All About Coffee Part 95

The St. Louis meeting was notable in violating a.s.sociation 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 a.s.sociation. Brazil sent a delegation of coffee men to invite a similar delegation to pay a return visit to Brazil. It was announced also that So 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 So Paulo exporters; the formation of a new membership cla.s.s 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 Ma.s.sachusetts Inst.i.tute of Technology, said a better brew of coffee could be obtained at a temperature of 185 degrees than at the boiling point; that gla.s.s, china, or enameled-ware pots were to be preferred, and that the filtration method is superior to that employed in the pumping percolator.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOEL O. CHEEK, NASHVILLE

President of the National Coffee Roasters a.s.sociation, 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 cla.s.sification inasmuch as most establishments handle both coffee and spices. Of the 696, however, 658 had coffee as their princ.i.p.al 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER x.x.xI

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 ama.s.sed 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 a.s.sociation 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 gla.s.sware. 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 pa.s.sed, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 a.s.sert 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 t.i.tanic 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 So 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 a.s.sistants. 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 Stra.s.se 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.