Uncommon Grounds Part 7

In 1912 the New York Coffee Exchange appointed a three-man committee to study robusta. They concluded that, even in comparison to low-grade Santos, robusta was "a practically worthless bean," and they banned it from the exchange. They were particularly concerned that Javanese robusta might be labeled Java Java, which traditionally meant the finest arabica growths.

Although some robusta plants briefly were exported to Brazil, that country swiftly moved to ban them, fearing the importation of the leaf rust spore, which had yet to reach the Western Hemisphere's coffee. Elsewhere, however, particularly where hemileia vastatrix hemileia vastatrix had rendered other coffee problematic, robusta plantations popped up, since the Dutch provided a market for the beans. In India, Ceylon, and Africa, the st.u.r.dy robusta plant thrived on abandoned tea or coffee plantations, or in hot lowlands where coffee had never grown before. had rendered other coffee problematic, robusta plantations popped up, since the Dutch provided a market for the beans. In India, Ceylon, and Africa, the st.u.r.dy robusta plant thrived on abandoned tea or coffee plantations, or in hot lowlands where coffee had never grown before.

Between Cancer and Capricorn Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee, now exported a negligible amount of the bean, largely due to graft and corruption extending from King Menelik down to the country's customs agents, and the situation in Yemen wasn't much better. Harrar and Mocha still produced some of the world's best beans, but they were notoriously variable in quality. By this time Jamaica's Blue Mountain coffee was famed for its full-bodied flavor. Although the British consumed mostly tea, they also appreciated the finer coffees of the world, taking most of the Blue Mountain as well as a majority of the high-quality Costa Rican crop. Americans as well as Europeans prized the sweet, rich flavor of the coffee grown in the Kona district of Hawaii.

Gradually coffee reached other mountainous regions around the world, located between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. The British encouraged the infant industry in British East Africa, soon to be known as Kenya and Uganda. Coffee had to come full circle, back to Africa. Even though arabica coffee originated in nearby Ethiopia, the seed was imported by missionaries from the island of Reunion (formerly Bourbon) in 1901, followed by imports of Jamaican Blue Mountain stock. Despite the arrival of leaf rust in 1912, the coffee exports from British East Africa doubled each year until World War I delayed developments. After the war, Kenyan and Ugandan planters-all white-continued to expand coffee growth, encouraged by new British-built railways.

Brazil nonetheless continued to dominate the coffee industry.

9.

Selling an Image in the Jazz Age Professor Prescott speaks of the influence of coffee as a "beneficent exhilaration" and as tending to increase the power to do muscular work as well as the power of concentration in mental effort. . . . In a sad world, and especially in a country like ours, recently and const.i.tutionally deprived of wine . . . the function of coffee in bringing serene delight is an important one.

-Boston Transcript (newspaper), October 18, 1923 Transcript (newspaper), October 18, 1923

While coffee-growing countries vied to supply their share of caffeine to the industrialized countries of the North, the jazzed-up North Americans entered a golden age of hustle in which business, advertising, and consumption defined a decade. Coffee emerged as a widely accepted drink, and it fueled the energetic decade of the twenties.

Prohibition and the Roaring Twenties During World War I the American temperance movement had persuaded Congress that the use of grain to make alcohol was an unpatriotic waste of potential food. Along with long-term pressure from the temperance movement, this argument pushed the legislature to pa.s.s the Eighteenth Amendment to the Const.i.tution in 1917, prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages in the United States. In January 1919 the amendment was ratified by the states and went into effect the following year, along with the Volstead Act to enforce it. Most coffee men rejoiced, a.s.suming that their beverage would replace booze as the preferred pick-me-up on social occasions. "I believe there are great possibilities in coffeehouses succeeding the saloon as a community center," one roaster said.

Coffee consumption did climb slowly throughout the 1920s. "Prohibition has created a situation favorable to increased consumption of coffee," wrote William Ukers in the Tea & Coffee Trade Journal Tea & Coffee Trade Journal. "While the coffeehouse idea has not expanded as rapidly as some antic.i.p.ated, nevertheless coffee cafes and lunch counters have supplanted hundreds of saloons."42 Changing eating habits also helped, as light midday meals at luncheonettes and soda fountains brought requests for a sandwich and a cup of coffee. Some factories began to offer free coffee as a work incentive. As Americans became ever more mobile on expanding roadways, they chose coffee as the drink for driving. The truck stop meant the coffee stop. "The 2,000,000 American soldiers who went overseas," Ukers continued, "and there had their coffee three times a day, learned to have a keener appreciation of coffee's benefits, and since returning to civilian life are using it more than ever before." Changing eating habits also helped, as light midday meals at luncheonettes and soda fountains brought requests for a sandwich and a cup of coffee. Some factories began to offer free coffee as a work incentive. As Americans became ever more mobile on expanding roadways, they chose coffee as the drink for driving. The truck stop meant the coffee stop. "The 2,000,000 American soldiers who went overseas," Ukers continued, "and there had their coffee three times a day, learned to have a keener appreciation of coffee's benefits, and since returning to civilian life are using it more than ever before."

Yet the most positive influence was probably the first national advertising campaign. Funded by the Brazilian growers via a domestic tax on every exported bag but executed by N.W. Ayer, an American advertising firm, the campaign got under way in 1919 with spots in popular weekly magazines. Most of the ads were bland and predictable. "Your Uncle Sam provided his boys with COFFEE." Coffee was "the drink of intellectuals." All ended with the slogan, "Coffee-the Essential Drink."

After a New York roaster complained that the ads were "spineless, supine and too d.a.m.ned dignified," the copy became a bit more aggressive, fighting back at Postum and other coffee bashers. "It is so easy to get false notions, but but-of course COFFEE COFFEE is Healthful is Healthful." Ads were placed not only in women's magazines but also in medical journals. "Don't Take the Joy Out of Breakfast," the coffee men begged doctors. "Yet isn't that just what you are doing when you unreservedly rule Coffee from the dietary of every patient?" The joint advertising committee even produced generic ads meant to help individual roasters. "Good coffee means _______ brand of coffee. It is fresh and clean-with a fine full body and a rare, rich fragrance. You'll be much taken with the taste!"

The content of the advertising probably didn't make as much difference as its repet.i.tion and visibility. At least there finally was was national advertising for coffee-even if financed by growers in another country. The first year, the Brazilians paid $250,000 for the magazine and newspaper spots, while the U.S. coffee men contributed only $59,000, enough to finance a film, national advertising for coffee-even if financed by growers in another country. The first year, the Brazilians paid $250,000 for the magazine and newspaper spots, while the U.S. coffee men contributed only $59,000, enough to finance a film, The Gift of Heaven The Gift of Heaven, depicting coffee cultivation and consumption, which was shown in some two hundred theaters across the country and donated to colleges and high schools. They also developed a kit aimed at fourth, fifth, and sixth graders-for suggested use in geography, history, foods and cookery, school a.s.semblies, and even English composition-hoping to indoctrinate young children with coffee's virtues. A Coffee Club Coffee Club monthly newsletter presented the latest-breaking (favorable) coffee news, along with a cartoon featuring the exploits of Kernel Koffee, a combination tyc.o.o.n-southern gentleman. "Men of affairs talk business over their coffee," he explained. "It gives them inspiration." monthly newsletter presented the latest-breaking (favorable) coffee news, along with a cartoon featuring the exploits of Kernel Koffee, a combination tyc.o.o.n-southern gentleman. "Men of affairs talk business over their coffee," he explained. "It gives them inspiration."43 The national advertising campaign helped boost coffee's image and sales, but the Brazilians objected that although they were paying for the ads, none so much as mentioned Santos or Rio coffees. Brazil thereafter began receiving plugs in the promotional copy, even though that country's coffee generally lowered the quality of a blend. In addition, few roasters donated money toward the campaign, even though it benefited them. In an effort to punish nonpartic.i.p.ating roasters, newspaper ads were limited to regions whose roasters had contributed money. Consequently, ads appeared in only thirty-six states in 1921. The joint publicity committee of the National Coffee Roasters a.s.sociation drafted an appeal to the much-hated peddlers, chain stores, and mail-order coffee companies. "This campaign is yours as much as any other coffee interest's. You have shared in its benefits."

The twenties also witnessed the coffee industry's first effort to sway public opinion with commissioned scientific research. In 1921 the National Coffee Roasters a.s.sociation hired MIT professor Samuel C. Prescott to review existing studies on coffee's health effects, as well as to conduct his own experiments. After three years his "dispa.s.sionate study of the vast literature on the subject," combined with his "long-continued studies," led him to conclude (not surprisingly) that "for the overwhelming majority of adults, Coffee is a safe and desirable beverage." Prescott also a.s.serted that coffee "whips up the flagging energies [and] enhances the endurance." It was useful as an antiseptic and "an encourager of elimination." The a.s.sociation's joint publicity committee trumpeted Prescott's conclusions (omitting mention of coffee's diuretic effects) in newspaper ads that reached 15 million readers countrywide. Reporters and food writers across America picked up the Prescott story, often adding favorable editorial comments.

One indication of just how much the public att.i.tude toward coffee had changed in twenty years was the decline in Postum sales. Vicious anticoffee ads in the grand tradition of C.W. Post no longer worked. In 1924 Postum hired the Erwin Wasey Agency to take over from the old in-house agency. New ads featured radiantly healthy, happy people enjoying the drink. "It is not an imitation of coffee or anything else," the 1924 copy proclaimed in the Sat.u.r.day Evening Post Sat.u.r.day Evening Post. "It is an excellent drink in its own right." At the same time, account executive John Orr Young junked the old "There's a Reason" slogan as old-fas.h.i.+oned and silly. The new ads temporarily halted Postum's sales decline, but the drink would never again challenge coffee's supremacy.

The Coffeehouse Resurgence Owing to Prohibition, positive publicity, and a public eager to socialize, coffeehouses opened throughout the twenties in major U.S. cities. A 1923 New York Times New York Times feature article announced a "Coffee-Drunken New York." The subt.i.tle explained, "That's Why It Is So Relentlessly Tense, or, So to Say, Jazzed Up." Coffee officially entered-and helped to create-the jazz age. The article stated, "The number of men and women who breakfast on nothing but coffee is increasing. And there is an all-day call for coffee as a pick-me-up after moments of stress in business." feature article announced a "Coffee-Drunken New York." The subt.i.tle explained, "That's Why It Is So Relentlessly Tense, or, So to Say, Jazzed Up." Coffee officially entered-and helped to create-the jazz age. The article stated, "The number of men and women who breakfast on nothing but coffee is increasing. And there is an all-day call for coffee as a pick-me-up after moments of stress in business."

That same year the U.S. per-capita consumption of coffee rose to thirteen pounds-the figure had hovered around ten or eleven pounds for years-with Americans consuming half of the world's supply. "You're the cream in my coffee," crooned a popular 1928 love song. "You will always be my necessity, I'd be lost without you." By that time coffee indeed had become a staple of American life.

Having clawed her way into the man's world of coffee roasting, Alice Foote MacDougall made her fortune during the twenties with her coffeehouses. Just before Christmas 1919 she opened the Little Coffee Shop in Grand Central Station. At first, in her tiny twelve-by-sixteen-foot s.p.a.ce, she sold only whole coffee beans-and not very many of them. Then she added a huge electric percolator to entice potential buyers with the aroma. Seeking to create "a place of rest and beauty, a little haven to entice the weary commuter to sit down," she began to sell coffee by the cup at tiny tables.

Then one bl.u.s.tery February day in 1921, MacDougall had an inspiration. "As I entered the Grand Central, I found the huge corridors packed with a damp ma.s.s of miserable humanity." She called her apartment and ordered her waffle iron and ingredients, and placed a small sign in the window, WAFFLES. She gave them away, charging for the coffee only. The following Sat.u.r.day she tried it again but this time charged for the waffles. "Almost before we realized it, we were serving coffee and waffles every day, and all day, and turning people away by carloads."

In 1922 MacDougall opened a second coffeehouse on Forty-third Street and served 250 customers the first day. She hired black women to cook the waffles at each table, "suggesting the Southern-waffle, colored-mammy, log-cabin idea."44 Soon she added sandwiches and then "all the delicious foods we could think of." Soon she added sandwiches and then "all the delicious foods we could think of."

By March 1923 MacDougall's coffeehouse was serving three full meals to capacity crowds, but she was exhausted from eighteen-hour days and took a European vacation. "Soon the beauty of Italy and of the gentle laughing Italian people overflowed my senses and life began anew." Back in New York, MacDougall rented an adjoining store, doubling her seating capacity less than a year after opening. The new s.p.a.ce was narrow, long, and eighteen feet high. Inspired by Italian walls, "broken and crumbling with age . . . every crack filled with tiny vines or baby flowers," MacDougall transformed the high wall of the annex, and the s.p.a.ce below became a small Italian courtyard, or cortile cortile, which is what she renamed the restaurant. She made her coffeehouses "places of rest for New York, as Italy had been a soul-reviving experience for me."

At the end of the year, with business booming, MacDougall opened a third coffeehouse, the Piazzetta, on West Forty-third Street, based on a little square in Naples. The fourth, the Firenze, opened on Forty-sixth Street in 1925, imitating Florence. In 1927 she opened her fifth and largest coffeehouse, the Sevillia, on West Fifty-seventh Street, signing a million-dollar lease for the property ($50,000 a year for twenty years). By the time she published her autobiography in 1928, MacDougall's coffeehouses employed 700 people, served 6,000 customers a day, and grossed $2 million a year. The following year she opened her last coffeehouse on Maiden Lane. Though MacDougall's extraordinary success was unusual, many other coffeehouses also opened in major American cities during the decade.

Eight O'Clock Rocks and Jewel s.h.i.+nes While coffeehouses thrived during the twenties, so did direct coffee sales to consumers, with A & P leading the way. During World War I John Hartford opened hundreds of stores. After the war the pace quickened, with thousands thousands of new stores. Overall sales rose from $193 million in 1919 to $440 million in 1925, by which time there were 14,000 A & P stores across the United States. of new stores. Overall sales rose from $193 million in 1919 to $440 million in 1925, by which time there were 14,000 A & P stores across the United States.

A & P had become the largest chain of stores in the world. The Hartford Brothers decentralized into six divisions, each with its own president and staff organization. A central purchasing office oversaw subsidiary corporations. Berent Johan Friele ran the American Coffee Corporation, the coffee-buying arm of the company. A German-schooled Norwegian, Friele was raised in his family's coffee business. While working on the export side in Brazil, he did some work for A & P. In October 1919, at the age of twenty-four, he was hired full time to supervise A & P purchases in Brazil. Over the next two decades Friele became the most powerful and knowledgeable coffee buyer on earth. By 1929 A & P sold over a billion dollars' worth of groceries, with coffee-ground fresh at the checkout counter-its best seller.

The Jewel Tea Company also thrived during the twenties, though the company had nearly gone bankrupt at the beginning of the decade. In 1916, with 850 wagon routes and a net profit of $1.4 million the previous year, the company had embarked on a major expansion program, more than doubling the number of wagon routes and opening three new coffee-roasting plants. Just after the gigantic Hoboken, New Jersey, plant-intended to supply most of the coffee for Jewel-went into operation, the U.S. War Department commandeered it for war production. At the same time, with so many young men at the front, Jewel had difficulty finding appropriate new wagon men.

In 1918 profits fell to a mere $700,000, and in 1919 the company lost $1.8 million. With the company failing, founders Frank Skiff and Frank Ross retired, and thirty-six-year-old John M. Hanc.o.c.k, who had served as a naval purchasing agent, led a financial retrenchment. In 1922 Hanc.o.c.k, newly elected president, hired his old navy buddy, Maurice H. Karker, as the Jewel general sales manager.

Hanc.o.c.k and Karker lit an inspirational fire under the company. Net profits grew to $624,000 in 1923 and $855,000 in 1924. That year Hanc.o.c.k left to join Lehman Brothers, and Karker took over. By 1926 he had pushed profits to $1.2 million, and the last horse-drawn wagon had been replaced by a delivery truck.

Perhaps more than any other coffee business, Jewel profited from the motorization of America, though during the twenties the incredible transformation wrought by the automobile affected every business. Villages once had prospered only along railroad tracks. They now formed at the confluence of roadways. Along these newly paved roads sprung up filling stations, hot dog stands, coffee shops, restaurants, and campgrounds-all more places to buy and drink coffee. A more mobile nation could drive more easily to a chain store for bargains, even if it meant spending more on gas, but the better roadways and growing suburbs also allowed Jewel drivers to cover new fertile ground.45 In 1929 construction began for Jewel Park, the future company headquarters, on two hundred acres in Barrington, a rural community near Chicago. A planned community would surround the plant, with low-cost homes for Jewel employees. By the end of the decade, Jewel had rebounded brilliantly, with $7 million in a.s.sets, 1,200 motor routes, 2,400 employees, and nearly a million faithful customers. Coffee provided over half of the sales for the company, with the Hoboken roasting plant capable of turning out 150,000 pounds a day. Jewel had become a fixture in the lives of loyal customers, while every employee was indoctrinated in the "Jewel Way," exhorted to think like the salesman who said, "If I can get to the point where somebody will refer to me as a typical Jewel man, I'll feel perfectly satisfied."

The West Coast Brands Move East In San Francisco, which now specialized in the higher-quality Colombian and Central American mild coffees, Hills Brothers, Folger's, and MJB continued to battle for supremacy while expanding their sales territories toward the east. Following Hills Brothers, MJB and Folger's finally had adopted the vacuum can. Folger's Golden Gate Coffee even began to appear in a red can like Hills Brothers. "These red containers make a striking display. They attract attention," advised a 1920 Folger's letter to dealers. The memo itself attracted the attention of H. G. "Gray" Hills, the son of original founder A.H. "Some nerve," wrote Gray Hills in the margin of the letter he pasted into the Hills Brothers sc.r.a.pbook.

Hills Brothers had emerged as the leading regional coffee. The two aging Hills brothers, A.H. and R.W., still monitored the business but their children had taken over the day-to-day decisions. Prior to World War I, Hills Brothers Red Can vacuum-packed coffee was sold throughout the seven western states, in part of Montana, and in Alaska. In 1920 it moved into New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and the rest of Montana. Throughout the rest of the twenties, the company steadily marched east, systematically saturating every new area with newspaper ads while salesmen set up window displays in local retail outlets.

The original Jim Folger's son James A. Folger II continued to lead the oldest San Francisco coffee firm. On July 5, 1921, Folger, like his father, died prematurely of a heart attack at fifty-seven. Ernest R. Folger, his younger brother, now a.s.sumed the presidency of both Folger companies (in Kansas City and San Francisco). When James A. Folger III graduated from Yale in 1922 with a degree in physics and economics, he joined the family business in the new advertising department. In Kansas City, Frank Atha's sons, Russell and Joseph, also joined the firm.

Under the new management, Folger's newspaper ads boasted, "We Go 10,000 Miles for Coffee," the distance the beans traveled from plantation to roaster. The ads also played up the insecurity of housewives, for whom a good after-dinner coffee meant social status. Folger's billboards offered "A Word to the Wives . . . Folger's Coffee," while a s.e.xist 1922 ad explained, "It's a Vital Matter, Madam-to the Men." If the coffee lacked flavor, "It's a brand's brand's fault, not yours." fault, not yours."

MJB, under the leaders.h.i.+p of Max Brandenstein after Mannie died, targeted the lower price range. "Which Coffee is the MOST ECONOMICAL? In a Coffee with the flavor and great strength of M.J.B. you use half as much as of inferior grades." Such a claim was preposterous, leading only to a watered-down brew-but it did sell coffee.

Hills Brothers hired N. W. Ayer to design their advertising campaigns. In 1921 they placed Red Can spots in every streetcar west of the Rocky Mountains. "Rich flavored and full bodied: Selected from the finest plantations and vacuum packed." That September, Eddie Hills, R.W.'s son, wrote to his uncle that "we have been going very strong this month. [For two weeks] we were obliged to run the factory until ten o'clock at night. . . . Things have been running very smoothly with no complications."46 Yet things soon did did become complicated. To boost sales, the spreading chain grocery stores sometimes sold brand-name coffee below their own cost. The small grocer could not compete. Led by Hills Brothers, several coffee firms inst.i.tuted a "minimum resale price" to protect the traditional retailers. Beginning in fall 1920, Hills Brothers refused to sell to any firm that did not resell their coffee for become complicated. To boost sales, the spreading chain grocery stores sometimes sold brand-name coffee below their own cost. The small grocer could not compete. Led by Hills Brothers, several coffee firms inst.i.tuted a "minimum resale price" to protect the traditional retailers. Beginning in fall 1920, Hills Brothers refused to sell to any firm that did not resell their coffee for at least at least a nickel more than the wholesale price, which allowed approximately an 11 percent markup-usually just enough to cover overhead and give a small profit to the grocer. The rapidly growing Piggly Wiggly chain balked, vaunting the fact that it sold only at cut-rate prices. "No Hills Coffee," its headline advertising read. "Shall the Consumer Be the Goat? No! Never! A thousand times No!" The ad explained that Hills Brothers insisted that the chain raise prices 1 cent per pound. a nickel more than the wholesale price, which allowed approximately an 11 percent markup-usually just enough to cover overhead and give a small profit to the grocer. The rapidly growing Piggly Wiggly chain balked, vaunting the fact that it sold only at cut-rate prices. "No Hills Coffee," its headline advertising read. "Shall the Consumer Be the Goat? No! Never! A thousand times No!" The ad explained that Hills Brothers insisted that the chain raise prices 1 cent per pound.

For its stand Hills Brothers became an instant hero to smaller retailers. A California trade journal, the Retail Grocers Advocate Retail Grocers Advocate, urged readers to "boost Hills Bros. Coffee at every opportunity-morning, noon and night." The editor praised Hills Brothers for standing up to Piggly Wiggly. He blasted MJB, Folger's, and Schilling as "outlaw roasters" for selling to the chains and not enforcing a minimum retail price. A Hills Brothers executive declared it "a war, not a battle" and vowed a fight to the finish.

Despite the minimum resale price, the chains' triumph appeared inevitable. Ironically, it was hastened by the Federal Trade Commission, which had been created in 1914 for the purpose of ensuring fair compet.i.tion. In 1925 the FTC sued Hills Brothers for price fixing and constraint of trade. In vain the Hills Brothers briefs pointed out that their minimum resale policy effectively promoted promoted compet.i.tion by protecting the small corner grocery against predatory price cutting. The FTC ruled against the minimum resale price plan. compet.i.tion by protecting the small corner grocery against predatory price cutting. The FTC ruled against the minimum resale price plan.

The legal setback did not stop Hills Brothers' aggressive drive toward the east. By 1925 the firm sold nearly half its coffee outside of California, and that percentage would increase substantially in the next few years. Their ad copy played up their rugged Western origins. "The robust West loves its vigorous drink loves its vigorous drink," copy read, while an ill.u.s.tration showed a bronco rider. Another ad portrayed a mountain scene with "Gorgeous heights and deep ravines . . . and Hills Bros. Red Can Coffee." Out in this territory "a canyon is a canyon canyon-dizzy-deep and awesome. And coffee is coffee coffee!"

By 1926 Hills Brothers was spending a quarter of a million dollars on advertising, mostly in California, Oregon, Missouri, and Utah newspapers. In 1927 the firm opened a sales division in Minneapolis, quickly establis.h.i.+ng itself as the leading brand in the Twin Cities area. In December of that year N. W. Ayer conducted an industry survey of over two hundred towns in the Midwest. The emerging portrait showed an industry in transition, ripe for a major advertising campaign. Nationally advertised brands, such as Chase & Sanborn and Maxwell House, frequently appeared, but rarely as the leading brand; usually a local brand predominated. In fifty-five stores in Aurora, Illinois, for instance, the survey found eighty different brands. In addition, unbranded bulk coffee still outsold the brands in a sizable minority of the stores. Grocers in the rural areas reported that the Jewel Tea peddlers had grabbed as much as 20 percent of the entire coffee business.

In 1928 Hills Brothers opened a Chicago office. For two years they systematically canva.s.sed areas around the Midwestern city in preparation for the big push in Chicago itself. Hills Brothers began a "sampling campaign," giving away half-pound cans to everyone in a targeted small town, while installing store displays and placing full-page newspaper ads in the local papers. The results often were spectacular. In Milwaukee, when the campaign began in October 1928, Hills Brothers was virtually unknown; two months later it was the best-selling public brand of coffee in the city, though A & P's private Eight O'Clock brand still held the lead.

No longer content with batch-roasted coffee, Hills Brothers' engineers created a long roaster through which beans continuously pa.s.sed on a conveyer belt. This a.s.sembly-line approach ensured a uniform roast but destroyed the art of the individual roast master, who fine-tuned each batch to the needs of the particular beans. Hills Brothers nonetheless made their new "controlled roast" the focus of their 1929 advertising, touting it with clever cooking a.n.a.logies: "To thoroughly bake a hundred-pound fish would be a whale of a job," a headline read, along with an eye-catching ill.u.s.tration of a housewife attempting to do just that. Similarly, the ad explained, coffee had to be roasted just a bit at a time, in a continuous process. For those who didn't know much about roasting coffee, the ads were effective. More important, they were relentless and ubiquitous.

At the end of the decade, Hills Brothers was an exceedingly well-managed company. Although still family-owned, the firm was run by second-generation professional managers with near-military precision. Indeed, war a.n.a.logies surfaced frequently in sales bulletins. "The guns are loaded, men-firing has commenced-the ammunition piles are huge and handy-there will be no let-up in the battle from now on, until the Hills Bros. flag flies from the topmost height." At company conventions employees sang their allegiance to the revered old brothers, A. H. and R. W. Hills: "Hail to you our honored Chieftains! / Staunch, untiring, loyal Captains! / Success was won by constant effort, / 'Red Can' goes marching on."

The Decline of Arbuckles'

As executive M. E. Goetzinger wrote in a brief history of the firm in 1921, Arbuckle was "the world's greatest coffee business." Its Jay Street Terminal in Brooklyn was equipped with its own freight station, locomotives, tug-boats, steam lighters, car floats, and barges. It owned motor trucks and horses, a gigantic printing press for coffee wrappers and circulars, and a barrel factory, in addition to ma.s.sive roasters and a sugar refinery. "A more self-contained plant plan than ours it would be hard to imagine," Goetzinger bragged. On staff were physicians, chemists, steamboat captains, chauffeurs, teamsters, wagon makers, harness makers, machinists, draughtsmen, blacksmiths, tinsmiths, coppersmiths, coopers, carpenters, masons, painters, plumbers, riggers, typesetters, pressmen, chefs, and waiters. There were engineers of every description: mechanical, civil, electrical, chemical, railroad.

After John Arbuckle's death in 1912, his nephew, Will Jamison, had successfully launched the high-quality Yuban brand with his mother, Mrs. Catherine Arbuckle Jamison, and aunt, Christina Arbuckle, as financial partners. According to Goetzinger, the two elderly sisters took "the keenest interest in all our more important problems," but they did not take part in active management.

In 1921 Arbuckle Brothers made a fateful decision. The J. Walter Thompson advertising men, jubilant over the swift ascendancy of Yuban in New York and Chicago, wanted to take the brand national. They presented a comprehensive thirty-three-page report doc.u.menting "the opportunity for a nationally advertised coffee, and none is in so ideal a position to take advantage of it as Yuban." The agency suggested a major full-page advertising campaign in the Sat.u.r.day Evening Post Sat.u.r.day Evening Post, Ladies' Home Journal Ladies' Home Journal, and Pictorial Review Pictorial Review. The five-year campaign would cost Arbuckle Brothers approximately 1.5 cents per pound of coffee.

But Arbuckle Brothers rejected the plan. A JWT memo offers only one sentence of explanation: "After consideration, they decided that the effort and cost of going national was too great for them." It is surprising that Will Jamison would not have recognized the wisdom of the campaign, since he had been responsible for Yuban's triumphant 1912 introduction. Although it is only surmise, it seems likely that his mother and aunt, who owned the majority of the stock, vetoed what appeared to them to be an expensive and perilous undertaking.

Whatever the reason, Arbuckle Brothers stopped growing. Within the next few years the two elderly women died. Then in 1928 Will Jamison also died, leaving the company to his two sisters, Margaret and Martha Jamison, who neither married nor took much interest in the coffee business. By the end of the twenties, the Arbuckle brands had been largely pushed off the shelves by nationally advertised brands. The frustrated J. Walter Thompson men gave up the Arbuckle account and began to look for another coffee that they could promote in popular consumer magazines.

The Corporate Monsters Swallow Coffee In the summer of 1929, within months of each other, two new corporate giants came into being, signaling a new age in the production of consumer goods and the ultimate death of family businesses. In February Royal Baking Powder Company snapped up Chase & Sanborn Coffee, whose gross sales now topped $12 million annually. A few months later the Fleischmann Company bought Royal, along with Chase & Sanborn, and reincorporated as Standard Brands. Already delivering perishable yeast twice a week to grocers, the new management put coffee on the same trucks, adding the packaging date. "It's dated," ads announced, supposedly a.s.suring Chase & Sanborn's freshness.

In July 1929 Postum, which had swallowed Maxwell House Coffee, renamed itself General Foods. Maxwell House had been a very attractive acquisition. Under the leaders.h.i.+p of Joel Cheek and his numerous offspring, it had continued to expand throughout the twenties. In 1921 Maxwell House had entered New York, building a gigantic roasting plant in Brooklyn and running ads that showed flappers sipping from dainty cups, "Good to the Last Drop." In just over two years Maxwell House had overtaken Yuban to become Manhattan's top brand.

The Southern coffee's successful invasion of New York City naturally attracted the attention of the J. Walter Thompson admen, whose national ad proposal had been turned down the year before by Arbuckle Brothers. In 1922 JWT executive John Reber approached Frank Cheek, who managed the Brooklyn plant, but he couldn't shake the Maxwell House allegiance to its little-known advertising agency, Cecil, Berreto, and Cecil. After two years of courts.h.i.+p the JWT men finally won the cherished Maxwell House contract. The coffee firm had just opened a new roasting facility in Los Angeles. "An important factor in our favor proved to be our having a going California office," a JWT memo noted.

Another factor may have been the Thompson agency's increasingly sophisticated manipulation of potential consumers through a combination of surveys and psychology. In 1921 the J. Walter Thompson agency hired John B. Watson, famed as the father of behaviorism, a new school of psychology emphasizing how positive or negative stimuli could shape behavior. According to Watson, humans responded best to stimuli that evoked fear, rage, or love. "Tell [the consumer] something that will tie [him] up with fear, something that will stir up a mild rage, that will call out an affectionate or love response." Once surveys revealed which b.u.t.tons to push, "any object or person in the world can be made to call out a love response."47 He sought "such proficiency in our science that we can build any man, starting at birth, into any kind of . . . being upon order." He sought "such proficiency in our science that we can build any man, starting at birth, into any kind of . . . being upon order."

When Watson arrived at J. Walter Thompson, he spent nearly a year in a kind of advertising boot camp. "Yubanning is a strenuous job," Watson wrote to a friend. "We are up at 6:30 A.M., have a meeting at 7:45 and by 8:15 we are on the trail of the grocer." By 1924, when JWT snared the Maxwell House account, Watson had risen to vice president and become the ad agency's "chief show piece," as a snide contemporary journalist put it.

Though Watson did contribute to the Maxwell House campaign, it was run by another famed JWT account manager, James Webb Young, whose youthful experience included evangelical door-to-door Bible sales in the South. A surprising number of early copywriters with a religious background were attracted to the secular advertising pulpit. "Business had become almost the national religion of America," Frederick Lewis Allen observed in Only Yesterday Only Yesterday, his cla.s.sic book on the twenties. "So frequent was the use of the Bible to point the lessons of business and of business to point the lessons of the Bible that it was sometimes difficult to determine which was supposed to gain the most from the a.s.sociation."

Young conducted surveys of San Francisco and Chicago housewives, along with home tests of Maxwell House. Coffee, he wrote in an internal memo, was "one of the most intensively compet.i.tive fields in the world," where Maxwell House had to counter "the aggressive sales and advertising attacks of compet.i.tors who in most cases had the advantage of working in their own home territory." Moreover, the surveys revealed that 87 percent of the housewives cited flavor flavor as the important factor in their brand choice. Yet "it is extremely difficult for the average person to make clear distinctions where flavor is concerned." Young concluded that although women might as the important factor in their brand choice. Yet "it is extremely difficult for the average person to make clear distinctions where flavor is concerned." Young concluded that although women might think think they were buying flavor, they really sought social status. they were buying flavor, they really sought social status.

As a traveling Bible salesman, Young had stayed at the old Maxwell House in Nashville several times. He knew how potent stereotyped Southern charm could be, since by that time he had invented Aunt Jemima to sell pancake mixes. Now he sent copywriter Ewing Webb to Nashville to stay in the hotel and soak up the ambience. Webb wrote compelling copy that positioned Maxwell House Coffee as the aristocratic drink of the Old South. Henry Raleigh, a "high society" ill.u.s.trator, spent several weeks sketching in Nashville.

J. Walter Thompson then launched its color ads-"A Carnival of Southern Hospitality"-in the Ladies' Home Journal Ladies' Home Journal, Woman's Home Companion Woman's Home Companion, Good Housekeeping Good Housekeeping, and the Sat.u.r.day Evening Post Sat.u.r.day Evening Post. Many Cheek-Neal salesmen and plant managers were appalled, since the Maxwell House Hotel was a "rather shabby relic of its former glory." Yet image, not reality, was what mattered. The ads bent history to make Maxwell House Coffee sound more venerable than it was. "Over this coffee the North and South pledged the new brotherhood years ago." Joel Cheek in fact had invented it in 1892. Sales increases in 1925 over the previous year were gratifying: some months jumped over 100 percent. The Maxwell House ads soon were expanded to show the coffee served at other prestigious hotels around the country.

Letters of praise for the campaign poured in. "I'm going to try Maxwell House Coffee and see if it's as good as the advertising," wrote one consumer. The moral was clear to the men at J. Walter Thompson. "Coffee may be advertised just as coffee-a drink which pleases the palate," wrote James Webb Young in a company memo. "[But] we know that beauty, romance and social prestige mean more than almost anything to a woman," he continued. "The outstanding modern hotels are considered absolute arbiters of correct social usage, particularly with regard to foods." It appeared that the JWT team had, as John Watson suggested, refined its techniques so that "when you go out on the firing line with your printed message you can aim accurately and with deadly execution." To Watson's three stimuli of fear, rage, and love, the advertisers had added a fourth: a yearning for social prestige.

The Roaring Twenties ushered in a new era in advertising. Along with the professional corporate manager and public relations man, the scientific adman had arrived. "It has all changed so rapidly it is astonis.h.i.+ng and bewildering," an old-fas.h.i.+oned advertising man groused in 1926. "No business is more serious. It is based on facts." He yearned for the good old days. "Remorseless research data have destroyed all the color, adventure and romance so prevalent in the old advertising game."

In 1927 Maxwell House opened a new roasting plant in Chicago, a direct result of the JWT surveys and ad campaign there. A monoplane, the Miss Maxwell House Miss Maxwell House, flew across the country to push the coffee, while a new electronic sign in New York's Times Square flashed "Good to the Last Drop." That year Joel Cheek's coffee netted a profit of $2.7 million and became the leading national brand. The coffee also caught the eye of Edward F. Hutton, "Lucky Ned," the millionaire stockbroker who had become Marjorie Merriweather Post's second husband and, in 1923, CEO of the Postum Cereal Company.

With Hutton at the helm and Marjorie Post's financial adviser, Colby M. Chester Jr., installed as president, Postum's headquarters were moved from Battle Creek to New York City. Without diverging from the path set by C.W. Post, Postum had continued to generate cash but wasn't growing. Hutton, Chester, and other executives made a list of some thirty companies that would fit their criteria. They wanted to buy consumer brands that were already well advertised, nationally prominent, and profitable. In 1925 they commenced with Jell-O, followed by a string of other acquisitions during the rest of the twenties.

In 1928 Hutton made his biggest purchase, paying $42 million for the Cheek-Neal Company-half in cash, half in stock.48 Joel Cheek split the proceeds with his nine children and two nephews, making all of them instant millionaires. The following year Hutton reincorporated the firm, calling it General Foods. In a supreme irony, C. W. Post's anticoffee business now had become the purveyor of the country's most prominent coffee brand. Joel Cheek split the proceeds with his nine children and two nephews, making all of them instant millionaires. The following year Hutton reincorporated the firm, calling it General Foods. In a supreme irony, C. W. Post's anticoffee business now had become the purveyor of the country's most prominent coffee brand.

By the time E. F. Hutton and Marjorie Post purchased Maxwell House in 1928, American capitalism had come of age. Until the 1920s most successful corporations and businesses were still essentially family-owned affairs. Eventually the second or third generation, lacking that fire in the belly, sold out, and steely-eyed financiers, cynical advertising men, and professional managers took over. Surveys and statistics replaced intuition. The public relations man, he of the firm handshake and perpetual smile, prowled corporate halls.

The Great Stock Market-Coffee Crash Throughout the decade Brazilian coffee men had coped with overproduction by holding millions of bags off the market. In 1921 they financed a third valorization with a joint British-American loan totaling 9 million, with security provided by 4.5 million bags of coffee held in Brazil, London, and New York. When coffee prices obligingly doubled by mid-decade, the Brazilians sold most of the coffee, paying off the loan. The planters and politicians of Brazil recognized, however, that storing coffee overseas involved added expenses. President Artur da Silva Bernardes, elected in 1922, ordered the construction of eleven huge So Paulo warehouses, capable of holding 3.5 million bags. He then inst.i.tuted a policy of s.h.i.+pping just enough coffee to the ports to meet market demand. The planters would be responsible for financing the retention of their own crops.

The middlemen-exporters, importers, traders, speculators, and roasters-hated the new policy, since they now had little idea how much coffee was in the warehouses. As prices rose in early 1924, importers and roasters tried to break the system by a policy of heavy buying, hoping to lure the surplus into the open, but they failed. As usual, the rise of coffee prices provoked an outcry in the United States. At the end of June, Emmet Beeson, a New York coffee broker, suggested that the United States increase the use of the Hawaiian and Puerto Rican coffee grown by its own possessions. "In the final a.n.a.lysis, it would seem that Brazil's greedy tactics will serve to encourage the development of vast areas of coffee lands that are now going to waste in different parts of the world."

In 1925 a delegation of coffee men representing the National Coffee Roasters a.s.sociation, the chain stores, and wholesale grocers, including Berent Friele of A & P, called on Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, asking that a permanent American commission be installed in So Paulo to monitor Brazilian coffee production and warehoused stocks. Hoover could ill afford to antagonize the government by making such demands. In January 1926, however, Hoover attacked international commodity schemes before Congress. Identifying a "growing menace in international commerce and relations," he complained of price-fixing efforts that const.i.tuted an "intrusion of governments into trading operations on a vast scale." Nine raw products were subject to such agreements, but the focus was on rubber (whose price affected the automobile-mad United States) and coffee.

Julius Klein, Hoover's director of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, testified about coffee, emphasizing the secrecy of the warehouse stockpiles. "There is a vast quant.i.ty of coffee there that might suddenly be turned loose at almost any moment or under any contingency-political or otherwise." Hoover conceded that "if all these combinations had been content with fair returns," he might not object so strenuously; but due to the "inherent quality of all monopolies," speculators inevitably took over to drive prices to unreasonable levels.

Thumbing its nose at Hoover, the So Paulo government sought a 4 million ($19.2 million) loan in London. British bankers rushed to supply the money, and the bonds were oversubscribed within five minutes. The rubber problem eventually was solved by the invention of synthetic rubber, but no one could duplicate the coffee bean in a laboratory.

The Brazilians were infuriated with Hoover's grandstanding. Shortly after his speech a Brazilian journalist protested that Americans shouldn't talk, with their "Sugar Trust, Petroleum combines, cigar and tobacco monopolies, Metal Mining and refining combination, United Drugs and Cold Drinks monopolies, meat packers, [and] Motion Picture Trust." U.S. cotton and wheat growers had a system of bonded warehouses; why not the Brazilians? Besides, the major markup on coffee occurred after export. Why did American consumers have to pay 50 cents a pound for coffee imported at 20 cents?

With its newly borrowed money the So Paulo Coffee Inst.i.tute opened its own bank, the Banco do Estado do So Paulo, and began loaning money based on real estate (primarily coffee plantations), warehouse receipts, and coffee bills of lading. With the 1926 presidential election of Was.h.i.+ngton Luis Pereira de Sousa, a Paulista, the coffee growers were a.s.sured of continued federal support. Although the 1926-1927 crop had been relatively small, the inst.i.tute decided to carry over more stock in an attempt to bolster sagging prices. The warehouses now bulged with some 3.3 million bags. The following year a b.u.mper crop totaling nearly 30 million bags surprised everyone. In 1927 the So Paulo Coffee Inst.i.tute called two conferences with other Brazilian coffee-growing states, who agreed to join their retention scheme by limiting coffee sent to the ports.

By the end of 1927 it appeared that the inst.i.tute could do no wrong, securing a 5 million line of credit for a year from Lazard Brothers in London, followed by a 5 million gold mortgage loan to the Banco do Estado. Even with the b.u.mper crop, coffee prices rose. In 1928 Lazard renewed its loan for twenty more years.

Amid general euphoria, however, there were a few Brazilians who expressed concern about the 100 million new So Paulo trees about to begin bearing. The Paulistas also were uneasy about the possibility that Herbert Hoover might be elected the U.S. president.49 On the whole, however, the Brazilian coffee planters were optimistic about the future. They argued that the new production would be offset by declining fertility on old plantations, aging of other trees, and continued increase in world consumption. Besides, there had never been two b.u.mper crops in consecutive years. On the whole, however, the Brazilian coffee planters were optimistic about the future. They argued that the new production would be offset by declining fertility on old plantations, aging of other trees, and continued increase in world consumption. Besides, there had never been two b.u.mper crops in consecutive years.

In the buoyant mood of the twenties, only a few Brazilians protested the continued axing of their rain forests. During that decade, forest destruction in So Paulo proceeded at the rate of 3,000 square kilometers a year. Yet most Brazilians didn't care that the forest was being destroyed. It was only "an unimaginable surfeit of climbing plants, a tragic disorder of trunks [in which] man [is] imprisoned in the labyrinth of demented vegetation," according to one commentator. At a typical Brazilian Arbor Day celebration, schoolchildren often planted nonnative coffee trees, which one cynic observed was similar to eulogizing chickens during a wildlife celebration.

Herbert Hoover, newly elected president, warned that "Brazil is carrying the umbrella for the other coffee producing countries," allowing them to expand and profit at Brazil's expense. On a visit to So Paulo, Berent Friele urged the government there to release more coffee and lower the price to encourage greater exports to the United States. The prosperous Brazilian planters ignored Friele and Hoover, despite signs of trouble. Credit became tighter. Nervous foreign banks refused to send capital into the country.

Under the protection provided by Brazil's retention plan, Central American coffee planters prospered. The region's stability, important to North American businessmen, was guaranteed by the "dollar diplomacy" that sent U.S. Marines into Haiti and Nicaragua to protect American business interests.50 In 1929 American professor Parker Thomas Moon complained of "American imperialism," objecting to the American habit of "confusing altruism with Wall Street and naval strategy." Two years later, retired General Smedley Butler admitted that he had spent the past three decades as a "muscleman for big business" while serving as a U.S. Marine. "I helped in the rape of a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street." Although few U.S. businesses owned coffee plantations, many American banks provided credit for the coffee industry. Thus it is relevant that Butler spoke of helping the "National City Bank boys." In 1929 American professor Parker Thomas Moon complained of "American imperialism," objecting to the American habit of "confusing altruism with Wall Street and naval strategy." Two years later, retired General Smedley Butler admitted that he had spent the past three decades as a "muscleman for big business" while serving as a U.S. Marine. "I helped in the rape of a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street." Although few U.S. businesses owned coffee plantations, many American banks provided credit for the coffee industry. Thus it is relevant that Butler spoke of helping the "National City Bank boys."

In general, the U.S. support of the Latin American status quo did provide a beneficial business environment, particularly for coffee farmers. The famous "fourteen families" of El Salvador (by now more like forty), along with growers in Guatemala and Costa Rica, thrived during the twenties. "The coffee barons lived in great splendor, collecting chorus girls in Manhattan, tall blondes by preference, and became familiar figures at the baccarat tables of the Riviera," one historian noted. Regardless of the owners' prosperity, however, the workers made the same 15 cents a day.

Against this uneasy backdrop, the prosperity of the Roaring Twenties fell apart. The 1928-1929 Brazilian crop was much smaller than that of the previous year, coming in at 10.6 million bags. Yet the warehouses still overflowed with coffee, and a vigorous flowering in July 1929 from new trees indicated that a huge crop would arrive in 1930, unless some natural disaster prevented it. By September the planters finally started getting nervous. Rumors spread that they soon would move a million bags of coffee toward foreign markets and that they were negotiating with Berent Friele and other American buyers to contract for 10 million bags, though knowledgeable coffee men were skeptical that so much coffee could ever be absorbed into the market without causing a major price slump.

Lazard Brothers, which had renewed the old loan in July, informed the Paulistas, when they sought another 9 million, that no more money would be forthcoming. Now frantic, the Brazilians sought help from the Rothschilds. No dice. Nor could they expect loans from American banks, especially not with Hoover in the White House.

On October 11, 1929, the Santos Bolsa, the country's coffee exchange, opened as usual. Trading was moderate. The So Paulo Coffee Inst.i.tute's broker sat silently in his chair all morning. No one paid much attention. In the afternoon, when he still failed to buy, sellers offered much lower prices, yet he never bought. The terrible secret was out. The inst.i.tute was bankrupt. Coffee prices plummeted. In a desperate attempt to rea.s.sure the New York Coffee Exchange, Consul General Sebastiao Sampaio lied, denying that Brazil had ever applied for a loan and boasting of Brazil's large gold reserves. The coffee market rallied temporarily. Then on October 29 the New York stock market crashed, and all hope with it.

It is no coincidence that coffee crashed two weeks before the U.S. stock market. By that time coffee was a "canary in the coal mine," since it was so intimately tied to international commerce. Like their prosperous business counterparts in the United States, the arrogant Brazilian coffee kings thought that the prosperity party would never end. As late as October 17, an American economics professor stated that stock prices had reached "a permanently high plateau." Similarly, the Paulistas deluded themselves into thinking they were invincible. As their warehoused coffee commanded higher and higher paper prices, they used it as collateral for ever-higher loans, just as U.S. investors bought on margin. In the end it all came cras.h.i.+ng down, buried under the weight of all that coffee. The worldwide Great Depression of the 1930s ushered in years of lower prices for coffee and just about everything else, along with ma.s.sive unemployment. But no one stopped drinking the black brew.

10.

Burning Beans, Starving Campesinos Coffee is our national misfortune.

-Brazilian coffee grower, 1934

The world's interlocking economic system pulled everyone down when it crashed in 1929. The story of how several million coffee growers, importers, and roasters survived the Great Depression offers a microcosmic look at how the economic chaos affected the globe. For some the crisis created opportunity; for others it meant bankruptcy, despair, or even death. But for billions of Brazilian coffee beans it meant a holocaust.

The Coffee Inferno In Brazil the crash signaled the end of the country's Old Republic and the domination of the coffee oligarchy. In 1930, after a rigged election put Julio Prestes in power, an October military coup replaced him with Getulio Vargas, a politician from southern Brazil. Even the coffee kings of So Paulo welcomed the revolt, since the faltering government had failed to rally around coffee valorization at all costs. The price of coffee tumbled from 22.5 cents a pound in 1929 to 8 cents two years later. In 1930, 26 million bags of coffee sat in Brazilian warehouses-a million bags more than the entire world had consumed the previous year. In such a desperate situation, any change seemed good.

Vargas, a short, stocky lawyer with a ready smile and a pragmatic bent, was to rule Brazil for an unprecedented length of time. Chewing contemplatively on his ever-present cigar, he presented the facade of a calm, friendly listener who genuinely cared for his country and its problems. Unlike other Latin American dictators, Vargas generally practiced moderation rather than terror. He quickly banned new coffee plantings.

Vargas also appointed a military governor in So Paulo who immediately alienated the Paulistas by decreeing a 5 percent wage hike and distributing some land to revolutionary veterans. Vargas infuriated coffee shop owners by cutting the price of a cup of coffee in half. To conciliate the coffee growers and sellers, Vargas appointed Jose Maria Whitaker, a Paulista coffee banker, as his minister of finance. "It is absolutely necessary to return to unrestricted trading," Whitaker announced, "first removing the nightmare of the formidable coffee stocks." The government intended to burn the ma.s.sive coffee surplus, but only so that the market could "revert to the time-honored law of supply and demand." In the first year, the Brazilians destroyed over 7 million bags of coffee worth some $30 million-and they still had millions more bags clogging their warehouses.

Foreign journalist Heinrich Jacob first encountered the burning coffee from a low-flying airplane in the early 1930s. "An aromatic yet pungent odour was rising from beneath and permeated the cabin," he wrote. "It dulled the senses, and was at the same time actually painful. . . . The smell by now had become intolerable, and the fumes had produced a ringing in my ears. It seemed to sap my strength." Jacob subsequently met a distraught former coffee grower, now bankrupt, who declared, "Coffee is our national misfortune." He produced a small box with a gla.s.s cover containing the broca do cafe broca do cafe, the coffee borer that had begun to attack beans about ten years earlier. "Nothing should be done to resist the onslaught of the broca broca," he said. "If the government really wants to save the country, it will take up loads of the eggs of this beetle in airplanes, and strew them far and wide over the plantations."

The Brazilians were desperate. Their scientists and inventors labored to find alternative uses for their surplus coffee. The minister of public works authorized a project to compress beans into bricks, to be used as fuel for the railroad. Other experiments sought to extract alcohol, oil, gas, caffeine, or cellulose by-products from coffee. A Rio newspaper suggested that nutritious bread "of excellent taste and appearance" could be made from flour milled in part from green coffee beans. Vintners made a pa.s.sable white wine from the pulp, while perfume came from crushed coffee blossoms. A few years later one inventor created a new type of plastic from the beans.

The Brazilians also approached foreign governments with innovative coffee proposals. They would recognize Soviet Russia and trade coffee for Russian wheat or hides. They planned to open thousands of Brazilian coffee shops throughout Asia, creating new markets for their beans. Little came of most such plans, but they did trade coffee for American surplus wheat, beginning in 1931.51 Although the rich Brazilian Although the rich Brazilian terra roxa terra roxa could have grown enough wheat for domestic consumption, the country grew only an eighth of its requirements-another result of the short-sighted devotion to coffee monoculture. could have grown enough wheat for domestic consumption, the country grew only an eighth of its requirements-another result of the short-sighted devotion to coffee monoculture.

The coffee-wheat swap caused trouble, though. American s.h.i.+ppers complained that Brazilian s.h.i.+pping lines were carrying all of the wheat and coffee. Argentineans, who had previously supplied wheat to Brazil, objected. American coffee men didn't like the government getting into the coffee market with cheap coffee that might lower the price. U.S. flour companies were upset when they learned that the deal involved an embargo on flour imports into Brazil.

In July 1932, just as the Grain Stabilization Board began to sell the coffee it had received in exchange for wheat, the frustrated Paulistas rebelled against Vargas, demanding a restoration of const.i.tutional government. The port of Santos was closed. "Breakfast Without Its Cup of Coffee Looms," an August New York Times New York Times headline warned. Although the alternate ports of Rio and Victoria hastened to export more coffee, the huge supplies of better-grade beans from So Paulo were suddenly unavailable. In the United States the Grain Stabilization Board held over a million bags of coffee but was contractually restricted to sell only 62,500 bags per month. As a result, it looked as if there would be a coffee shortage, but the Paulista revolt fizzled after three months and coffee prices again declined. headline warned. Although the alternate ports of Rio and Victoria hastened to export more coffee, the huge supplies of better-grade beans from So Paulo were suddenly unavailable. In the United States the Grain Stabilization Board held over a million bags of coffee but was contractually restricted to sell only 62,500 bags per month. As a result, it looked as if there would be a coffee shortage, but the Paulista revolt fizzled after three months and coffee prices again declined.