Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World

by Mark Pendergrast

  8

  Making the World Safe for Coffee

  Take a carefully blended, full-bodied, highly aromatic coffee and brew it carefully . . . , obtaining a heavy, delicate, enjoyable beverage. Give it to the average coffee-drinker and he will say, “This is no good.” Then take the same coffee, boil it until all its delicate characteristics have disappeared and a lye-like drink has been produced and give it to the same man, who will accept it joyfully, exclaiming, “Ah! That is coffee!”

  —Charles Trigg, coffee researcher, 1917

  For coffee men, World War I shifted the focus of Latin America northward to the United States as its most reliable customer, while imprinting coffee drinking—often in the form of stale, inferior beans—as a regular habit among a generation of veterans.

  Until the conflict, the ports of Hamburg and Le Havre, and to a lesser degree Antwerp and Amsterdam, had commanded over half of the world’s coffee. Because German coffee growers and exporters dominated much of Latin America, German importers traditionally had received the prime growths. Europeans also were willing to pay more for good coffee, leaving Americans with lower grades.

  Most of the coffee brought to U.S. ports arrived in foreign bottoms. Legislation to bolster the virtually nonexistent American merchant marine had languished, leaving America dependent on other countries’ ships. With the declaration of hostilities, every vessel flying the flag of a warring nation had to remain in harbor to avoid being sunk. A quickly enacted stopgap law permitted American registry of foreign-built ships. Firms that had never before transported coffee—such as W. R. Grace & Company, which had made its fortune shipping guano (bird dung fertilizer) from Latin America—jumped at the new business.

  In the confused wartime economy, the New York Coffee Exchange closed its doors for four months. In September 1914 an editorial in a coffee trade journal called for American coffee men to act. “South American commerce, rightly ours by virtue of proximity,” had been largely controlled by European capital. “Only now, when most of the nations comprising Europe are fighting for the preservation intact of their home territories and independence, have they been compelled to neglect established trade in South America.” The time was ripe for aggressive American salesmen. Moreover, coffee prices were bound to decline, since the United States now represented the only major market for the beans.

  “New York has become, temporarily at least, the financial and commercial center of the world,” a banker informed U.S. roasters in 1915. England gave way to America as the clearinghouse for the world’s business, and New York’s National City Bank swiftly established new branches in Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Rio de Janeiro, Santos, São Paulo, and Havana, with the United States developing a favorable trade balance.

  Latin American planters complained bitterly that although their coffee commanded lower prices, their costs for imported machinery to help process their beans and other items had doubled with the war’s onset. Richard Balzac, a coffee expert who specialized in importing Colombian coffee, urged that “the thinking manufacturer of coffee” remember that he needed healthy Latin American plantations. Brazil, already suffering a financial crisis, was seeking another £25 million loan in Europe when the war broke out. Planters desperately requested that the government intervene with a second valorization scheme, but it did not act until near the end of the war. The Brazilians called the war era the quinquenio sinistro, the five disastrous years.

  Importer J. Aron gleefully advertised, “The war has upset business to such an extent that coffee producers are being forced to market their product at prices below the cost of production. This offers an opportunity for buyers to anticipate future needs and take advantage of the present low prices.” Although Brazil remained neutral throughout most of the war, European consumption steadily dwindled. Shipping for a “non-essential,” such as coffee, was scarce. The British established a relatively firm blockade of the route from Latin America. Coffee prices dropped precipitously in the first year of the war.

  Still, coffee did flow to the warring countries, much of it by way of the United States. Two years earlier the United States had reexported less than 4 million pounds of coffee. By 1915 that figure shot up over 1 billion pounds, virtually all of it headed overseas.

  At the same time more U.S. consumers were discovering the snappy full flavor of Guatemalan, Colombian, and other “mild” coffees of Latin America. “For a time,” a reporter wrote from Guatemala in June 1915, “the outlook did seem somewhat gloomy, for Germany had always taken about two-thirds of the republic’s coffee crop.” Now, however, California had become the largest purchaser of Guatemalan coffee.

  For many Germans in Latin America, the war proved to be a nightmare. The Brazilian federal government suppressed German-language newspapers and interned a number of prominent Germans. American neutrality wore thin in the face of German submarine attacks, with the United States entering the war in April 1917. Brazil also went to war with Germany, but only after the United States promised to purchase a million pounds of coffee for its expeditionary forces.

  The United States quickly passed legislation calling for the confiscation of “alien property” and pressured coffee-producing countries to do the same. In February 1918 Guatemala passed a similar law. Prior to the war, German growers in Guatemala, who owned 10 percent of the coffee plantations, had accounted for 40 percent of the total harvest, and Germans controlled 80 percent of the country’s beans. Now, under pressure from the United States, control of many German-owned coffee plantations was put under the supervision of Daniel Hodgson, a U.S. citizen living in Guatemala. The U.S. government insisted that nearly two-thirds of the German-owned plantations qualified as “enemy property.” Guatemalan dictator Estrada Cabrera took advantage of the situation to enrich his own real estate holdings.

  Coffee and the Doughboy

  With the American entry into the war, jingoistic fervor quickly turned Germans into monsters in the popular mind. “It is a solemn time, big with destiny,” intoned the editor of a coffee trade journal. “Yet the struggle between autocracy and democracy, now world-wide, must go on [for the] preservation of human freedom and civilization.” These noble sentiments did not stop American coffee firms from reexporting coffee to the Scandinavian countries, knowing that most of the beans would end up in Germany. The same day that Woodrow Wilson declared his intention of making the world safe for democracy, coffee prices on the exchange shot up on the assumption that peace would now come quickly, along with higher prices spurred by renewed European demand.

  The war did not end quite so quickly. Instead it provided a demand for even more coffee—over 29 million pounds requisitioned by the Quartermaster-General’s Department for 1917. Coffee was, as a contemporary journalist noted, “THE most popular drink of the camp,” imbibed at every meal.

  Most army coffee—low-grade Santos to start with—was roasted and ground in the United States, then poorly packed. By the time it reached the troops “over there,” it was guaranteed to be stale. Also, army regulations called for using only five ounces of coffee for every gallon of water. The grounds were to be left in the pot until the next meal, when water was added, along with three more ounces of coffee to each gallon of water. E. F. Holbrook, a New Hampshire grocer assigned to the Quartermaster’s Department to purchase all the military coffee, vowed to modify the hideous instructions for brewing military coffee and to set up roasters behind the lines.

  Holbrook lobbied the military, pushing the fact that shipping green beans would save considerable space, since coffee expands when roasted. General John J. Pershing cabled authorization for roasting and grinding machinery to be sent overseas, along with professional roasters and green coffee. By the time the war ended, the U.S. Army was roasting 750,000 pounds of green beans daily.

  At first the war demanded little sacrifice from the coffee roasters beyond switching to fiber rather than tin containers. Then, early in 1918, cotton speculators entered the coffee market. Alarmed, Herbert Hoover’s Food Admini
stration decided to take over the coffee market and freeze the price to prevent speculation. Many importers objected, pointing out that coffee prices had actually declined during the war, whereas other consumer goods cost more. In a letter to Herbert Hoover, the entire green coffee trade asserted, “If the regulations are not withdrawn, it must ultimately result in the ruination of our business.” Hoover remained unmoved.

  A Cup of George for the Boys

  The war provided a substantial boost for the new soluble or “instant” coffees. In 1906, while living in Guatemala, a Belgian named George Washington—purportedly an indirect descendant of the first American president—conceived the idea of refining coffee crystals from brewed coffee. 37 By 1910 Washington, now an American citizen living in New York, came out with his G. Washington’s Refined Coffee. Although it did not possess the aroma, taste, or body of coffee brewed from freshly roasted beans, this miraculous instant version did taste perceptibly like the real thing, and it provided the same warmth and caffeine content. Through persistent advertising and clever promotions, the instant coffee made its mark even before America entered the war.

  In the summer of 1918, the U.S. Army requisitioned the entire G. Washington output, which fact the company promptly advertised: “G. Washington’s Refined Coffee has gone to WAR.” The instant coffee found grateful consumers. “I am very happy despite the rats, the rain, the mud, the draughts, the roar of the cannon and the scream of shells,” wrote one doughboy from his 1918 trench. “It takes only a minute to light my little oil heater and make some George Washington Coffee. . . . Every night I offer up a special petition to the health and well-being of [Mr. Washington].” Another soldier wrote, “There is one gentleman I am going to look up first after I get through helping whip the Kaiser, and that is George Washington, of Brooklyn, the soldiers’ friend.” The doughboys frequently called for a cup of “George” rather than coffee.

  Other coffee roasters scrambled to create their own instant coffees, and several new firms, such as the Soluble Coffee Company of America, sprang into existence. By October 1918 the army was calling for 37,000 pounds of instant coffee a day, while the entire national production was only 6,000 pounds. Then the war ended in November 1918, abruptly eliminating the market for soluble coffee and driving many of its producers out of business. Though G. Washington survived, it never established a large following, and it would take another world war to revive the fortunes of instant coffee.

  Peace brought temporary prosperity to coffee producers, but not to American roasters. As it became clear that the war would end soon, Brazilian traders, anticipating renewed European demand, drove Santos futures prices to unprecedented heights. At the same time, the U.S. Food Administration ordered the liquidation of all futures contracts to avoid runaway price inflation. Aggrieved coffee men telegraphed Hoover: “Prices in producing counties are soaring and our merchants are unwilling to import because there is no free market in which they can hedge their purchases.” They asked for a “contract absolutely free from restrictions.” Again, Hoover remained adamant.

  The U.S. Expeditionary Forces had used 75 million pounds of coffee during the war, and the American Army of Occupation in Germany continued to require 2,500 pounds of coffee every day. The war had addicted veterans to coffee. “It shall not be forgotten,” a coffee roaster gloated, “that a good cup of coffee is one of the vital blessings of their every-day life which should not and must not be denied to them, our boys, the unbeatable, happy warriors of a coffee-loving nation!”38

  Meanwhile, Back on the Fazenda . . .

  The Great War exacerbated a trend that would continue for the next few decades: Brazil, while maintaining its overwhelming dominance of world coffee production, faced stiffer opposition from other producing countries, particularly those of Central America and Colombia. While Brazil struggled with chronic overproduction of its lower grades, the so-called mild coffee countries gradually increased their output, all of which they could sell for a premium above the price commanded by Santos.

  Hit with disastrously low wartime prices, the Brazilians financed a second valorization in 1917, holding 3 million bags off the market. The following year, prices skyrocketed when the war ended, driven by news of a severe Brazilian frost, limited shipping space, speculators, and U.S. Food Administration restrictions. The Brazilian government quickly sold its second consignment of valorized coffee for a tidy profit.

  For forty years its coffee had accounted for over half the value of all Brazilian exports. Now in 1918, despite the valorized coffee profits, it fell to a third, partly due to increased Allied demand for other agricultural essentials such as beans, sugar, and beef. In addition, Brazilian industrialization, which had lagged far behind that of the United States, doubled under the impetus of the war and tripled by 1923. Nearly 6,000 new industrial enterprises—mostly foodstuffs and textiles—sprang up between 1915 and 1919. Though much of the capital for these ventures derived from São Paulo coffee growers, this trend signaled the gradual decline of the absolute political power of the traditional coffee barons.

  Colombia Comes of Age

  Only after World War I did Colombian coffee exports have an appreciable impact on the market. While Brazil repeatedly held back part of its crop, Colombian production increased, despite almost insurmountable odds.

  Although its volcanic landscape suited it for coffee growing, Colombia’s geography also made it almost impossible to get the beans to market. The best coffee-growing regions were virtually inaccessible except by way of the shallow, rapid-strewn Magdalena River. “The region is fit for settlement [only] by madmen, eagles and mules,” an exasperated early Spanish explorer had observed. Besides, Colombians seemed intent on murdering one another rather than growing coffee. There were civil wars in 1854, 1859-1861, 1876-1877, 1885, 1895, and the Thousand Days War of 1899- 1903, which left the country in ruins. “When we aren’t in a revolution we are waiting for it,” one Colombian coffee grower lamented.39

  Once at peace, however, Colombia turned toward coffee with the battle cry, “Colombianos a sembrar café! ” loosely translated as “Colombians, plant coffee or bust!” When coffee prices doubled in 1912 and 1913, one Colombian writer noted “a veritable fever which is populating our lands with coffee trees.” While larger plantations, called haciendas, dominated the upper Magdalena River regions of Cundinamarca and Tolima, penniless but determined peasants staked new claims in the mountainous regions to the west, in Antioquia and Caldas. Due to a labor shortage, these small landowners, who became the majority of Colombian coffee growers, frequently helped one another during harvest time. This custom of la minga, common among the Indians, called for the host farmer to feed his guest worker, entertain him in the evening, and then reverse roles to harvest his neighbor’s finca.

  On the larger haciendas of the upper Magdalena River (20,000 trees or larger), tenant farmers lived on small plots where they could grow their own food. Although conditions were never as bad as those in Brazil, Guatemala, and El Salvador, the tenant farmers grew increasingly unhappy on the larger plantations. Conflicts focused on tenant contracts, working conditions, and the right to sell crops grown on workers’ plots. Gradually, larger plantations declined as small family coffee farms proliferated. Each farm generally depulped and dried its own coffee but sold its beans to large processing plants for the final removal of the parchment.

  In a symbiotic relationship, new railroads, relying on coffee for profits, allowed more coffee to be grown and transported, though much of it still found its way from the farther mountainous reaches on muleback. With the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, coffee also could be exported from Colombia’s previously unreachable Pacific Coast.

  In 1905 Colombia exported only 500,000 bags of coffee. Ten years later, exports had more than doubled. In the ensuing years, while Brazil desperately tried to control its overproduction, Colombian crops continued their steady expansion as the country’s high-grown, flavorful beans found favor with American and European consumer
s.

  World War I provided an enormous boost to American consumption of Colombian, Central American, and other mild coffees. In 1914 Brazil had supplied three-quarters of U.S. coffee imports with 743 million pounds, but by 1919 it provided barely half, with 572 million pounds. Meanwhile Colombian imports had increased from 91 million to 121 million pounds. American consumers, noted the Saturday Evening Post in 1920, had become accustomed to the finer grades of coffee. Colombian coffees named for particular localities—Bogotá, Bucaramanga, Cúcuta, Santa Marta, Manizales, Armenia, Medellin—achieved fame among coffee connoisseurs and even run-of-the-mill consumers. Within a few years Maxwell House would mention Bucaramanga and Manizales in its commercial pitches.

  During the same period Central American exports to the United States had risen from 40 million to 158 million pounds. In Guatemala business returned to normal after the war, as dictator Estrada Cabrera sold most of the confiscated German farms back to their former owners, who resumed their traditional domination of the coffee industry. Haiti, partially recovered from the long-ago slave insurrection that had ruined its coffee industry, provided 48 million pounds to the United States by the end of the war, up from virtually nothing. Even the Dutch East Indies—principally Java and Sumatra—had recovered sufficiently from the leaf rust plague to increase exports to the United States.40

  Robusta or Bust

  By 1920, 80 percent of Java’s coffee crop consisted of robusta beans, the high-caffeine, disease-resistant alternative that had been discovered in the Belgian Congo in 1898, just as the leaf rust hemileia vastatrix was decimating the East Indies’ arabica crop.41 Unlike its more delicately flavored arabica cousin, robusta—so named for its hardy growth—thrived anywhere from sea level to 3,000 feet and produced its small berries in far greater abundance. It also began bearing in its second year, earlier than arabica. Its only disadvantage lay in the cup: even the best robusta brew tasted harsh, flat, and bitter. It had to be used in a blend with arabicas, to the detriment of the latter. The Dutch, who supervised robusta’s growth amid the rubber trees of Java and Sumatra, nonetheless developed a taste for it, particularly during World War I, when its consumption in the Netherlands surpassed that of Brazilian arabica.