All About Coffee Part 96

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 a.s.sociates 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 t.i.tle 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 t.i.tles. 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 t.i.tles.

While his greatest achievement was, of course, the valorization enterprise, he played a not unimportant role 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 quant.i.ties 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 c.o.ke 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 compet.i.tors, 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 a.s.sociation 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 const.i.tuted 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 a.s.sisted 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, compet.i.tors; 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.