system for roasters; the recommendation that
coffee importers insist upon the use of American ships by Brazilian
exporters; the formulation of a cost-and-freight arbitration contract
for use with São Paulo exporters; the formation of a new membership
class roasting up to 6000 bags a year; and the decision to make a
national campaign to put the selling of coffee on a uniform thirty-days
credit, two percent cash in ten days basis. Professor S.C. Prescott,
reporting on the research work being done at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, said a better brew of coffee could be obtained at a
temperature of 185 degrees than at the boiling point; that glass, china,
or enameled-ware pots were to be preferred, and that the filtration
method is superior to that employed in the pumping percolator.
[Illustration: JOEL O. CHEEK, NASHVILLE
President of the National Coffee Roasters Association, 1922]
The Industrial Exposition included displays by twenty-eight
manufacturers of machinery and supplies, and was voted a success. Many
of the exhibits were of a distinctly educational character.
The following officers were elected for 1921-22: President, Joel O.
Cheek, Nashville, Tenn.; first vice-president, Webster Jones, San
Francisco; second vice-president, Joseph E. Maury, Memphis, Tenn.;
treasurer, Frank Ennis, Kansas City.
_Coffee Roaster Statistics_
As might be expected, considering the leading place that New York holds
as a port of entry for coffee, the roasting and grinding of coffee is
more important in the eastern section of the country than in any other.
But there are many establishments for preparing coffee scattered
throughout the south and the middle west, and the business has grown to
considerable proportions on the Pacific coast. New York state leads in
number of establishments and is followed by Pennsylvania, California,
Missouri, Ohio, and Illinois. The chief southern state is Texas,
followed by Louisiana and Kentucky, although Maryland and Louisiana lead
in value of product. Missouri has more plants than any other state in
the middle west, and is followed by Illinois, though the capital
invested and the value of the output are much greater in the latter than
in the former.
COFFEE AND SPICE ROASTING AND GRINDING
ESTABLISHMENTS--CENSUS OF 1914
_Value of_
_States_ _Number_ _Capital_ _product_
Alabama 8 $155,000 $331,000
California 43 3,619,000 9,584,000
Colorado 9 445,000 1,168,000
Connecticut 7 136,000 435,000
Dist. of Col. 5 294,000 428,000
Florida 19 219,000 697,000
Georgia 6 80,000 169,000
Illinois 34 8,159,000 22,045,000
Indiana 12 941,000 1,790,000
Iowa 14 1,752,000 3,804,000
Kansas 6 144,000 396,000
Kentucky 17 541,000 1,561,000
Louisiana 17 1,657,000 4,241,000
Maryland 14 1,643,000 4,393,000
Massachusetts 21 3,678,000 8,675,000
Michigan 16 502,000 1,618,000
Minnesota 11 1,531,000 4,729,000
Mississippi 5 27,000 94,000
Missouri 37 6,152,000 14,299,000
Nebraska 6 405,000 1,262,000
New Jersey 17 828,000 3,451,000
New York 136 9,910,000 31,675,000
Ohio 35 6,578,000 13,312,000
Oklahoma 6 191,000 757,000
Oregon 9 757,000 2,050,000
Pennsylvania 77 2,454,000 6,967,000
Tennessee 7 465,000 1,648,000
Texas 36 970,000 3,326,000
Virginia 9 413,000 1,137,000
Washington 25 1,023,000 2,237,000
West Virginia 3 73,000 71,000
Wisconsin 8 362,000 809,000
Other states 21 492,000 1,590,000
____ ___________ ____________
Total 696 $56,596,000 $150,749,000
The distribution of the business of preparing coffee is shown by the
figures of the Census Bureau, which reports for 1914 a total of 696
establishments under the designation "Coffee and spice, roasting and
grinding." It was found to be necessary to adopt this classification
inasmuch as most establishments handle both coffee and spices. Of the
696, however, 658 had coffee as their principal product, and the figures
may thus be taken as indicating fairly well the general distribution of
the coffee-manufacturing industry. These figures, for the various
states, are shown on page 515.
Preliminary figures for the 1919 census show that the value of the
product almost doubled in the five years 1914-19, amounting to
$304,740,000 in 1919, while the number of establishments increased from
696 to 794, of which 769 specialize in coffee.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER XXXI
SOME BIG MEN AND NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENTS
_B.G. Arnold, the first, and Hermann Sielcken, the last of the
American "coffee kings"--John Arbuckle, the original package-coffee
man--Jabez Burns, the man who revolutionized the roasted coffee
business by his contributions as inventor, manufacturer, and
writer--Coffee-trade booms and panics--Brazil's first valorization
enterprise--War-time government control of coffee--The story of
soluble coffee_
In the history of the coffee trade of the United States, several names
stand out because of sensational accomplishments, and because of notable
contributions made to the development of the industry. In green coffee,
we have B.G. Arnold, the first, and Hermann Sielcken the last, of the
"coffee kings"; in the roasting business, there was John Arbuckle, the
original national-package-coffee man; and in the coffee-roasting
machinery business, Jabez Burns, inventor, manufacturer, and writer.
_The First "Coffee King"_
Benjamin Green Arnold came to New York from Rhode Island in 1836 and
took a job as accountant with an east-side grocer. He was thrifty,
industrious, and kept his own counsel. He was a born financial leader.
Fifteen years later he was made a junior partner in the firm. By 1868,
the bookkeeper of 1836 was the head of the business, with a line of
credit amounting to half a million dollars--a notable achievement in
those days.
Mr. Arnold embarked upon his big speculation in coffee in 1869. For ten
years he maintained his mastery of the market, and in that time amassed
a fortune. It is related that one year's operations of this daring
trader yielded his firm a profit of a million and a quarter of dollars.
[Illustration: BENJAMIN GREEN ARNOLD]
B.G. Arnold was the first president of the New York Coffee Exchange. He
was one of the founders of the Down Town Association in 1878. The
president of the United States was his friend, and a guest at his
luxurious home. But the high-price levels to which Arnold had forced the
coffee market started a coffee-planting fever in the countries of
production. Almost before he knew it, there was an overproduction that
swamped the market and forced down prices with so amazing rapidity that
panic seized upon the traders. Few that were caught in that memorable
coffee maelstrom survived financially.
Arnold himself was a victim, but such was the man's character that his
failure was regarded by many as a public misfortune. Some men differed
with him as to the wisdom of promoting a coffee corner, and protested
that it was against public policy; but Arnold's personal integrity was
never questioned, and his mercantile ability and honorable business
dealings won for him an affectionate regard that continued after his
fortune had been swept away.
After the collapse of the coffee corner, Mr. Arnold resumed business
with his son, F.B. Arnold. He died in New York, December 10, 1894, in
his eighty-second year. The son died in Rome in 1906. The business which
the father founded, however, continues today as Arnold, Dorr & Co., one
of the most honored and respected names in Front Street.
_Hermann Sielcken, the Last Coffee King_
If B.G. Arnold was first coffee king, Hermann Sielcken was last, for it
is unlikely that ever again, in the United States, will it be possible
for one man to achieve so absolute a dictatorship of the green coffee
business.
There never was a coffee romance like that of Hermann Sielcken's. Coming
to America a poor boy in 1869, forty-five years later, he left it many
times a millionaire. For a time, he ruled the coffee markets of the
world with a kind of autocracy such as the trade had never seen before
and probably will not see again. And when, just before the outbreak of
the World War, he returned to Germany for the annual visit to his
Baden-Baden estate, from which he was destined never again to sally
forth to deeds of financial prowess, his subsequent involuntary
retirement found him a huge commercial success, where B.G. Arnold was a
colossal failure. It was the World War and a lingering illness that, at
the end, stopped Hermann Sielcken. But, though he had to admit himself
bested by the fortunes of war, he was still undefeated in the world of
commerce. He died in his native Germany in 1917, the most commanding,
and the most cordially disliked, figure ever produced by the coffee
trade.
Hermann Sielcken was born in Hamburg in 1847, and so was seventy years
old when he died at Baden-Baden, October 8, 1917. He was the son of a
small baker in Hamburg; and before he was twenty-one, he went to Costa
Rica to work for a German firm there. He did not like Costa Rica, and
within a year he went to San Francisco, where, with a knowledge of
English already acquired, he got a job as a shipping clerk. This was in
1869. A wool concern engaged him as buyer, and for about six years he
covered the territory between the Rockies and the Pacific, buying wool.
On one of these trips he was in a stage-coach wreck in Oregon and nearly
lost his life. He received injuries affecting his back from which he
never fully recovered, and which caused the stooped posture which marked
his carriage through life thereafter. When he recovered, he came to New
York seeking employment, and obtained a clerical position with L.
Strauss & Sons, importers of crockery and glassware. In 1880, married
Josephine Chabert, whose father kept a restaurant in Park Place.
Sielcken had learned Spanish in Costa Rica, and this knowledge aided him
to a place with W.H. Crossman & Bro. (W.H. and George W. Crossman)
merchandise commission merchants in Broad Street. He was sent to South
America to solicit consignments for the Crossmans, and was surprisingly
successful. For six or eight months every South American mail brought
orders to the house. Then, as the story goes, his reports suddenly
ceased. Weeks and months passed, and the firm heard nothing from him.
The Crossmans speculated concerning his fate. It was thought he might
have caught a fever and died. It was almost impossible to trace him; at
the same time it distressed them to lose so promising a representative.
Giving up all hope of hearing from him again, they began to look around
for some one to take his place. Then, one morning, he walked into the
office and said, "How do you do?" just as if he had left them only the
evening before. The members of the firm questioned him eagerly. He
answered some of their questions; but most of them he did not. Then he
laid a package on the table.
[Illustration: HERMANN SIELCKEN]
"Gentlemen", he said, "I have given a large amount of business to you,
far more than you expected, as the result of my trip. I have a lot more
business which I can give to you. It's all in black and white in the
papers in this package. I think any person who has worked as hard as I
have, and so well, deserves a partnership in this firm. If you want
these orders, you may have them. They represent a big profit to you.
Good work deserves proper reward. Look these papers over, and then tell
me if you want me to continue with you as a member of this firm."
After the Crossmans had looked those papers over they had no doubt of
the advisability of taking Sielcken into partnership. He was admitted as
a junior in 1881-82 and became a full partner in 1885. For more than
twenty years Hermann Sielcken was the human dynamo that pushed the firm
forward into a place of world prominence. He was the best informed man
on coffee in two continents; and when, in 1904, the firm name was
changed to Crossman & Sielcken--W.H. Crossman having died ten years
before--he was well prepared to assert his rights as king of the trade.
He proved his kingship by his masterful handling of valorization three
years later.
Sielcken was many times credited with working "corners" in coffee; but
he would never admit that a corner was possible in anything that came
out of the ground; and to the end, he was insistent in his denials of
ever having cornered coffee. As a daring trader, he won his spurs in a
sensational tilt with the Arbuckles in the bull campaign of 1887.
Because of this, he became one of the most feared and hated men in the
Coffee Exchange. For a while, coffee did not offer enough play for his
tremendous energy and ambition. He embarked in various
enterprises--among them, the steel industry and railroads. No one was
too big for Sielcken to cross lances with. He bested John W. Gates in a
titanic fight, in American Steel and Wire. He quarreled with E.H.
Harriman and George J. Gould over the possession of the Kansas City,
Pittsburgh, and Gulf Railroad, now known as the Kansas City Southern,
and, backed by a syndicate of Hollanders, obtained control.
While still busy with the Kansas City Southern enterprise Sielcken began
work on the coffee valorization scheme that he carried to a successful
conclusion in spite of the law of supply and demand and the interference
of the Congress of the United States. Valorization by the São Paulo
government, and by coffee merchants, having proved a failure; Sielcken
showed how it could be done with all the American coffee merchants
eliminated--except himself. In this way, he secured for himself the
opportunity he had long been seeking--the chance to bestride the coffee
trade like a colossus. The story is told farther along in this chapter.
When his partner, George W. Crossman, died in 1913, it was discovered
that the two men had a remarkable contract. Each had made a will giving
one million dollars to the other. Then Sielcken bought his late
partner's interest in the firm for $5,166,991.
His first wife having died at Mariahalden, his home in Baden-Baden,
seven years before, Sielcken married at Tessin, Germany, in 1913, Mrs.
Clara Wendroth, a widow with two children, and the daughter of the late
Paul Isenberg, a wealthy sugar planter of the Hawaiian Islands. At that
time the coffee king was dividing his time between the Waldorf-Astoria,
New York, which he called his American home, and his wonderful estate in
the fatherland. This latter was a two-hundred-acre private park
containing four villas and a marvelous bath-house for guests besides the
main villa; a rose-garden in which were cultivated one hundred
sixty-eight varieties on some twenty thousand bushes; a special
greenhouse for orchids; and landscaped grounds calling for the service
of six professional gardeners and forty assistants. Here he delighted to
entertain his friends. Frequently, there were fifteen to twenty of them
for dinner on the garden terrace; and, as the moon came up through the
tall hemlocks and shone through the majestic pines brought from Oregon,
a full military band from Heidelberg, adown the hillside among the rose
trees, mingled its music with the dinner discussions. There was nothing
at that dinner table but peace and harmony, although every language in
Europe was spoken; for Sielcken knew them all from his youth. Sometimes
he entertained his guests with stories of his California life, and
sometimes with those of shipwrecks in South America.
All the post-telegraph boys in Baden knew every foot of the sharply
winding road up the Yburg Strasse to Villa Mariahalden; and the guests
therein have counted more than eighty cables received, and more than
thirty sent in a single day. And those daily cable messages were to and
from all quarters of the globe, and to and from the master, who handled
them all, without even a secretary or typewriter. Nowhere in the entire
establishment was there even an appearance of business, except as the
messages came and went on the highway. Sielcken manifested his greatest
delight in showing his friends his orchids, his roses, his pigeons, his
trout, and his trees.
Like Napoleon, this merchant prince required only five hours sleep. It
was his custom to go to bed at one and to be up at six. Did he wish to
know anything that the cables did not bring him, he jumped into his
eighty-horse-power Mercedes with a party of guests and was off with the
sunrise, down the Rhine Valley, on his way to Paris or Hamburg; and
before one realized that he was gone, he was back again.
In 1913, Sielcken admitted to partnership in his firm two employees of
long service, John S. Sorenson and Thorlief S.B. Nielsen. He went to
Germany in 1914, shortly before the beginning of the World War, and
remained at Mariahalden until he died in 1917. Sielcken never would
believe that war was possible until it had actually started. Up to the
last moment in July, 1914, he was cabling his New York partner that
there would probably be no hostilities. He lost a bet of a thousand
pounds made with a visiting Brazilian friend a few days before war was
declared. The guest believed war inevitable and won. A few days before
Sielcken's death the old firm was dissolved under the Trading with the
Enemy Act, being succeeded by the firm of Sorenson & Nielsen. The former
had been with the business thirty-four years, and the latter thirty-two
years. The alien property custodian took over Sielcken's interest for
the duration of the war.
Rumors in 1915 that the German government was extorting large sums of
money from Sielcken brought denials from his associates here. After the
war, it was confirmed that no such extortions took place.
Sielcken always claimed American citizenship. There was a widely
circulated story, never proved, that he tore up his citizenship papers
in 1912 when the United States government began its suit to force the
sale of coffee stocks held here under the valorization agreement. The
Supreme Court of California in 1921 decided that he _was_ a citizen, and
his interests and those of his widow, amounting to $4,000,000, held by
the alien property custodian, were thereupon released to his heirs. It
appeared in evidence that he took out his citizenship papers in San
Francisco in 1873-74, but lost them in a shipwreck off the coast of
Brazil in 1876. The San Francisco fire destroyed the other records; but
under act of legislature re-establishing them, the citizenship claim was
declared valid.
Hermann Sielcken never liked the title of "coffee king." He was once
asked about this appellation, and turned smartly upon the interviewer.
"Nonsense," he said. "I am no king. I don't like the term, because I
never heard of a 'king' who did not fail."
Sielcken had no use for titles. T.S.B. Nielsen says that at a dinner
party in Germany in 1915 he heard Sielcken explain to a large number of
guests that the United States was the best country because there a man
was appraised at his real value. What he did, and how he lived,
counted--not birth or titles.
While his greatest achievement was, of course, the valorization
enterprise, he played a not unimportant rôle in the Havemeyer-Arbuckle
sugar-trust fight. He aided the late Henry O. Havemeyer to secure
control of the Woolson Spice Co. of Toledo in 1896, so as to enable the
Havemeyer's to retaliate with Lion brand coffee for the Arbuckles'
entrance into the sugar business. The Woolson Spice Co. sold the Lion
brand in the middle west, and the American Coffee Co. sold it in the
east. That was the beginning of a losing price-war that lasted ten
years. At the end, Sielcken took over the Woolson property at a price
considerably lower than originally paid for it. In 1919, the Woolson
Spice Co. brought suit against the Sielcken estate, alleging a loss of
$932,000 on valorization coffee sold to it by Sielcken just after the
federal government began its suit in 1912 to break up the valorization
pool in the United States. The Woolson Spice Co. paid the "market
price", as did the rest of the buyers of valorization coffee; but it was
charged that Sielcken, as managing partner of Crossman & Sielcken, sold
the coffee to the Woolson Spice Co., of which he was president, "at
artificially enhanced prices and in quantities far in excess of its
legitimate needs, concealing his knowledge that before the plaintiff
could use the coffee, the price would decline." Sielcken collected for
the coffee sold $3,218,666.
When the United States government crossed lances with Sielcken in 1912
over the valorization scheme, it looked for a time as if he would be
unhorsed. But men and governments were all the same to Sielcken; and at
the end of the fight it was discovered that not only was he
undefeated--for the government never pressed its suit to conclusion--but
that his prestige as king and master mind of the coffee trade had gained
immeasurably by the adventure.
Hermann Sielcken typified German efficiency raised to the nth power. He
was a colossus of commerce with the military alertness of a Bismarck.
His mental processes were profound, and his vision was far-reaching. He
was a resourceful trader, an austere friend, a shrewd and uncompromising
foe. Physically, he was a big man with a bull neck and black, piercing
eyes. His policy in coffee was one of blood and iron. He brooked no
interference with his plans, and he was ruthless in his methods of
dealing with men and governments. Usually silent and uncommunicative,
occasionally he exploded under stress; and when he did so, there was no
mincing of words. He knew no fear. Newspaper criticism annoyed him but
little; and he had a kind of contempt for the fourth estate as a whole,
although he knew how to use it when it suited his purpose. He avoided
the limelight, and never courted publicity for himself. Socially he was
a princely host; but few knew him intimately, except perhaps in his
native Germany.
Sielcken's widow was married in New York, February 11, 1922, to Joseph
M. Schwartz, the Russian baritone of the Chicago Opera Company.
_The Story of John Arbuckle_
John Arbuckle, for nearly fifty years the honored dean of the American
coffee trade, pioneer package-coffee man, some time coffee king, sugar
merchant, philanthropist, and typical American, came from fine, rugged
Scotch stock. He was the son of a well-to-do Scottish woolen-mill owner
in Allegheny, Pa., where he was born, July 11, 1839. He often said he
was raised on skim milk. He received a common school education in
Pittsburgh and Allegheny. He and Henry Phipps, the coke and steel head,
are said to have occupied adjoining desks in one of the public schools,
Andrew Carnegie being at that time in another grade of the same school.
He had a strong bent for science and machinery; and, although he chose
the coffee instead of the steel business for his career, the basis of
his success was invention. He also attended Washington and Jefferson
College at Washington, Pennsylvania.[348]
The Arbuckle business was founded at Pittsburg, in 1859, when Charles
Arbuckle, his uncle Duncan McDonald, and their friend William Roseburg,
organized the wholesale grocery firm of McDonald & Arbuckle. One year
later John Arbuckle, the younger brother of Charles Arbuckle, was
admitted to the firm, and the firm name was changed to McDonald &
Arbuckles. McDonald and Roseburg retired from the firm a few years
later, leaving the business in the hands of the two youthful, hopeful,
and energetic brothers, who under the firm name of Arbuckles & Co., soon
made their firm one of the important wholesale grocery houses in
Pennsylvania. Although little thinking at the time that their greatest
success was to be achieved in coffee, and that a new idea of one of the
partners--that of marketing roasted coffee in original packages--would
make their name familiar in every hamlet in the country, yet the first
two entries in the original day-book of McDonald & Arbuckles record
purchases of coffee.
Prior to the sixties, coffee was not generally sold roasted or ground,
ready for the coffee pot. Except in the big cities, most housewives
bought their coffee green, and roasted it in their kitchen stoves as
needed. John Arbuckle, having become impressed with the wasteful methods
and unsatisfactory results of this kitchen roasting, had already begun
his studies of roasting and packaging problems, studies that he never
gave up. How, first to roast coffee scientifically, and then to preserve
its freshness in the interval between the roaster and the coffee pot,
continued to be an absorbing study until his death. The range of his
work may be illustrated by reference to his first and his last patents.
In 1868, he patented a process of glazing coffee, which had for its
object the preservation of the flavor and aroma of coffee by sealing the
pores of the coffee bean. Thirty-five years later, he patented a huge
coffee roaster in which, more closely than in any other roaster, he felt
he could approach his ideal of roasting coffee--that ideal being to hold
the coffee beans in suspension in superheated air during the entire
roasting process, and not to allow them to come in contact with a heated
iron surface.
By 1865, John Arbuckle had satisfied himself that a carefully roasted
coffee, packed while still warm in small individual containers, would
measurably overcome the objections to selling loose coffee in a roasted
state. So in that year (1865), although not without the misgivings of
his elder brother, and even in the face of the ridicule of competitors,
who derided the plan of selling roasted coffee "in little paper bags
like peanuts", Arbuckles & Co. introduced the new idea, namely, roasted
coffee in original packages. The story of the development of that simple
idea, which soon spread from coast to coast, and of how it laid the
foundations of a great fortune, is one of the romances of American
business.
Although Osborn's Celebrated Prepared Java Coffee, a ground-coffee
package, first put on the New York market by Lewis A. Osborn, and later
exploited by Thomas Reid in the early sixties, appears to have been the
original package coffee, much of the fame attached to the name of
Arbuckle comes from its association with the Ariosa coffee package,
which was the first successful national brand of package coffee. It was
launched in 1873. The Ariosa premium list (premiums have been a feature
of the Arbuckle business since 1895) includes a hundred articles. Almost
anything from a pair of suspenders or a toothbrush, to clocks, wringers,
and corsets may be obtained in exchange for Ariosa coupons.
The common belief that the name Ariosa was made up from the words Rio
and Santos (said to be the component parts of the original blend) is
erroneous. It was arbitrarily coined, though it is not known what
considerations prompted it. One story has it that the "A" stands for
Arbuckle, the "rio" for Rio, and the "sa" for South America.
Early in the seventies, the great business opportunities of New York
City had attracted the two brothers, and a branch was established in New
York in charge of John Arbuckle, the main business in Pittsburg being
left in the care of his brother Charles. The growth of the New York
branch soon made it necessary for Charles Arbuckle to leave the
Pittsburg business in charge of trusted employees, and to come to New
York. In time, the coffee business of the New York house overshadowed
the grocery lines; and the latter were abandoned there, so that the
entire energy of the firm in New York might be devoted to the coffee
business, which thenceforth was operated under the firm name of Arbuckle
Bros. The Arbuckle coffee business, which began with a single roaster in
1865, had eighty-five machines running in Pittsburg and New York in
1881.
Charles Arbuckle died in 1891, and John Arbuckle admitted as partners
his nephew, William Arbuckle Jamison, and two employees, William V.R.
Smith and James N. Jarvie, the business continuing under the former name
of Arbuckle Bros. The most important step taken by the firm while thus
constituted was its entrance into the sugar refining business in 1896.
That entrance had to be forced against the bitterest opposition of a
so-called sugar trust, and brought on a "war" signalized by the most
ruthless cutting of prices of both coffee and sugar. This war was costly
to both sides; but when it had ended, Arbuckle Bros. remained unshaken
in the preeminence of their package-coffee business and had acquired
also great publicity and a fine trade in refined sugar.
[Illustration: JOHN ARBUCKLE]
Arbuckles were always large consumers of sugar in connection with their
coffee glaze, and having introduced the package sugar idea with their
customers some years before, they at last made up their minds to refine
for their own needs and thus to save the profits paid to "the
Havemeyers". It is generally conceded that John Arbuckle's shrewdness
and business sagacity in having previously acquired the Smyser patents
on a weighing and packing machine, and his control of it, really led to
the coffee-sugar war. "This packing machine", said the _Spice Mill_,
when Henry E. Smyser died in 1899, "puts him [Smyser] with the greatest
inventors of our day."
The sugar trust met the Arbuckle challenge by invading the
coffee-roasting field. This they accomplished by securing a controlling
interest for $2,000,000 in one of the largest competing roasting plants
in the country, that of the Woolson Spice Co., of Toledo, Ohio, that had
in the Lion brand, a ready-made package coffee wherewith to fight
Ariosa. The re-organization of the Woolson Spice Co. in 1897, when A. M.
Woolson was relieved of the office of president, disclosed, among
others, the names of Hermann Sielcken in close juxtaposition to that of
H.O. Havemeyer on the board of directors. Both men helped to make
coffee-trade history.
The trade found the coffee-sugar war the all-absorbing topic for several
years. Hot debates were held on the question as to whether, on one hand,
the Arbuckles had the right to enter the sugar-refining business and, on
the other, as to whether the sugar-trust had a right to retaliate. The
answer seemed to be "yes" in both instances.
In two years, John Arbuckle's model sugar refinery in Brooklyn was
turning out package sugar at the rate of five thousand barrels a day.
The Woolson Spice Co. was credited with spending unheard-of sums of
money in advertising Lion brand coffee. The eastern newspaper displays
alone exceeded anything ever before attempted in this line. However,
many people are of the opinion that it was a tactical error on the part
of the sugar interests to spend so much money advertising a Rio coffee
in the central and New England states, while John Arbuckle was confining
his activities to the south and the west, where there already existed a
Rio taste among consumers.
The legal fight which the Arbuckles carried on with the Havemeyers for
the control of the sugar business in this celebrated coffee-sugar war is
said to have cost millions on both sides.
Eventually, the Havemeyers were glad to be relieved of their coffee
interests, but John Arbuckle continued to sell both coffee and sugar.
Mr. Arbuckle married Miss Mary Alice Kerr in Pittsburg, in 1868. She
died in 1907. His many charities included boat trips for children,
luxurious farm vacations for tired wage-earners, boat-raising and
life-saving schemes, a low-priced home for working girls and men on an
old full-rigged ship lying off a New York dock, which he called his
"Deep Sea Hotel," and a vacation enterprise for young men and young
women at New Paltz, N.Y., which was known as the "Mary and John Arbuckle
Farm." A magazine for children, called _Sunshine_, was another
benevolent enterprise of his.
When John Arbuckle died at his Brooklyn home, March 27, 1912, he had
been ill only four days. The New York Coffee Exchange closed at two
o'clock the day following, after adopting appropriate resolutions and
appointing a committee to attend the funeral. His estate in New York was
valued at $33,000,000.
W.V.R. Smith and James N. Jarvie retired from the firm in 1906; and John
Arbuckle and his nephew W.A. Jamison continued it as sole owners and
partners until Mr. Arbuckle's death in 1912. Mr. Arbuckle died childless
and a widower, leaving as his only heirs his two sisters, Mrs. Catherine
Arbuckle Jamison and Miss Christina Arbuckle. Mrs. Jamison is the widow
of the late Robert Jamison, who had been a prominent drygoods merchant
in Pittsburg. William A. Jamison is her eldest and only living son.
Following the death of John Arbuckle, a new partnership was formed in
which Mrs. Jamison, Miss Arbuckle, and Mr. Jamison became the partners
and owners, and that partnership, without change of name, continues.
Probably there is no other mercantile establishment of similar size in
the country that is carried on as a partnership, and none which after
more than sixty years is so exclusively owned by members of the
immediate family of its founders.
The Arbuckle business, as it is today, is John Arbuckle's best monument.
All that it is he foresaw; for behind those keen, penetrating eyes,
there was wonderful vision. Simple in his tastes; democratic in his
dress, in his habits and his speech; he was one of the most approachable
of our first captains of industry. Many of the younger generation in the
coffee business have found inspiration in contemplating John Arbuckle's
achievements. As represented in what has been called "the world's
greatest coffee business", these include other package coffees, such as
Yuban, Arbuckle's Breakfast, Arbuckle's Drinksum, and Arbuckle's
Certified Java and Mocha. The pioneer Ariosa brand is still being sold;
although it is interesting to note that the demand for ground Ariosa is
increasing, marking the swing of the pendulum of public taste away from
the original bean package to the so-called "steel-cut," or ground,
coffee package. Will it swing back again, some day? Many coffee men
believe it will. If it does, good old Ariosa, with its coating of sugar
and eggs, will no doubt be on the job to meet it.
Yuban was launched in the fall of 1913. It is a high-grade package
coffee, whereas Ariosa is popular-priced. In addition to the package
coffee business, Arbuckle Bros. have many other activities. They deal in
green coffee as well as roasted coffee in bulk. The wholesale grocery
business in Pittsburg continues under the old name of Arbuckles & Co.;
while in Chicago, Arbuckle Bros. have a branch equipped with a
coffee-roasting-and-packaging plant, also spice-grinding and
extract-manufacturing plants, and do a large business in teas. A branch
in Kansas City distributes the products manufactured in New York and
Chicago. In Brazil, offices are maintained at Rio de Janeiro, Santos,
and Victoria, as Arbuckle & Co. In Mexico, Arbuckle Bros. are
established at Jalapa, with branches at Cordoba and Coatepec. In season,
the warehouses and hulling plants at those points employ as many as 650
hands preparing Mexican coffee for shipment to New York.
Arbuckle Bros. are direct importers of green coffee on a large scale,
and are known also as heavy buyers "on the street." The roasting
capacity of their Brooklyn plant is from 8,000 to 9,000 bags per day.
The cylinder equipment of twenty-four Burns roasters is supplemented by
four "Jumbo" roasters of Arbuckle build, each capable of roasting
thirty-five bags at one time. The Ariosa package business grew from the
smallest beginnings to more than 800,000 packages per day. Individual
brands have not held their lead of late years; but the volume of
package-coffee business is greater than ever. Many jobbers now pack
brands of their own, besides handling the Arbuckle brands.
Distribution of roasted coffees outside Chicago and Kansas City is
accomplished through the medium of more than one hundred stock depots
in as many different cities of the United States.
To operate the world's greatest coffee business is no small undertaking;
and when this is coupled with an important sugar-refining business and a
waterfront warehouse-and-terminal business, plenty of room is needed. So
we find the plant along the Brooklyn waterfront occupying an area of a
dozen city blocks. An idea of the extent and diversity of the activities
of the plant may be gained from a brief reference to the utilities, and
the trades, and even the professions, that are required to make the
wheels go round.
To ship more than one hundred cars of coffee and sugar in a single day
calls for shipping facilities that could be had only by organizing a
railroad and waterfront terminal, known as Jay Street Terminal, equipped
with freight station, locomotives, tugboats, steam lighters, car floats,
and barges. City deliveries of coffee and sugar call for a fleet of
thirty-five large motor trucks that are housed in the firm's own garage
and kept in repair in their own shops. Although motor trucks are fast
replacing the faithful horse; and the time will never come again when
Arbuckle Bros. will boast of their stable of nearly two hundred horses
that were generally acknowledged to be the finest string of draft horses
in the city, some fifty or sixty of their faithful animals still are in
harness; and so the stable, with blacksmith shop, harness shop, and
wagon-repair shops, are serving their respective purposes, though on a
reduced scale. A printing shop vibrates with the whirr of mammoth
printing presses turning out thousands upon thousands of coffee-wrappers
and circulars; and doubtless it will be news to many that the first
three-color printing press ever built was expressly designed and built
for Arbuckle Bros. Then there is a sunny first-aid hospital on top of
the Pearl Street warehouse where a physician is ever ready to relieve
sudden illness and accidental injuries. On the eleventh floor there is a
huge dining room where the Brooklyn clerical forces get their noonday
lunches. This feeding of the inner man (and woman) is matched by the
power-house where twenty-six large steam boilers must be fed their quota
of coal. In the winter months, when Warmth must come for the workers as
well as power for the wheels, the coal consumption runs up as high as
four hundred tons per day.
The barrel factory, with a daily capacity of 6,800 sugar barrels, is
located about a mile away, where barrel staves and heads are received
from the firm's own stave mill in Virginia, made from logs cut on their
own timber lands in Virginia and North Carolina. A more self-contained
plant would be hard to imagine, and so we find that even the last
activity in its operations--that of washing and drying the emptied sugar
bags--is also provided for. That this is "some laundry" goes without
saying, when it is recalled that in the busy sugar season the firm dumps
from eight to ten thousand bags of raw sugar per day, and that these
bags are washed and dried daily as emptied. A huge rotary drier of the
firm's own design does the work of about three miles of clothes lines.
Even after the coffees have been sold and paid for, there still remains
an important task, and that is to redeem the signature coupons which the
consumers cut from the packages and return for premiums. Lest some
regard this as an insignificant phase of the business, it may be stated
that in a single year the premium department has received over one
hundred and eight million coupons calling for more than four million
premiums. These premiums included 818,928 handkerchiefs; 261,000 pairs
of lace curtains; 238,738 shears; and 185,920 Torrey razors. Finger
rings are perennial favorites, and so insistent is the demand for the
rings offered as premiums, that Arbuckle Bros. are regarded as the
largest distributors of finger rings in the world. One of their premium
rings is a wedding ring; and if all the rings of this pattern serve
their intended purpose, it is estimated that the firm has assisted at
eighty thousand weddings in a year.
Turning from the utilities at the plant to the trades and professions
represented, other than the trained sugar and coffee workers, the
following are constantly employed: physicians, chemists, mechanical
engineers, civil engineers, electrical engineers, railroad engineers and
brakemen, steamboat captains and engineers, chauffeurs, teamsters,
wagon-makers, harness-makers, machinists, draughtsmen, blacksmiths,
tinsmiths, coppersmiths, coopers, carpenters, masons, painters,
plumbers, riggers, typesetters and pressmen, and last but not least,
the chef and table waiters.
One of the most remarkable things about the growth of this business
enterprise is that it is not the result of buying out, or consolidating
with, competitors; but has resulted from a steady wholesome growth along
conservative business lines. Consolidations are often desirable and
effective; but when a great business has been built without any such
consolidations, the conclusion is inevitable that somewhere in the
establishment there must have been a corresponding amount of wisdom,
foresight, energy, and honorable business dealing. Those were the things
for which John Arbuckle stood firm, and for which he will always be
remembered.
_Jabez Burns, Inventor, Manufacturer, Writer_
Jabez Burns was a person of real importance to the American coffee trade
from 1864, when he began to manufacture his improved roaster, until his
death, at the age of sixty-two, in 1888. His success depended more on
unusual character than unusual ability, although he was really gifted as
regards mechanical invention. He loved to acquire practical information,
and arrived confidently at common-sense conclusions; and he exercised a
wide and helpful influence, because he liked to give expression to
opinions that he considered sound and useful.
Mr. Burns was born in London in 1826. The family moved soon after to
Dundee, Scotland, and came to New York in 1844. They were people of
small means and independent thinking. The father, William G. Burns, had
been more interested in the Chartist social movement than in any settled
business activity. An uncle, also named Jabez Burns, became a popular
Baptist preacher in London.
The first winter in America found youthful Jabez teaching a country
school at Summit, N.J. Then he began in New York (1844-45) as teamster
for Henry Blair, a prosperous coffee merchant who attended a little
"Disciples" church in lower Sixth Avenue where many Scottish families
congregated. There also Burns met Agnes Brown, daughter of a Paisley
weaver, and married her in 1847. A brave young pair they were, who found
all sorts of odd riches--just as if a fast-growing family could somehow
make up for a slow-growing income. There were hopes, too, that the
contrivances Burns kept inventing might bring wealth; and some extra
money did come from the sale of early patents, including one in 1858 for
the Burns Addometer, a primitive adding machine.
But Mr. Burns had continued regularly in the employ of coffee and spice
firms, and at one time he was bookkeeper for Thomas Reid's Globe Mills.
He advanced slowly, because he lacked real trading talent; but he was
learning all about the handling of goods, from purchase to final
delivery; and when he quit bookkeeping for the old Globe Mills, and
began to build his patent roaster, he could advise clients reliably
about every factory detail.
He was soon looked on as an authority. He wrote some articles for the
_American Grocer_, a series on "Food Adulteration" being reprinted; and
in 1878, he began the quarterly publication of his thirty-two-page
_Spice Mill_, which soon became a monthly, and gained the interested
attention of practically the entire coffee and spice trade.
Through the columns of this paper, in circulars, by letters, and in a
pocket volume called the _Spice Mill Companion_, he distributed
information on coffee, spices, and baking powder, and gave valuable
advice to beginners in the coffee-roasting business. Not a few coffee
roasters were started on the way to fortune by the counsel of Jabez
Burns. He died in New York, September 16, 1888.
Jabez Burns founded the business of Jabez Burns & Sons in 1864,
beginning the manufacture of his patent coffee roaster at 107 Warren
Street, New York. Since then, there have been four removals. In
December, 1908, the business moved to its present uptown location, at
the northwest corner of Eleventh Avenue and Forty-third Street,
occupying a six-story building which was doubled in size in 1917. This
Burns factory has been referred to as "the unique coffee-machinery
workshop", the greatest establishment of its kind in the United States.
Upon the death of its founder the business was continued; first, as the
firm of Jabez Burns & Sons, composed of his sons, Jabez, Robert, and A.
Lincoln Burns; and later, in 1906, incorporated as Jabez Burns & Sons,
Inc., with Robert Burns as president, Jabez Burns as vice-president,
and A. Lincoln Burns as secretary and treasurer. Jabez Burns died August
6, 1908. The present officers are: Robert Burns, president; A. Lincoln
Burns, vice-president; William G. Burns, general manager; and C.H.
Maclachlan, secretary and treasurer.
[Illustration: JABEZ BURNS]
A. Lincoln Burns succeeded his father as editor of the _Spice Mill_.
William H. Ukers was made editor in 1902, and he continued until 1904,
when he left to assume editorial direction of _The Tea and Coffee Trade
Journal_.
_Coffee-Trade Booms and Panics_
In the last fifty years there have been many spectacular attempts to
corner the coffee market in Europe and the United States. The first
notable occurrence of this kind did not originate in the trade itself.
It took place in 1873, and was known as the "Jay Cooke panic", being
brought about by the famous panic of that name in the stock market.
As a result of the Jay Cooke failure, it was impossible to obtain money
from the banks. Hence buyers were forced to keep out of the coffee
market; and as a consequence, the price for Rios dropped from
twenty-four cents to fifteen cents in the course of the trading period
of one day[349].
Another interesting development during that year was of foreign origin.
A coffee syndicate was organized in Europe, financed by the powerful
German Trading Company of Frankfort, with agencies in London, Rotterdam,
Antwerp, and Brazil. For more than eight years this proved to be a
highly successful undertaking, largely controlling the principal
producing and consuming markets.
As far as the American coffee trade is concerned, the first sensational
upheaval took place in 1880-81. This period witnessed the collapse of
the first great coffee trade combination in this country--the so-called
"syndicate", comprising O.G. Kimball, B.G. Arnold, and Bowie Dash,
sometimes known as the "trinity".
The period of high coffee prices, commencing in 1870, had greatly
stimulated production in many Mild-coffee producing countries, as well
as in Brazil, and as a consequence the syndicate found its burden
becoming extremely heavy early in 1880. In January of that year our
visible supply amounted roughly to 767,000 bags. While this was reduced
to about 740,000 bags in July, the latter likewise proved to be
decidedly burdensome, especially as another liberal crop was beginning
to move in producing countries. The excessive volume of supplies was
especially marked, because distributing trade during the summer was
strikingly dull, as the majority of buyers were holding off, in view of
the prospective liberal new crops. At that time Java coffee was a big
item in American markets, whereas Santos was just about beginning to be
a factor.
The syndicate found that it had its hands full supporting the Brazil
grades, and hence had to let the Javas go. As a result, the latter,
which had sold at twenty-four and three-quarters cents in January, 1880,
fell to nineteen and one-half cents in July, to eighteen cents in
November and to sixteen cents in December. As a matter of fact, the
syndicate was practically the only buyer of Brazil coffee during the
fall of 1880; and as a consequence, Rios, which had started the year at
fourteen and one-half to sixteen and one-quarter cents, were down to
twelve and three-quarters cents in December, 1880, and had dropped nine
and one-half cents when the break in the market culminated in June,
1881.
The first whispers of financial troubles growing out of these adverse
conditions were heard in October, 1880; and on the 27th of that month
the first failure was announced--that of C. Risley & Co., with
liabilities placed at $800,000 and assets at $400,000. This firm had
been doing business in the local market for about thirty years. The
efforts of the receivers to dispose of this company's large stock
naturally served to accelerate the decline; and the final impetus came
on December 6, when the New York trade heard of the death, two days
previously, of O.G. Kimball, of Boston, one of the most prominent
merchants there. This precipitated the big crash of December 7, when
B.G. Arnold & Co., the largest New York firm, suspended with estimated
liabilities of $750,000 to $1,000,000. The official statement later
placed the liabilities at $2,157,914, and assets at $1,400,000, of which
$884,198 were secured. Within three days this failure was followed by
the suspension of Bowie Dash & Co., with liabilities estimated at
$1,400,000.
For weeks thereafter there was virtually no market. With all of these
distress holdings pressing for liquidation, buyers, as was natural, were
extremely timid. In the meantime, the import arrivals showed further
enlargement at various southern ports, as well as at New York. Total
arrivals at this port during 1881 were almost 12,400,000 pounds heavier
than for the preceding year. The growing importance of Santos as a
market factor was demonstrated by the fact that shipments from there in
1881 were 1,198,625 bags, compared with about 628,900 bags in 1876-77.
According to the best informed members of the trade at that time, the
losses sustained by the various firms that were forced to the wall
aggregated between $5,000,000 and $7,000,000.
The utterly demoralized conditions prevailing while this collapse was in
progress, and the practical elimination of a market in the true sense of
the word, furnished the principal impetus for the organization of the
New York Coffee Exchange. At that time, the Havre market was the only
one with an exchange. The local body was organized in December, 1881,
and started business in March, 1882.
_The Cable Break of 1884_
The second noteworthy movement, embracing an advance of four to four and
one-half cents and a recession of slightly more than three cents,
covered a period of about eight months shortly after the Exchange was
organized. Various local and out-of-town firms were interested in the
bulge which carried Rio coffee in this market from about seven cents in
July, 1883, up to eleven and one-half cents late in November. By the
middle of December, the price had fallen to nine and one-quarter cents,
the final break to eight and one-quarter cents occurring late in March
of the following year. At that time, there was no direct cable
communication with Brazil; and as a result of a temporary break in the
roundabout service by way of Portugal, the New York and Baltimore agents
of the Brazilian syndicate were unable to put up additional margins in
this market, and their accounts were closed out. This happened on a
Saturday; and by the following Monday, partial cable remittances arrived
and all accounts were settled in full with interest from Saturday to
Monday.
_The Great Boom_
What is generally described as "the great boom" of the coffee trade
occurred in 1886-87, and had its inception in unsatisfactory crop news
from Brazil. The crop of 1887-1888, it was estimated, would be extremely
small; and it turned out to be only 3,033,000 bags. These advices and
low estimates led to the formation of a "bull" clique, comprising
operators in New York, Chicago, New Orleans, Brazil, and Europe, who set
a price of twenty-five cents for December contracts as their goal.
Toward the end of June, 1886, when this campaign started, No. 7 Rio in
New York was worth about seven and one-half cents, with June contracts
on the Exchange quoted at seven and sixty-five hundredths cents. With
Brazilian crop news still more discouraging, the advance thereafter was
almost continuous, and on June 1, 1887, December contracts sold at
twenty-two and one-quarter cents--a new high price record, that was not
exceeded for thirty-two years, when twenty-four and sixty-five
hundredths cents were paid for July contracts in June, 1919. After
reaching twenty-two and one-quarter cents, prices suffered an abrupt
reversal. Ten days later the closing price for December was twenty-one
and four-tenth cents. Then the real crash began. On Saturday, June 11,
the panic started with another claim of cable trouble; and in the short
session, December coffee broke from twenty and fifteen-hundredths to
eighteen and sixty-five hundredths cents, closing at a loss for the day
of 275 points. The first sale of December on Monday was at seventeen and
four-tenths cents, or 125 points lower; and after numerous erratic
variations, the price broke to sixteen cents, a drop of six and
one-quarter cents in less than two weeks. Business on that day was of
enormous volume, in round numbers 412,000 bags; and approximately
$1,500,000 was put up in margins. For the next three days the decline
was temporarily halted, and December, at one time, was up three and
one-quarter cents from the bottom (nineteen and one-quarter cents). On
June 17, another battle commenced, December dropping back to seventeen
cents. Then came a rally to eighteen and one-tenth cents, a drop to
sixteen and one-half cents; another rally to eighteen and one-tenth,
and, on June 24, another break to the previous low level of sixteen
cents for December. This sharp reversal in less than a month was
traceable largely to more favorable news from Brazil, the 1888-89 crop
being estimated at 6,827,000 bags.
Following a rally to nineteen and six-tenths cents during the next month
(July, 1887), the pendulum again swung downward. The climax came with
the culmination of the "European fiasco" of the spring of 1888. Reports
were received that various European coffee firms had failed; and future
contracts in the American market sold as low as nine cents in March.
_A Famous European Bull Campaign_
The next campaign of interest lasted more than two and a half years. In
September, 1891, there was a corner in the local market which forced the
September price up to seventeen and one-quarter cents. George
Kaltenbach, a wealthy speculator living in Paris, combining with three
operators in Havre, Hamburg, and Antwerp, succeeded in breaking the
corner, forcing the price down to ten and eight-tenths cents. They then
changed to the bull side, buying heavily in all markets of the world.
This was continued until early in 1893, bringing the price back to
fifteen cents. Although his associates then returned to the bear side,
Kaltenbach kept on buying; and aided by bad crop reports from Brazil, he
worked the price up as high as seventeen and seven-tenths cents. At one
time it was said that his profits were more than one million dollars.
The collapse of this deal occurred in May, 1893, involving thirty firms
in Hamburg, Havre, and Rotterdam. As Kaltenbach could not keep his large
New York holdings margined, they were thrown on the market, bringing
about a sharp break, and causing the failure of his New York agents,
T.M. Barr & Co.
The present era of large crops began in 1894, Brazil's production for
1894-95 being placed at 6,695,000 bags. Nevertheless, Guzman Blanco, a
former president of Venezuela, then living in Paris, and said to be
worth about $20,000,000, attempted to run a corner in April, 1895. He
bought 200,000 bags of spot coffee in Havre warehouses and accumulated a
big line of futures in various markets. Assisted by reports of cholera
in Rio and some reduction in Brazilian crops, he enjoyed temporary
success, the price of Rio 7s in New York rising to fifteen and one-half
cents in October, 1895. Thereafter, there was an almost continuous
decline. In the spring of 1898, a vigorous bear campaign was conducted,
largely in the form of market letters; and by November, Rio 7s here had
dropped to four and one-half cents.
_The Bubonic Plague Boom_
The so-called "bubonic plague boom" halted this prolonged downward
movement for a time in 1899-1900. The boom derived its name from the
outbreak of bubonic plague in Brazil, as a result of which the ports of
that country were quarantined. In addition, Brazilian steamers arriving
at New York were placed in quarantine; and the impossibility of
unloading their cargoes caused a temporary shortage. As a result, prices
rose from four and one-quarter cents in September, 1899, to eight and
one-quarter cents in July, 1900. The quarantine being lifted, the bears
again became aggressive; and by April, 1901, they had forced the price
back to five cents.
There was another short-lived attempt to establish a corner in
September, 1901. Receipts at Rio and Santos had been running light,
encouraging a local clique embracing Skiddy, Minford & Company; W.H.
Crossman & Bro.; and Gruner & Company, to endeavor to gain control. The
arrivals at Brazilian ports suddenly increased to the largest volume
ever known up to that time; and, with vigorous opposition from operators
in Havre, the corner here was speedily broken.
The opening of the new century witnessed the beginning of another new
coffee era, Santos permanently displacing Rio as the world's largest
source of supply. The figures for 1900-01 were: Santos, 2,945,000 bags;
Rio, 2,413,000 bags.
Huge crops then became a regular thing in Brazil. That of 1901-02 was
far in excess of estimates, being 15,000,000 bags; while 20,000,000 bags
were produced in 1902-03. As a result, the world's coffee trade became
completely demoralized for the time being. In August, 1902, contracts
for July, 1903, delivery sold at six and one-tenths cents. By June,
1903, they had fallen to three and fifty-five hundredths cents, the
lowest price ever recorded for coffee.
_The Southern Boom_
As is invariably the case when prices reach extreme levels, either high
or low, the pendulum swung back rapidly in the other direction. Based on
the unprecedentedly low prices, the so-called "cotton crowd" started
what was generally known as "the southern boom". Various cotton traders
in New York and the South, under the leadership of D.J. Sully, the
one-time "cotton king", and ably assisted by prominent local coffee
firms, became extremely active on the buying side; and by February,
1904, they had forced the price up to eleven and eighty-five hundredths
cents. This figure, the highest since 1896, was reached on February 2,
which proved to be another day of enormous speculative dealings,
involving roundly 462,000 bags. This marked another turning point; the
three succeeding days of record-breaking operations on the Exchange
witnessing a break of roughly two cents. Mr. Sully went on a vacation on
February 3, and the Sielcken interests sold on a large scale. Business
for that day was placed at 555,000 bags, closing prices being about
one-half cent lower. This brought on enormous liquidation by western
bulls on the following day, approximately 500,000 bags. As a result,
prices lost twenty-five to sixty-five points on a turn-over of about
642,000 bags. All records for business were smashed on the following
day, February 5. The official record was 689,000 bags, but trade
estimates made it more than 1,000,000 bags. On that day, southern
interests liquidated heavily, causing net losses of eighty to ninety
points. Doubtless the break would have been more severe had it not been
for buying by the Sielcken people and several other strong interests at
and below seven and one-quarter cents for September contracts.
_The Story of Valorization_
The valorization, or equalization, of coffee originated in Brazil. When
the original plan was threatened with disaster, Hermann Sielcken stepped
in and saved the Brazil planters from ruin; the Brazil government from
possible revolution; and, incidentally, won for himself and those who
were his partners in the enterprise much unenviable notoriety.
The principle of valorization is generally conceded to be economically
unsound, because it encourages overproduction. And valorization in
Brazil would have been a failure, had it not been for a fortuitous
combination of short crops, Hermann Sielcken's genius, and the World
War. Because of the lessons learned in this experience, Brazil's
subsequent valorization enterprises have run more smoothly.
A rapidly increasing world demand, a wonderfully fertile soil, and cheap
labor kept the Brazil coffee industry in a flourishing condition nearly
to the close of 1889. Coffee consumption was increasing, especially in
the United States. By April 1890, the average import price per pound of
Rio No. 7 in this country was nineteen cents; and Brazil was supplying
only about half our needs. Virgin soil was still available in Brazil,
and immigration furnished all the needful labor. Easy profits led to
increased investment and careless methods. Her planters were drunk with
prosperity. For six years, nearly all the three million inhabitants of
São Paulo, Brazil's largest coffee producing state, "entirely gave up
planting corn, rice, beans, everything they needed. They bought them
because coffee was so immensely profitable that they put all their labor
in coffee."
Brazil had been going through a period of low exchange. Paper money fell
below par. The exaggerated issues of it, which provoked the collapse of
exchange, suddenly endowed Brazil with an abundant circulation of money.
Production was enormously stimulated. New undertakings sprang up on
every hand. Armies of agricultural laborers were recruited in Europe and
shipped into the coffee districts. And then, to make the story short,
supply passed demand, surplus stocks began to appear, prices began to
fall, and fell until they dropped below the cost of production.
It was in 1896-97, when the new trees came into bearing by the tens and
hundreds of thousands, that São Paulo's folly began to tell. By October
of that year the price of Rio No. 7 in New York had fallen to about
seven cents. The decline continued, until, in 1903, it hung around five
cents. Then began the winter of São Paulo's discontent. Too late, the
state government tried by taxing new coffee estates, to force the
planters to raise crops to supply their own necessities. The times grew
harder.
Mortgages held by large coffee houses and bankers were being foreclosed.
The industry was passing into European hands. The smaller planters were
becoming desperate; and desperation is only a step from revolution. The
government of the state of São Paulo knew this; and to save the state,
it finally promised it would buy the next coffee crop, and would hold it
for the planters at such a price as would be necessary to continue the
industry. The protagonists of this plan to valorize coffee were Dr.
Jorge Tibiriçá, Dr. Augusto Ramos, and Dr. Albuquerque Lins.
During all the period covering São Paulo's rise and fall in coffee, the
financial genius who was to lead her again into the land of plenty had
been quietly acquiring a knowledge of her problems--also, the ability to
make money out of their solution.
Valorization was undertaken to save the coffee industry. Its intent was
good, even if the theory was bad. The scheme was not new, and there were
no encouraging precedents to augur its success. The situation was
desperate and seemed to justify the trial of a desperate remedy. São
Paulo attempted to carry the load; but her resources were insufficient.
The bumper world crop of 19,090,000 bags in 1901-02 was followed, in
1906-07, with another extraordinary yield of 24,307,000 bags, of which
Brazil alone produced 20,192,000 bags. To make good its promise to the
planters, ready cash was needed; and so the São Paulo government sent a
special commissioner to Europe to get it. For sixty years the
Rothschilds had acted as Brazil's bankers. The commissioner went to the
Rothschilds first. He was flatly refused. After that, he was turned down
by practically every bank on the continent. It looked as if the bankers
had entered into a gentlemen's agreement to make it unanimous. Then the
commissioner bethought himself of the coffee merchants; and that thought
naturally suggested Hermann Sielcken, who, singularly enough, happened
to be conveniently resting at nearby Baden-Baden. In August, 1906, the
commissioner waited upon Mr. Sielcken and begged his aid.
It was Sielcken's hour of triumph. For years he had been soliciting
Brazil. Now the tables were turned, and Brazil was asking favors of
Sielcken.
The rest of the story is best told by Robert Sloss, who wrote it for
_World's Work_ from information furnished by trade authorities--and even
by Mr. Sielcken, himself, in various speeches, newspaper articles, and
on the witness stand. It is presented here with certain minor
corrections by the author:
"Well, what do you want me to do?" asked Hermann Sielcken of the
commissioner from the state of São Paulo.
"We want you to finance for us five to eight million bags of
coffee," said the commissioner blandly.
Here was an adventure. Here was a proposition to lift bodily out of
the market half as much coffee as the world's total production had
averaged for the ten preceding years when prices had been so low.
Presumably, if this were done, prices would be doubled. But Hermann
Sielcken shook his head.
"No," he said, "there is not the slightest chance for it, not the
slightest." And then he pointed out that there would be "no
financial assistance coming from anywhere" if the São Paulo
planters kept on raising such ridiculously large crops of coffee.
The commissioner assured him that the prospect was for smaller
crops in future. Hermann Sielcken was not so sure about it "At a
price low enough," he mused, "I might be able to raise funds to pay
eighty percent on a value of seven cents a pound for Rio No. 5."
The commissioner was dismayed. His government had already promised
to take coffee from the planters at about a cent a pound above the
market, and the market then stood at nearly eight cents. The
government would have to dig to make up the difference. Hermann
Sielcken's terms were the best that could be got, however, and the
commissioner accepted them.
From that time forth Hermann Sielcken was the head of the movement.
He approached a few large coffee merchants, including his former
rivals, Arbuckle Brothers, and drew up a contract. The merchants
agreed to advance eighty percent of the sum required to buy two
million bags of coffee at seven cents a pound. If the market went
above seven cents, the government was to make no purchases. If it
fell below seven cents, the government was to make good the
difference to the merchants by cable.
Before the season was well advanced the unexpected happened. Brazil
was reaping the largest coffee harvest in the history of the world.
The two million bags of coffee purchased by the government were as
a drop in a bucket. Financed by Hermann Sielcken, Schroeder, the
great London banker, and a few prominent European merchants, the
government was forced to buy almost nine million bags. Toward the
end of 1907, the government had lifted half of the world's visible
supply of coffee, but the market stood only a trifle above six
cents a pound. The government was practically bankrupt.
Hermann Sielcken now enlisted the Rothschilds on his side, and
shifted the financial burden from the shoulders of the coffee
merchants to those of the Paris bankers and their American
associates. Then the Rothschilds imposed their conditions on the
government of Brazil. A national law was passed determining a heavy
penalty for any one who planted a new coffee tree in Brazil. The
government guaranteed that not more than mine million bags of the
next coffee crop and not more than ten million bags of any
succeeding crop should be exported.
By the end of 1911, the coffee market stood well above thirteen
cents. Here was a rise of more than one hundred percent in two
years, more than sixty percent in six months. Evidently,
valorization coffee in the hands of the bankers' committee had
become a gilt-edged security. But how?
During the five crop years since the "plan" was launched on the
heights above Baden, nearly 90,000,000 bags of coffee had been
raised in the world. The bankers' committee still held 5,108,000
bags of this. At the highest estimate, consumption had exceeded
production by only 4,000,000 bags. Here was a shortage of only a
little more than ten percent in supply as against demand, so far as
crops go. Yet there had been a rise of more than one hundred
percent in two years in the price of coffee on the New York Coffee
Exchange.... Upon the merchant's ability to deliver coffee on the
New York Coffee Exchange depends the price of coffee in the world.
That explains why the bankers' committee from the beginning refused
absolutely to sell valorization coffee on the public exchanges of
the world. In Europe, they put it up at auction; and when it didn't
go, it was bought in for them. In America, they announced in a
printed circular that valorization coffee would be sold only on
condition that the purchaser would not deliver it on the New York
Coffee Exchange.
Hermann Sielcken absolutely refused to sell coffee to the merchants
on the Exchange. Arbuckle Brothers kept on buying coffee heavily,
as if they would corner the market. They resold the coffee,
however, at private sales, exacting a written contract from the
buyer that he would not deliver the coffee on the New York Coffee
Exchange, or resell it to any one that would so deliver it. The
Coffee Exchange began an investigation, but nothing ever came of
it.
Shortly after the valorization committee had apparently cleared up
$25,000,000 in one year, the restriction as to the delivery of
valorization coffee on the New York Coffee Exchange was officially
removed. Yet neither from Hermann Sielcken nor from Arbuckle
Brothers, it is charged, could one buy any coffee to deliver for
that purpose. In 1911, coffee rose to sixteen cents per pound.
At the end, it was found that the committee's holdings had been marketed
at the various sales on a basis, for Santos 4s, from eight and
five-eighths cents minimum, to the final sale here forced by the United
States government, at which time the price realized was sixteen and
three-quarter cents for Santos 4s, and fourteen cents for Rio 7s.
The one fly in the valorization ointment was Senator G.W. Norris, of
Nebraska, who early in 1911 called for a congressional investigation of
the operations of the valorization syndicate, which he said was costing
the American people $35,000,000 a year. The attorney-general was
instructed to report as to whether or not there was a coffee trust. It
was a leisurely investigation, which encountered many snags placed in
its way by those who believed it would be against international policy
to question too closely the participation of the Brazil government in
the enterprise. Politics played no inconsiderable part in the
investigation, which dragged along until May 18, 1912, when an action
was begun in the Federal District Court for the southern district of New
York, alleging conspiracy in restraint of trade on the part of Hermann
Sielcken; Bruno Schroeder, of J. Henry Schroeder & Co.; Edouard Bunge;
the Vicomte des Touches; Dr. Paulo da Silva Prado; Theodor Wille; the
Société Generale; and the New York Dock Co.; also praying for injunction
and receivership of the valorization coffee then stored in the United
States, and amounting to 746,539 bags. The injunction was denied.
Immediately thereafter, rumors began to circulate that the government's
coffee suit would never be tried. The Brazilian ambassador threatened
diplomatic interference, and Attorney-General Wickersham let it be known
that a friendly settlement might be effected. Sielcken boldly challenged
the authorities to prosecute the case, and even seemed to invite
criminal proceedings against himself. Saving the government's face, and
Brazil's face, at one and the same time, proved to be a long and tedious
process.
Meanwhile, Senator Norris introduced in Congress a bill designed to give
the government power to seize importations of coffee when restraint of
trade was proved. It was vigorously opposed by many prominent
green-coffee men and roasters; but in February, 1913, it became enacted
into a law. It effectively killed all future valorization schemes in so
far as direct participation by this country is concerned.
About December 1, 1912, Attorney-General Wickersham accepted good-faith
assurances from Mr. Sielcken's attorney--who represented also the Brazil
government--and agreed that if the valorization coffee stored here was
sold to bona-fide purchasers before April 1, 1913, the government's suit
would be dismissed. In May, 1913, the attorney-general of the new Wilson
administration, which came into office in March of that year, issued a
statement saying that, good-faith assurances having been received from
the Brazil government that the understanding was fulfilled in letter and
spirit before the date set by the previous attorney-general, and the
entire amount of coffee disposed of to eighty dealers in thirty-three
cities, the suit would be dismissed.
In the United States Senate about the same time, Senator Norris renewed
his attack on "the international coffee trust". He charged that the
coffee sale was not as represented, but merely a transfer, and called
upon the Department of Justice for the facts, with names of the alleged
purchasers.
Attorney-General McReynolds, on May 7, 1913, declined to send to the
Senate the official correspondence in regard to the Brazil
coffee-valorization matter, because it was "incompatible with the public
interests." He did, however, send other papers on the subject. The
secretary of state sent copies of some correspondence; but the documents
were not made public. This ended the matter, although Senator Norris
called for a congressional investigation, charging that the
attorney-general had been handed a "gold brick".
Sielcken contented himself with remarking that the suit was a mistake in
the first place, and that it was a foregone conclusion the government
would be defeated. Also, he offered $5,000 to any one who could explain
the Norris bill.
Valorization, then, was started by the state of São Paulo in 1905, when
a law was passed authorizing the state to enter into an agreement with
the other Brazil states and the federal government for the adoption of
measures which would assure the valorization of coffee and facilitate a
propaganda abroad for increased consumption.
The states of São Paulo, Minãs Geraes, and Rio de Janeiro proposed,
early in 1906, to withdraw from the markets such quantities of coffee as
would keep down exports and maintain profitable prices. The plan
comprehended the interested states borrowing about $75,000,000 from
European and United States bankers with which to buy up the surplus
coffee. To take care of interest and amortization, a tax of three francs
per bag of 132 pounds (about 57 cents) was to be levied on all coffee
exports, collectable at Santos and Rio de Janeiro. Further
coffee-planting was to be checked by enforcing the law which carried a
tax sufficiently high to operate toward restriction.
When it was understood that Brazil's federal government would not
endorse the plan _in toto_, it was abandoned by Rio de Janeiro and Minãs
Geraes. However, the state of São Paulo in the course of the next two
years borrowed some $30,000,00 on its own account for valorization
purposes, obtaining half the amount direct from foreign banking
interests, and the remainder, through the Brazilian federal government,
from London sources.