Uncommon Grounds Part 2

Under Galvez, lands that had been held in common by indigenous villages increasingly were confiscated, forcing Indians to become share-croppers or debt peons. Many Indian children were taken from their parents and a.s.signed to "protectors," who often treated them as indentured servants. As a result of these policies, the Mayans retreated higher into the mountains and the altiplano altiplano-the high plateau-where the land was not so desirable.

Carrera, who aligned himself with the Conservatives, effectively ruled from 1839 until his death in 1865. Although a dictator who ama.s.sed a personal fortune, he was extremely popular with the indigenous peoples. He respected native cultures, protected Indians as well as he could, and tried to incorporate them into his government.

In the 1840s Guatemala's export economy was based on cochineal-a dye produced by a small insect that fed on a cactus. The dried insects yielded a brilliant red that was much in demand in Europe. Concerned about the internal self-sufficiency of Guatemala, Carrera encouraged agricultural diversification. When Europeans invented synthetic a.n.a.line dyes in 1856 and it became clear that cochineal's days were numbered, Carrera approved of the growth of coffee but also encouraged cotton and sugar.11 By the time of Carrera's death and for the few years following, during the rule of Vicente Cerna (1865-1871), the profits from coffee continued to grow. The sides of Guatemala's volcanoes-particularly on the Pacific side-proved to be perfectly suited for growing the coffee. In many cases the steeply sloped hillsides where coffee grew best, previously considered worthless, were occupied by Indians. The ladino ladino12 coffee growers needed a government that would allow them to take this land and guarantee them a cheap, reliable supply of labor. coffee growers needed a government that would allow them to take this land and guarantee them a cheap, reliable supply of labor.

In 1871 the Liberals overthrew Cerna, and two years later General Justo Rufino Barrios, a prosperous coffee grower from western Guatemala, a.s.sumed power. Under Barrios, a series of "liberal reforms" were inst.i.tuted, making it easier to grow and export coffee. The amount of coffee exported from Guatemala grew steadily, from 149,000 quintales (1 quintal = 100 kilograms) in 1873 to 691,000 by 1895, and over a million in 1909. Unfortunately, these "reforms" came at the expense of the Indians and their land.

Throughout Central America and Mexico at this time, the Liberals took power, all with essentially the same agenda: to promote "progress" in emulation of the United States and Europe, always at the expense of the indigenous populations. In Nostromo Nostromo, his 1904 novel about Latin America, Joseph Conrad exclaimed, "Liberals! The words one knows so well have a nightmarish meaning in this country. Liberty, democracy, patriotism, government-all of them have a flavour of folly and murder."

Guatemala-A Penal Colony?

The Mayans had little sense of private property, preferring to share their agricultural s.p.a.ce with one another, but they resented being displaced from their traditional lands. Through a series of laws and outright force, the Barrios government began to take prime coffee lands away from the Indians. Often they tried to placate the Mayans by giving them other marginal land.

The Liberal government encouraged agricultural development by defining all lands not planted in coffee, sugar, cacao, or pasture as "idle" (tierras baldias), then claiming them as national property. In 1873 nearly 200,000 acres in the western piedmont regions of Guatemala were divided into lots up to 550 acres and sold cheaply. Any required payment automatically excluded peasants from ownership.

Like the Brazilians, the Guatemalans tried to attract immigrant labor, but these attempts largely failed.13 They had to rely on the Indian, who had little incentive to work. As much as Liberals may have wished to apply the "North American solution"-that is, simply eliminating the "inferior" race-they could not afford to do so. They needed their indigenous population as virtual slave labor. Living in self-sufficient villages, however, most Mayans were loath to work other than briefly for a little money. They had to rely on the Indian, who had little incentive to work. As much as Liberals may have wished to apply the "North American solution"-that is, simply eliminating the "inferior" race-they could not afford to do so. They needed their indigenous population as virtual slave labor. Living in self-sufficient villages, however, most Mayans were loath to work other than briefly for a little money.

The Liberal government solved the problem through forced labor (mandamiento ) and debt peonage. For an Indian the only alternative to being dragged off to work on a farm (or to the army or gang labor on a road) or to go into debt to a coffee farmer was flight. ) and debt peonage. For an Indian the only alternative to being dragged off to work on a farm (or to the army or gang labor on a road) or to go into debt to a coffee farmer was flight.

Many Indians did flee, some to Mexico and others taking to the mountains. To maintain order, the Liberals inst.i.tuted a large standing army and militia. As Jeffrey Paige observed in Coffee and Power Coffee and Power, "Guatemala had so many soldiers that it resembled a penal colony because it was was a penal colony based on forced labor." Thus, coffee money funded a repressive regime that fostered smoldering resentment among the Indians. Sometimes they rebelled, but such attempts only resulted in Indian ma.s.sacres. Instead they learned to subvert the system by working as little as possible, by taking wage advances from several farmers simultaneously, and by running away. a penal colony based on forced labor." Thus, coffee money funded a repressive regime that fostered smoldering resentment among the Indians. Sometimes they rebelled, but such attempts only resulted in Indian ma.s.sacres. Instead they learned to subvert the system by working as little as possible, by taking wage advances from several farmers simultaneously, and by running away.

The Indians sometimes pet.i.tioned the jefe politicos jefe politicos (governors) for help. Their plaintive appeals are heartrending, even at the remove of a hundred years. One laborer alleged that "Don Manuel, the brother of my actual employer, beat me without motive . . . as well as my wife and our baby, with the result that they both died." A man over eighty wrote that through "all the flower of my youth the patron exploited my labor," but now, sick and crippled, he was to be released to "die slowly in the fields as do the animals when they become old and useless." (governors) for help. Their plaintive appeals are heartrending, even at the remove of a hundred years. One laborer alleged that "Don Manuel, the brother of my actual employer, beat me without motive . . . as well as my wife and our baby, with the result that they both died." A man over eighty wrote that through "all the flower of my youth the patron exploited my labor," but now, sick and crippled, he was to be released to "die slowly in the fields as do the animals when they become old and useless."

The forced Indian migration down from the altiplano altiplano to the coffee harvest also resulted in Mayans contracting diseases such as influenza and cholera, then bringing them back to their home communities, where deadly epidemics swept entire villages. to the coffee harvest also resulted in Mayans contracting diseases such as influenza and cholera, then bringing them back to their home communities, where deadly epidemics swept entire villages.

From the grower's perspective, securing a reliable labor supply was difficult. Indians ran off. Other planters stole their workers. Thus, the coffee economy of Guatemala, as well as that of nearby El Salvador, Mexico, and Nicaragua, frustrated everyone in one way or another. Above all, however, it relied on the forced labor and misery of the indigenous population. With this unhappy foundation, a future of inequity and violence was all but a.s.sured.

The German Invasion.

Into this mix came a new kind of immigrant, full of energy, self-a.s.surance, and a willingness to work hard. In 1877 the Liberals pa.s.sed a law to help foreigners obtain lands, granting a ten-year tax exemption and a six-year holiday from import duties on tools and machines. The Barrios government signed contracts with foreign firms for major construction and colonization projects. During the last two decades of the 1800s, enterprising Germans, many fleeing Bismarck's militarism, flocked to Guatemala-and to the rest of Central America. By the late 1890s they owned over forty Guatemalan coffee fincas fincas and worked on many others. Soon German coffee growers in the Alta Verapaz region of Guatemala got together to solicit private capital from Germany to build a railroad line to the sea. This was the beginning of a trend in which the Germans brought capital and modernization to the Guatemalan coffee industry. and worked on many others. Soon German coffee growers in the Alta Verapaz region of Guatemala got together to solicit private capital from Germany to build a railroad line to the sea. This was the beginning of a trend in which the Germans brought capital and modernization to the Guatemalan coffee industry.

By 1890, two decades after the Liberals took over, the largest Guatemalan fincas fincas-over one hundred of them-represented only 3.5 percent of the country's coffee farms but accounted for over half of the total output. While foreigners ran many large plantations, others were still owned by the Spanish descendants of the original conquistadors.

These large-scale operations typically had their own processing machinery and grew their own food. Small, marginal coffee farms of only a few acres, usually owned by poor, illiterate peasants, had to rely on the larger farms for processing. They and their children were sometimes subjected to forced labor on the bigger farms. In some cases the dominant farms deliberately sabotaged their smaller neighbors, as finca finca agents burned their agents burned their milpas milpas (small subsistence plots, usually of corn) and destroyed their coffee bushes. (small subsistence plots, usually of corn) and destroyed their coffee bushes.

Securing credit was always a major problem for the coffee farmer. Typically, European or North American banks would loan to coffee import houses at 6 percent. The import houses in turn would loan to export houses at 8 percent, who then loaned to large growers or beneficios beneficios (coffee processing plants) at 12 percent. The small farmer would have to pay the (coffee processing plants) at 12 percent. The small farmer would have to pay the beneficio beneficio 14 to 25 percent, depending on the perceived risk. Most entrepreneurs starting a plantation found themselves deep in debt before their first crop matured four years later. The Germans had an advantage, since they frequently arrived with capital and maintained ongoing relations with German brokerage firms that gave them lower interest rates. They also had recourse to diplomatic intervention and maintained close ties to foreign-controlled export and import houses. Nonetheless, the coffee industry of Latin America has never resolved the credit problem satisfactorily. 14 to 25 percent, depending on the perceived risk. Most entrepreneurs starting a plantation found themselves deep in debt before their first crop matured four years later. The Germans had an advantage, since they frequently arrived with capital and maintained ongoing relations with German brokerage firms that gave them lower interest rates. They also had recourse to diplomatic intervention and maintained close ties to foreign-controlled export and import houses. Nonetheless, the coffee industry of Latin America has never resolved the credit problem satisfactorily.

Many of the Germans who came to make their coffee fortunes in Guatemala were not wealthy men when they first reached the country. Bernhard Hannstein, born in Prussia in 1869, left Germany "to get away from the military habits of Germany, to flee the tyranny of [my] eccentric father and to be a free man." In 1892 Hannstein found work at La Libertad, one of the huge coffee plantations owned by ex-president Lisandro Barillas, where he received $100 a month plus free room and board-many times more than the Indians.

It apparently did not trouble the German that Indians were virtual slaves. He described the debt peonage system without any judgmental emotion. "The only way to make an Indian work is to advance him money, then he can be forced to work. Very often they run off but they are caught and punished very severely."

Bernhard Hannstein eventually worked his way up the hierarchy and came to own Mundo Nuevo and other plantations.

To the north in Alta Verapaz, Erwin Paul Dieseldorff, another German, slowly a.s.sembled the largest privately owned coffee plantations in the area. At first he lived among the Indians, ate their food, and learned their language and culture. Eventually Dieseldorff became an expert on Mayan archaeology, folklore, and herbal medicine. As long as the Indian laborers obeyed him, Dieseldorff treated them with paternal kindness. Yet he too paid the Indians a pittance and kept them bound to him in a feudal system of debt peonage. He summed up his and other Germans' philosophy when he observed, "The Indians of the Alta Verapaz are best handled as if they were children."

How to Grow and Harvest Coffee in Guatemala.

Although it took some trial and error to establish the custom, coffee in Central America has traditionally been grown under shade trees of various types to protect the coffee from sun, promote automatic mulching, and prevent the coffee trees from overproducing and exhausting themselves and the soil. These shade trees usually are pruned yearly to allow the proper amount of sunlight to pa.s.s through; the wood then can be used for fuel.

Unlike the Brazilian bean, the coffees of Central America were harvested by the "wet" method invented in the West Indies and popularized in Ceylon and Costa Rica. According to most coffee experts, this system yields a superior bean with fewer defects, producing a drink with bright acidity and full, clean flavor. It is also far more labor-intensive, requires more sophisticated machinery and infrastructure, and needs an abundant supply of fresh running water at each beneficio beneficio, or processing facility. The mountainsides of Guatemala provide plenty of water, and the German farmers brought much technical know-how.

As the coffee industry developed during the late nineteenth century, importers began to refer to two types of coffee: Brazils and milds. The Brazilian coffee gained a reputation for lower quality-often, but not always, deserved. Most other, more carefully processed arabica coffees were known as milds because they were not as harsh in the cup as the Brazils.

Though the Brazilian laborers can simply strip the branches, the Guatemalan harvesters must pick only the ripe berries, which are depulped by machine, then left in water-filled fermentation tanks for up to forty-eight hours. As the mucilage decomposes, it loosens from its sticky binding on the parchment and in the process lends a subtle seasoned flavor to the inner bean. From the fermentation tank the beans b.u.mp along a long channel, where the loosened mucilage washes off with the wastewater. Still covered in parchment, the beans then are spread out to dry in the sun or are dried artificially in huge rotating cylinders heated by dried parchment from previous batches, along with coal, gas, or wood pruned from shade trees. Women and children hand sort the dried coffee, removing broken, blackened, moldy, or overfermented beans.

Since the actual coffee bean const.i.tutes only 20 percent of the weight of the cherry, this whole process produces an enormous amount of waste product. The mounds of wet pulp are often recycled as smelly fertilizer, if the beneficio beneficio is located on the farm. Allowed to float downstream, the mucilage causes ma.s.sive pollution problems. is located on the farm. Allowed to float downstream, the mucilage causes ma.s.sive pollution problems.

Women and Children as Laborers.

Women (and children in the old days) always did the tedious sorting in Guatemala and elsewhere, primarily because they traditionally were paid even less than their husbands. Though the men performed most of the physically demanding jobs, such as clearing, planting, pruning, and digging irrigation ditches, women and children did much of the harvesting as well.

On a good farm, harvest time is a relaxed, joyous occasion. The pay may not be great but it is higher than any other time of the year, and no one forces children to work any set schedule. In the late nineteenth century, however, women and children were often forced to work long hours in the fields along with everyone else. One observer in 1899 described the "ragged, tattered pickers, large and small, father and mother and a brood of partially clothed children" on their way to pick coffee.

The father and mother salute you with the deference born of generations of training. Later, from the depths of every thicket comes the chant of singing voices, and the chorus is feminine, the woman of poverty, somehow, knowing how to be happier than the man. The little children gather all the low berries which may be reached by their tiny hands. [At dusk,] the sleepy, tired tots stumble along, with all the brightness of life gone out, for that day, from their worn-out little souls. It is no uncommon sight to see a mother carrying a sleeping child, besides all her other load.

Occasionally, however, Guatemalan women forgot how "happy" they were in their poverty, and they somehow overcame the "deference born of generations of training." Men sometimes took wage advances, to be worked off by their wives or children, virtually selling their labor. Juana Domingo wrote from jail to the jefe politico jefe politico of Huehuetenango in 1909, for instance, because she refused to work after she was "sold by my own father, which is the custom among our race." Women were routinely subjected to s.e.xual exploitation by overseers. Sometimes complaining backfired, as when the of Huehuetenango in 1909, for instance, because she refused to work after she was "sold by my own father, which is the custom among our race." Women were routinely subjected to s.e.xual exploitation by overseers. Sometimes complaining backfired, as when the finca finca administrator for one woman added the cost of capturing her rapist to her debt. administrator for one woman added the cost of capturing her rapist to her debt.14 Coffee in Guatemala thus brought a reliance on a fickle foreign market, the rise of a coercive police state, gross social and economic inequality, and the virtual enslavement of the indigenous peoples. The pattern was set. Large fincas fincas, owned by ladinos ladinos, Germans, and other foreigners who earned huge profits in good years, were worked by migrant labor forces forced down from the adjacent highlands. In years to come this coffee legacy would lead to repeated uprisings, discontent, and bloodshed. "The strategies of government in Guatemala," wrote one Latin American historian, "can be briefly summarized as: censorship of the press, exile and prison for the opposition, extensive police control, a reduced and servile state bureaucracy, matters of finance and the treasury in the hands of interrelated members of the large coffee-growing families, and benevolent treatment of foreign companies."

Stealing the Land in Mexico, El Salvador, and Nicaragua.

The pattern set in Guatemala was echoed in neighboring countries, except that the size of the typical coffee finca finca was smaller. To the north, in Mexico, Porfirio Diaz attracted American capital to his "liberal" regime (1877- 1880, 1884-1911), where laborers on the sugar, rubber, henequen (a plant used to make rope), tobacco, and coffee plantations were little more than slaves. A labor agent, known as an was smaller. To the north, in Mexico, Porfirio Diaz attracted American capital to his "liberal" regime (1877- 1880, 1884-1911), where laborers on the sugar, rubber, henequen (a plant used to make rope), tobacco, and coffee plantations were little more than slaves. A labor agent, known as an enganchador enganchador (snarer), would supply unwary laborers through lies, bribes, or outright kidnapping. The mortality rate for the workers on the henequen farms of the Yucatan or the tobacco plantations of the infamous Valle Nacional was horrendous. Conditions were somewhat better on the coffee (snarer), would supply unwary laborers through lies, bribes, or outright kidnapping. The mortality rate for the workers on the henequen farms of the Yucatan or the tobacco plantations of the infamous Valle Nacional was horrendous. Conditions were somewhat better on the coffee fincas fincas in southern Mexico in the mountains of Chiapas, since migrant labor had to find it sufficiently attractive to return every year. in southern Mexico in the mountains of Chiapas, since migrant labor had to find it sufficiently attractive to return every year.

In El Salvador, the small but densely populated Pacific Coast country to the south of Guatemala, the disenfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the Indians was even more violent. Though in Guatemala the Mayans lived primarily above the coffee regions, in El Salvador the majority lived in areas suitable for coffee growing. Land expropriation began in 1879, and legislation in 1881 and 1882 eliminated the indigenous system of common lands and communities. The Indians revolted throughout the 1880s, setting fire to coffee groves and processing plants. The government responded by creating a mounted police force to patrol coffee sectors and squelch rebellions. A famous group of fourteen families-with surnames such as Menendez, Regalado, de Sola, and Hill-came to own most of the coffee plantations of El Salvador, and through a well-trained militia they maintained an uneasy peace, punctuated by coups that replaced one authoritarian military regime with another.

In Nicaragua, to the south of El Salvador and Honduras, coffee cultivation began early, but it did not dominate the economy as in Guatemala and El Salvador, and the Indian resistance in Nicaragua was not so easily broken. Coffee cultivation began in the southern uplands in earnest during the 1860s, where the transition from other commercial agriculture took place relatively smoothly. But the prime coffee-growing lands turned out to be in the north central highlands, where Indians owned most of the land, and the familiar process of disenfranchis.e.m.e.nt took place. In 1881 several thousand Indians attacked government headquarters in Matagalpa, in the heart of prime coffee-growing regions, to demand an end to forced labor. The national army finally put down the revolt, killing over a thousand Indians. Nonetheless, peasant resistance remained strong, even after Liberal General Jose Santos Zelaya, the son of a coffee planter, took over in 1893. He ruled Nicaragua until 1909, creating an effective military and successfully promoting coffee, despite continued agitation, including the a.s.sa.s.sination of the largest coffee grower in the country.

Coffee in Costa Rica: A Democratic Influence?

Coffee-rich Latin American countries have been routinely racked by revolution, oppression, and bloodshed. The singular hopeful exception to this rule, on the whole, has been Costa Rica. In his thought-provoking 1994 book States and Social Evolution: Coffee and the Rise of National Governments in Central America States and Social Evolution: Coffee and the Rise of National Governments in Central America, Robert Williams argued that the way coffee land and labor evolved in the late nineteenth century helped determine the shape of Central American governments, setting patterns that continue to this day: Along with the expansion of coffee came changes in trading networks, international financial connections, patterns of immigration and investment, and international political relations, but coffee also reached back into the structures of everyday life of ports, capital cities, inland commercial centers, and the countryside, altering the activities of merchants, moneylenders, landowners, shopkeepers, professionals, bureaucrats, the urban poor, and the peasantry. . . . A careful look at this single commodity affords a lens through which to view the construction of Central American states.

In Costa Rica reliance on coffee resulted in democracy, egalitarian relations, smaller farms, and slow, steady growth. Why did cultivation of the same tree lead to such different results? The primary reason appears to be the lack of a ready labor force. Most of Costa Rica's Indians, never very numerous, had been killed off by early Spanish settlers or by disease. Consequently, by the time the Costa Ricans began serious cultivation of coffee in the 1830s, they could not establish the huge latifundia latifundia that later developed in Brazil and Guatemala. Small family farms were the norm. that later developed in Brazil and Guatemala. Small family farms were the norm.15 As a result, Costa Rica's coffee industry developed gradually, without the need for repressive government intervention. As a result, Costa Rica's coffee industry developed gradually, without the need for repressive government intervention.

In addition, Costa Rican coffee production commenced in the rich highlands of the Central Valley, near San Jose, and spread outward from there. For years to come, an ever-expanding frontier would allow new coffee entrepreneurs to establish farms in virgin lands. Because of this opportunity, fewer fights developed over land. During harvest season families helped one another. The farmers themselves performed the hard physical labor and felt close to the land. Thus, a relatively egalitarian national ethos developed.

The conflict within Costa Rica developed between small growers and owners of the beneficios beneficios, which processed the coffee. Because the farms were generally so small, they could not afford their own wet processing mills. The beneficio beneficio owners had a great deal of clout and could set artificially low prices, reaping most of the profits. While this inequity did cause tension, the Costa Rican state managed it peacefully, on the whole. This small Central American country has had its share of revolution and bloodshed over the years, but nothing to compare to its neighbors. The reason can probably be traced directly to how the coffee industry developed there. owners had a great deal of clout and could set artificially low prices, reaping most of the profits. While this inequity did cause tension, the Costa Rican state managed it peacefully, on the whole. This small Central American country has had its share of revolution and bloodshed over the years, but nothing to compare to its neighbors. The reason can probably be traced directly to how the coffee industry developed there.

The British initially dominated foreign trade with Costa Rica, but Germans quickly moved in as well, so that by the early twentieth century they owned many of the beneficios beneficios and larger coffee farms in the country. Still, unlike Guatemala, Costa Rica offered opportunities for the hardworking native poor to join the coffee social elite. For example, Julio Sanches Lepiz began with a small farm, and through accrued investments in coffee farms he became the largest coffee exporter in the country. Though his success was extraordinary, other relatively poor Costa Rican farmers also built impressive holdings. and larger coffee farms in the country. Still, unlike Guatemala, Costa Rica offered opportunities for the hardworking native poor to join the coffee social elite. For example, Julio Sanches Lepiz began with a small farm, and through accrued investments in coffee farms he became the largest coffee exporter in the country. Though his success was extraordinary, other relatively poor Costa Rican farmers also built impressive holdings.

Indonesians, Coolies, and Other Coffee Laborers Java and Sumatra, like many other coffee-growing regions, possess astonishing natural beauty. This scenery, however, directly contrasted with the "contempt and want of consideration with which the natives are treated," as Francis Thurber observed in his 1881 work Coffee: Plantation to Cup Coffee: Plantation to Cup. Each family of natives had to raise and care for 650 coffee trees and to harvest and process them for the Dutch government. "The price received by the natives from the government is placed at a figure low enough to leave an enormous margin of profit to the government," Thurber noted. The Dutch thereby "have maintained a most grinding despotism over their miserable subjects, levying forced loans and otherwise despoiling those who . . . have acc.u.mulated anything beyond their daily subsistence."

The situation in India was no better. In 1886 Edwin Lester Arnold, an Englishman who owned coffee plantations there, described how to secure laborers in his book Coffee: Its Cultivation and Profit Coffee: Its Cultivation and Profit. A planter would journey to the country's lowlands and hire maistrie maistries, or head men, who in turn would bribe coolies (peasant laborers) with advances. The head men then would arrive in the jungle, "each at the head of his gang of coolies, all heavily loaded with earthen 'chatties' or cooking pans, native shawls, supplies of dried fish, curry stuffs, etc.; and 'salaaming' to the European." They would build huts and begin to work off their advances. It was best not to treat them too harshly, Thurber observed, "for in that case they would bolt."

The workday for the coolies described by Thurber began at 5:00 A.M., with men sent with axes and crowbars to cut and move logs for a new road, while women and children were dispatched to weed the coffee. "No sooner are they clear of the settlement, and winding along the narrow jungle paths, than they make all sorts of attempts to escape." Men were paid five annas a day-a pathetic amount-while women received only three. "Even the little children came up, ducked their small shaven heads in comical homage to the great white sahib, and held out very small brown hands for the price those hands were supposed to have earned at the rate of a penny a-day."

At the same time, Arnold observed with satisfaction, "the profits derived from healthy Coffee are so large, that were it not for many enemies which hamper the planter's struggles and stultify his best efforts, his occupation would be one of the most profitable in the world." The author then listed various coffee pests, ranging from elephants, hill buffaloes, cattle, and deer to jackals, monkeys, and the coffee rat. (Fortunately the coolies enjoyed coffee rat fried in coconut oil, considered a delicacy.) Also there were grubs, mealy bugs, scaley bugs, borers, and weevils to contend with.

"All these drags on the planter's prosperity, however, sink into insignificance by the side of a minute and consequently intangible fungus." Arnold was referring to hemileia vastatrix hemileia vastatrix, the dreaded coffee leaf rust that first appeared in Ceylon in 1869 and virtually wiped out the coffee industry of the East Indies within a few years-ironically, just as Latin America was flooding the market with beans.

Vastatrix Attacks Attacks Hemileia vastatrix, called rust rust because of its initial yellow-brown stain on the underside of the coffee leaf, eventually turns black, producing spores of pale orange powder that rub off and spread. The blotches gradually enlarge until they cover the entire leaf, which then falls off. Finally, the entire tree is denuded and dies. The first year it appeared, the rust did substantial damage in Ceylon, but then it seemed to go into remission, alternating between good and bad years. Scientists from all over the world advised the beleaguered coffee growers. The planters tried chemicals. They tried stripping the diseased leaves. Nothing worked. because of its initial yellow-brown stain on the underside of the coffee leaf, eventually turns black, producing spores of pale orange powder that rub off and spread. The blotches gradually enlarge until they cover the entire leaf, which then falls off. Finally, the entire tree is denuded and dies. The first year it appeared, the rust did substantial damage in Ceylon, but then it seemed to go into remission, alternating between good and bad years. Scientists from all over the world advised the beleaguered coffee growers. The planters tried chemicals. They tried stripping the diseased leaves. Nothing worked.

Various theories held that the rust was caused by the shade trees (dadap) commonly in use, or that too much dampness encouraged the disease. It does appear in fact that the fungus thrives in moist environments. The real villain, however, is monoculture. Whenever man intervenes and creates an artificial wealth of a particular plant, nature eventually finds a way to take advantage of this abundant food supply. The coffee tree is otherwise rather hardy. Plants containing mind-altering alkaloids such as caffeine and cocaine almost all grow in the tropics. Indeed, one of the reasons the tropical rain forest provides so many unique drugs is that the compet.i.tion for existence is so fierce, there being no winter to provide a respite from the battle for survival. The plants developed the drugs as protective mechanisms. The caffeine content of coffee probably evolved as a natural pesticide to discourage predators. Nonetheless, with acres and acres of coffee trees growing, it was inevitable that some nasty little bug or fungus would specialize in the bonanza.

"Now it seems but a question of time for Coffee to be as great a failure in Java as it has turned out to be in Ceylon," wrote Edwin Arnold in 1886. "In many estates the trees display nothing else but branches full of berries, which are still fresh-looking and green, but have become partially black and have dropped off." Arnold was correct. That bastion of traditional coffee soon switched primarily to tea.

One effect of the coffee rust epidemic was a frantic search for more resistant coffee species than the prevalent arabica strain. Coffea liberica Coffea liberica, found native in the African country of Liberia, seemed promising at first, but it too succ.u.mbed to the rust, yielded less than Coffea arabica Coffea arabica, and never gained in popularity, despite producing an acceptable cup. Coffea canephora Coffea canephora, chewed by Ugandan natives, "discovered" by whites in the Belgian Congo and named robusta by an early promoter, turned out to be resistant and prolific, and it grew at lower alt.i.tudes in moister, warmer conditions. Unfortunately, this hardy strain of coffee tasted harsh in the cup and contained twice the caffeine of arabica. Nonetheless, it was destined to play an important role in the future.

The American Thirst Despite the devastating effects of hemileia vastatrix hemileia vastatrix, the world coffee supply would continue to grow, stimulated in large part by the seemingly bottomless American coffee cup. While the British sipped tea, their rebellious colonies gulped a stronger black brew, destined to fuel the remarkable American entrepreneurial spirit. By the end of the nineteenth century, the United States would consume nearly half of the world's coffee.

3.

The American Drink We have joined in many a march in old Virginia, when the days were long and hot, and the power of the soldiers to endure the fatigue of the march and keep their places in the ranks was greatly enhanced by an opportunity to brew a cup of coffee by the wayside.

-Captain R. K. K. Beecham, Gettysburg: The Pivotal Battle of the Civil War Beecham, Gettysburg: The Pivotal Battle of the Civil War

The American thirst for coffee was slow to develop in a young country whose rambunctious citizens preferred booze. "Most colonial drinking was utilitarian, with high alcohol consumption a normal part of personal and community habits," observe the authors of Drinking in America Drinking in America. "In colonial homes, beer and cider were the usual beverages at mealtime. . . . Even children shared the dinner beer." Many colonists considered coffee and tea poor subst.i.tutes for strong alcoholic brews. Thus the first Continental Army ration, established by Congress in 1775, contained no coffee, only a daily allowance for spruce beer or cider.

Still, coffee was popular enough to cause over a hundred angry Boston women to raid a food warehouse in 1777. During the Revolutionary War, dealers took advantage of scarce supplies to h.o.a.rd coffee beans and jack up prices. As Abigail Adams described to her husband, John, "There is a great scarcity of sugar and coffee, articles which the female part of the state is very loath to give up, especially whilst they consider the great scarcity occasioned by the merchants having secreted a large quant.i.ty." She then described how the women raided the warehouse, while "a large concourse of men stood amazed, silent spectators."

Throughout the first half of the 1800s the American taste for coffee swelled, particularly after the War of 1812, which temporarily shut off access to tea just when all things French, including coffee drinking, were stylish. By that time Brazilian coffee was closer and cheaper anyway-and perhaps price counted even more than political ideology or fashion statements when Americans came to choose their favorite caffeinated beverage. Per-capita consumption grew to three pounds a year in 1830, five and a half pounds by 1850, and eight pounds by 1859. Although there were urban coffeehouses, most Americans drank coffee at home or brewed it over campfires while headed west. By 1849 coffee had become the "great essential in a prairie bill of fare," according to one surveyor of the time. "Give [the frontiersman] coffee and tobacco, and he will endure any privation, suffer any hardship, but let him be without these two necessaries of the woods, and he becomes irresolute and murmuring."

Once introduced to the black brew, Native Americans adopted it as well. The Sioux called it kazuta sapa kazuta sapa, or "black medicine." Indeed, the Indians attacked many wagon trains specifically to get coffee-along with sugar, tobacco, and whiskey. On the other hand, white traders took advantage of the Indians, trading one cup of coffee for a buffalo robe.

Home Roasting, Brewing, and Ruination In the predominantly rural United States of the mid-nineteenth century, people bought green coffee beans (primarily from the West or East Indies) in bulk at the local general store, then roasted and ground them at home. Roasting the beans in a frying pan on the wood stove required twenty minutes of constant stirring and often produced uneven roasts. For the affluent there were a variety of home roasters that turned by crank or steam, but none worked very well. The beans were ground in a manufactured coffee mill or a mortar and pestle.

Housewives usually brewed coffee just by boiling the grounds in water. To clarify the drink, or "settle" the grounds to the bottom, brewers employed various questionable additives, including eggs, fish, and eel skins. One popular cookbook contained the following recipe: "To prepared coffee, put two great spoonfuls to each pint of water; mix it with the white, yolk and sh.e.l.l of an egg, pour on hot, but not boiling water, and boil it not over ten minutes." If eggs were not available, creative coffee brewers could use cod. The consequent brew must have possessed a fishy off taste- yet it still gained in popularity from year to year, and coffee "experts" repeated the same advice.16 During the first half of the nineteenth century, there was a veritable explosion of European coffee-making patents and ingenious devices for combining hot water and ground coffee, including a popular two-tier drip pot invented around the time of the French Revolution by Jean Baptiste de Belloy, the Archbishop of Paris.

In 1809 a brilliant, eccentric expatriate American named Benjamin Thompson-who preferred to be known as Count Rumford-modified the de Belloy pot to create his own drip version. Rumford also made a correct brewing p.r.o.nouncement: Water for coffee should be fresh and near boiling, but coffee and water should never be boiled together, and brewed coffee should never be reheated. Unfortunately for American consumers, however, Rumford's pot and opinions did not travel back across the Atlantic. Nor did the numerous brewers from France and England that relied on a partial vacuum to draw hot water through ground coffee.

The Antebellum Coffee Industry After the coffee crisis and glut of 1823,17 prices tumbled to around 11 cents a pound in 1825 from a high of 21 cents in 1821. For the next thirty years prices remained low (usually below 10 cents), as increasing production continued to overtop burgeoning consumption. Java and Ceylon pumped out more and more coffee, as did Brazil. Costa Rica had begun to export as well. At the same time, coffee harvests from the islands of the West Indies, so important until the late eighteenth century, tailed off due to low prices, political disturbances, and labor scarcity. Many neglected plantations became overgrown, while in the lowlands, sugarcane, now far more lucrative, dominated. prices tumbled to around 11 cents a pound in 1825 from a high of 21 cents in 1821. For the next thirty years prices remained low (usually below 10 cents), as increasing production continued to overtop burgeoning consumption. Java and Ceylon pumped out more and more coffee, as did Brazil. Costa Rica had begun to export as well. At the same time, coffee harvests from the islands of the West Indies, so important until the late eighteenth century, tailed off due to low prices, political disturbances, and labor scarcity. Many neglected plantations became overgrown, while in the lowlands, sugarcane, now far more lucrative, dominated.

The low prices that were hurting the coffee growers contributed to the growing popularity of the drink among the lower cla.s.ses, particularly in continental Europe and the United States. In 1833 James Wilde imported the first commercial coffee roaster to New York from England. By the middle of the 1840s, at least in urban areas, a coffee-roasting industry had developed. In Germany, England, and the United States, multiple patents for large-scale roasters were taken out. The most popular roaster in the United States was the Carter Pull-Out, invented by James W. Carter of Boston in 1846, which featured huge perforated cylinders that turned inside brick ovens. Once the coffee was roasted, workers had to haul the gigantic cylinder out horizontally, accompanied by suffocating smoke, and dump the beans into wooden trays, where laborers stirred them with shovels. By 1845 there were sufficient facilities around New York City to roast as much coffee as was then consumed in the entirety of Great Britain.

The Union (and Coffee) Forever The Civil War (1861-1865) reduced coffee consumption in America, as the Union government levied a 4-cent duty on imported beans and blockaded Southern ports, preventing the rebels from receiving any coffee. Until the war, production had dwindled, discouraged by years of low prices, while consumer demand gradually grew. Now producers, encouraged by huge price hikes caused by the war, redoubled their efforts. In 1861 the price for Brazilian coffee increased to 14 cents a pound. In the ensuing war years it rose to 23 cents, then 32 cents, and finally 42 cents a pound before falling back to 18 cents after the war. Since the U.S. Army was a major purchaser, each Union victory spurred active trading and price hikes. By 1864 the government was buying 40 million pounds of green coffee beans.

The Civil War gave soldiers a permanent taste for the drink. Each Union soldier's daily allotment included one-tenth of a pound of green coffee beans that, translated into annual consumption, was a whopping thirty-six pounds per capita. "Coffee was one of the most cherished items in the ration," wrote one historian. "If it cannot be said that coffee helped Billy Yank win the war, it at least made his partic.i.p.ation in the conflict more tolerable." The book Hardtack and Coffee Hardtack and Coffee, written in 1887 by former Ma.s.sachusetts artilleryman John Billings, described the overwhelming importance of the coffee ration: Little campfires, rapidly increasing to hundreds in number, would shoot up along the hills and plains and, as if by magic, acres of territory would be luminous with them. Soon they would be surrounded by the soldiers, who made it an almost invariable rule to cook their coffee first, after which a large number, tired out with the toils of the day, would make their supper of hardtack and coffee, and roll up in their blankets for the night. If a march was ordered at midnight, unless a surprise was intended it must be preceded by a pot of coffee. . . . It was coffee at at meals and meals and between between meals; and men going on guard or coming off guard drank it at all hours of the night. meals; and men going on guard or coming off guard drank it at all hours of the night.

Because coffee was such an important ration const.i.tuent, the method of dividing it fairly (after the coffee had been pooled for grinding) developed into quite a ritual. "The lieutenant's rubber blanket lay on the ground," Stephen Crane wrote in one of his Civil War short stories, "and upon it he had poured the company's supply of coffee. . . . He drew with his sword various crevices in the heap, until brown squares of coffee, astoundingly equal in size, appeared on the blanket." To ensure fairness, the officer in charge of dividing the coffee then would turn his back while one of the men called out, "Who shall have this pile?" and the officer would read a name from his roster.

Since ground coffee stales quickly, soldiers preferred to carry whole beans and grind them as needed. Each company cook carried a portable grinder. A few Sharps carbines were designed to hold a coffee mill in the b.u.t.t stock of the gun, so that the soldier could always carry his grinder with him.

One of Sherman's veterans described the coffee as "strong enough to float an iron wedge and innocent of lacteal adulteration." Coffee was more than a pick-me-up; it also proved useful in other ways. Each box of hardtack biscuits carried a label suggesting the soldier boil his coffee, crumble the biscuits into it, and skim off the weevils.

Confederates meanwhile had to drink coffee subst.i.tutes made from acorns, dandelion roots, okra, or chicory. Real coffee was so scarce in the war-torn South that it cost $5 a pound in Richmond, Virginia, while one Atlanta jeweler set coffee beans in breast pins in lieu of diamonds.

Jabez Burns, Inventor During the Civil War two inventions revolutionized the nascent coffee industry, both developed to take advantage of the war economy. The first, created for peanuts in 1862, was the inexpensive, lightweight, and durable paper bag-an unheralded event at the time. The second, invented in 1864 by Jabez Burns, was the self-emptying roaster. Burns, who emigrated from England to the United States in his teens, was the nephew of his namesake, a famed British Baptist preacher. From the evangelist he inherited a revulsion for hard liquor, boundless self-a.s.surance and self-righteousness, and a devotion to coffee, the temperance beverage.

The industrious younger Jabez Burns created a string of inventions. Seeing an opportunity during the war, he quit his job as bookkeeper for a coffee mill to pursue an improved roaster. He now called himself Jabez Burns, Inventor. Using a clever double-screw arrangement, Burns's invention pushed the beans uniformly up and down a chamber as the cylinder turned. Best of all, when the operator opened the door of the roaster, the beans neatly tumbled out into a cooling tray.

Over the next fifteen years Burns sold hundreds of his roasters as the United States, with amazing rapidity, developed into a consumer society that relied on convenient, ma.s.s-produced products. Every town of any size had its own roaster, which introduced a measure of uniformity to coffee roasting that was a sign of things to come. Soon after, a Pittsburgh grocer named John Arbuckle would revolutionize the nascent coffee industry by showing how standardization, branding, and marketing could sell cheap goods.

Arbuckles' Ariosa: The People's Coffee In 1860 two young brothers, John and Charles Arbuckle, joined Duncan McDonald-their uncle on their mother's side-and another friend named William Roseburg to form the wholesale Pittsburgh grocery business of McDonald & Arbuckle. Though they dealt in most foods, twenty-one-year-old John Arbuckle decided to specialize in coffee, which he correctly perceived as a commodity with a future. Four years later, when Jabez Burns invented his roaster, Arbuckle bought one for his Pittsburgh plant, where he began selling preroasted coffee in one-pound packages. Others in the trade mocked him at first for selling coffee "in little paper bags like peanuts," but Arbuckle's product was an immediate success.18 He employed fifty girls to pack and label, then later secured the rights to an automated packaging machine that performed the work of five hundred human packers. Arbuckle also applied an egg-and-sugar glaze, purportedly to prevent his roasted beans from staling and to help in "clarifying" the coffee. He employed fifty girls to pack and label, then later secured the rights to an automated packaging machine that performed the work of five hundred human packers. Arbuckle also applied an egg-and-sugar glaze, purportedly to prevent his roasted beans from staling and to help in "clarifying" the coffee.

John Arbuckle proved to be a marketing genius. He knew that in addition to his innovative concept of providing conveniently preroasted coffee, the most important selling point would be a distinctive brand name and label. He tried out various names, including Arbuckles, Fragar, and Compono, before hitting on Ariosa, which became his flagship brand. ("A" probably stood for Arbuckle, "Rio" for coffee coming from Rio de Janeiro, and "Sa" for Santos, another Brazilian port, or South America, or Sociedade Anonima Sociedade Anonima, the Brazilian equivalent of "incorporated.") Much Rio coffee was (and still is) noted for its distinctively moldy off taste and, though it had its adherents, was one of the least acceptable beans in the trade. Santos had a better reputation.

Arbuckle enjoyed a good sc.r.a.pe with compet.i.tors. He started immediately by issuing a handbill with a woodcut ill.u.s.tration of Dilworth Brothers' coffee establishment. Various bugs and filth appeared in the coffee barrels. "No wonder I have been sick," a man observed. "I see what killed my children," a nearby woman cried. A bitter feud ensued, though no legal action resulted.

In 1871, with sales exploding in Pittsburgh, John Arbuckle left his brother Charles to open a factory in New York. Before the Civil War, New Orleans had been the major point of entry for coffee in the United States. A war blockade had closed the port, however, and New York had become the hub of the American coffee trade. By this time the uncle had departed, and they renamed the firm Arbuckle Brothers.

The following year Arbuckle printed a brightly colored handbill showing a disheveled housewife at her wood stove lamenting, "Oh, I have Burnt my Coffee, again." Her well-dressed, seated guest advises her: "Buy Arbuckles' Roasted, as I do, and you will have no trouble." The text continued with the claim that "every grain is evenly roasted," flatly a.s.serting, "You cannot roast Coffee properly yourself."

The names Arbuckle Arbuckle and and Ariosa Ariosa soon became household words throughout the East Coast and the frontier, while John and Charles Arbuckle became multimillionaires. Already demonstrating a desire to enter all aspects of the business, the Arbuckles had purchased a printer to make their own labels and were also doing job printing for others. soon became household words throughout the East Coast and the frontier, while John and Charles Arbuckle became multimillionaires. Already demonstrating a desire to enter all aspects of the business, the Arbuckles had purchased a printer to make their own labels and were also doing job printing for others.

In the 1880s John Arbuckle established branches in Kansas City and Chicago, with over a hundred additional stock depots across the country. He ventured to Brazil to establish green bean exporting offices in Rio de Janeiro, Santos, and Victoria, the three main Brazilian ports, as well as several branches in Mexico. Arbuckle even owned his own shipping fleet. The Arbuckle plant along the Brooklyn waterfront occupied a dozen city blocks and stabled two hundred draft horses. Arbuckle started his own barrel factory after he got into the sugar business. The barrels were made from Arbuckle-owned timber stands in Virginia and North Carolina. The Brooklyn plant had its own hospital and dining room for employees. In the days before "vertical integration" became a buzzword, Arbuckle had mastered the concept.

Out in the American West, strong, boiled Ariosa became the cowboy's coffee of choice. "Cookie, pour me a cup o' that condensed panther y'u call coffee," a macho cowpoke would say. "This is the way I like it, plum bare-footed [black]. None o' that dehorned stuff y'u get in town cafes for me."

The son of a Scottish immigrant, Arbuckle combined a pragmatic gruff-ness with a more tender side. Stubborn and independent, he also maintained a firm notion of right and wrong. Yet Arbuckle did not brook opposition if he felt he was in the right. In years to come he would become embroiled in a t.i.tanic, prolonged battle for control of the coffee industry.

In his latter years he spent a great deal of money on philanthropic ventures-enterprises such as his "poor man's yachts," three ships Arbuckle had fitted up to haul impoverished New Yorkers out to sea for a night. At one point he said that his "life had been saved" by a sea voyage. "I realized what a boon the cool, salt air of the ocean is to the sweltering, overworked people of the crowded cities." He converted another boat to the Riverside Home for Crippled Children, and he founded an eight hundred-acre farm at New Paltz, New York, as a fresh-air getaway for city children. Later he funded a home for the aged.

Mr. Chase Meets Mr. Sanborn Farther north, in Boston, another coffee dynasty took shape. Growing up on Cape Cod, Caleb Chase worked in his father's grocery store until he was twenty-four, then moved to Boston to work for a leading dry goods house. In 1864 Chase, then thirty-two, went into business for himself as a coffee roaster with two partners. In 1867 James Sanborn, four years younger than Chase, moved to Boston from his native Maine. Having worked in a machine shop, then sold garden seeds, he now set up as a coffee and spice man. In 1878 the two men joined forces under the name of Chase & Sanborn, specializing in coffee and tea.

They established a reputation for their high-grade Standard Java brand, shipped in sealed tin cans of their own manufacture. In 1880 Chase & Sanborn expanded to Chicago, and two years later they opened a Canadian branch in Montreal. By 1882 they were selling over 100,000 pounds of coffee a month from their seven-story factory on Boston's Broad Street. They hired some 25,000 local selling agents in nearly every city and town in the South, West, and Canada, giving each exclusive sales privileges in his defined market area. With such aggressive expansion, profits grew quickly, never falling below $1 million a year after 1880.

Chase, Sanborn, and their junior partner, Charles Sias, were master marketers as well as expert coffee men. The first to use sealed cans in a vain effort to avoid staling from oxygen (the air was sealed in too), they made much of their Seal Brand Java & Mocha, trademarking it with the Chase family seal (a lion rampant over four crosses) along with the Latin inscription "Ne cede malis," meaning roughly, "Yield not to evil."

They did, however, yield somewhat, as one of their longtime employees revealed years later. Their Java & Mocha brand contained very little coffee from either origin. When Swift & Company, charged with misrepresentation for using the term Pure Leaf Lard Pure Leaf Lard, lost their case, the Boston coffee roasters dropped the geographical terms and simply called their coffee Chase & Sanborn Seal Brand. At the same time, the firm put out a variety of second- and third-tier coffees with appealing if nondescriptive names: Sanrika, Crusade, Esplanade, Golden Glow, Good Fellow, Buffalo Brand, Bonita, and Dining Car Special. All of these were packed in parchment-lined paper bags.

Chase & Sanborn were among the first to use premiums to market their coffee. They spent $20,000 a year on advertising, much of it in the form of educational color booklets such as The History of the American Flag The History of the American Flag, North American Birds North American Birds, or The Story of the Pilgrim Fathers The Story of the Pilgrim Fathers. Other giveaways included blotters, novelty cards, and store displays. At one point they mounted giant coffeepots on fifty of their horse-and-wagon delivery teams, complete with steam pouring out of the spout.

Realizing the importance of establishing rapport with their customers, the owners sought salesmen who had the "personal touch." If a customer fell ill, the Chase & Sanborn man would call on him. In hard times, such as the Vermont flood of 1927, all debts owed to the company were canceled entirely. In the cash-strapped South, cotton was sometimes accepted in payment. The firm invariably sent holiday greeting cards to every customer.

One Chase & Sanborn advertis.e.m.e.nt from 1892 showed a sweet grandmother peering into the bottom of a coffee cup, with her daughter and granddaughter looking over her shoulder. "What vision, dear Mother, in your cup do you see?" asked the caption. "The whole world drinking Chase & Sanborn Coffee and Tea." An accompanying card explained how to tell fortunes from coffee or tea grounds in the bottom of a cup. The same year, Chase & Sanborn issued Chunks of Gold Chunks of Gold, an amplified booklet of endors.e.m.e.nts accompanied by the explanation that such customers "buy our Teas and Coffees EXCLUSIVELY, simply because they are proven THE BEST." They boasted that their buying agents, located at strategic points in the producing countries, bought mostly from private plantations, securing the "choicest selections."

It is likely that this hyperbolic advertising came from Charles Sias, a younger and more flamboyant partner who had joined the firm in 1882. Caleb Chase and James Sanborn exemplified the old-line Yankee aristocracy, with a dignified pragmatism and dry sense of humor. Chase invariably asked an a.s.sociate how business was going each day, because, he explained, it would help him decide whether to order steak or beans for lunch. Sanborn displayed his diplomacy one day when a woman asked him for his advice on the best way to make coffee. He asked her how she brewed it, then said, "My word, madam, I don't know any better way to make coffee."

Despite such deference to customers' taste, the two senior partners did indeed know their coffee. And they took pains to make sure they bought the best for the price they paid. They always roasted a sample by hand, then ground it fine, weighed it carefully, and compared it in the cup to another coffee with a fine reputation, known to give "complete satisfaction." While the tea buyers had "cup tested" in this fashion for many years, Chase & Sanborn were coffee pioneers in the early 1880s, though they noted that "this process is pursued by comparatively few," indicating that others had also adopted the practice. They added that "it takes years of careful application and general adaptability to succeed as a coffee expert."

Jim Folger and Gold Rush Coffee In the meantime another coffee dynasty, founded by James Folger, had begun in San Francisco, though the path to it wound from the faraway island of Nantucket, where the Folgers were a whaling clan. In Moby-d.i.c.k Moby-d.i.c.k, Melville referred to "a long line of Folgers and harpooneers."19 But by 1842 the sperm whale had been hunted almost to extinction. In 1849, when word of California gold reached Nantucket, fourteen ships of hopeful young men sailed away in search of the glittering metal rather than whale blubber. Among them were three of the Folger boys-Edward, twenty, Henry, sixteen, and James, fourteen-on a ship bound for Panama. But by 1842 the sperm whale had been hunted almost to extinction. In 1849, when word of California gold reached Nantucket, fourteen ships of hopeful young men sailed away in search of the glittering metal rather than whale blubber. Among them were three of the Folger boys-Edward, twenty, Henry, sixteen, and James, fourteen-on a ship bound for Panama.

After a harrowing trip they made it to the chaotic boomtown of San Francisco in May 1850. Only two years earlier the town had held 800 people. Now 40,000 would-be millionaires tramped through the mudslides that pa.s.sed for streets. The city's princ.i.p.al businesses were saloons, gambling establishments, and wh.o.r.ehouses, where bags of gold dust bought women's favors. While his brothers ventured into mining country, young Jim joined twenty-seven-year-old William Bovee in the Pioneer Steam Coffee and Spice Mills-named somewhat wishfully, since there was no steam engine to run anything yet. The roaster had to be turned by hand, probably by the fourteen-year-old Folger.