6

[Illustration: UNLOADING COFFEE WITH MODERN CONVEYOR, NEW ORLEANS]

A plan intended to cut down handling costs in New York, and to expedite
deliveries, was inaugurated by the National Coffee Roasters Association
at the beginning of 1920. The Association formed a freight-forwarding
bureau, and invited members to have their coffee shipments handled
through the bureau. The charges for forwarding direct importations are
two cents per bag. Cartage charges vary from six to eighteen cents per
hundred pounds. Claims are handled without charge.

_The Seven Stages of Transportation_

The foregoing story has taken the reader through the seven most direct
routes that lead from the plantation to the roaster: first, from the
patio to the railroad or river; then to the city of export; into the
warehouses there; then into the steamers; out of them, and upon the
wharf at the port of destination; from the wharf into the warehouses;
and, finally, from the warehouses to the roasting rooms. It will be
understood that in some instances where the plantation is hidden away in
the mountains, it is necessary to relay the coffee; and again, at this
end, the coffee is very often transhipped. In such cases, more handlings
are required.

[Illustration: UNLOADING A COFFEE SHIP BY BLOCK AND TACKLE AT THE PORT
OF NEW ORLEANS]

[Illustration: IN FOREGROUND--LOADING COFFEE BY MEANS OF AN AUTOMATIC
TRAVELING-BELT CONVEYOR, ON GOVERNMENT BARGES FOR ST. LOUIS]

[Illustration: COFFEE-HANDLING SCENES ON THE WHARVES AT NEW ORLEANS]

_Handling Coffee at New Orleans_

Coffee ships are unloaded in New Orleans, the second coffee port in the
United States, in about the same general manner as in New York, with the
important exception that the block-and-tackle system for transferring
the bags from the ship to the dock has been largely supplanted by the
automatic traveling-belt conveyor system. Another notable feature is New
Orleans' steel-roofed piers, whereon the coffee can be stored until
ready for shipment to the interior. Because of the class of
labor--mostly negro--employed in unloading ships, New Orleans has found
it expedient to retain the old flag system to indicate the part of the
pier where each mark of coffee is to be piled as taken from the vessel.
These little flags vary in shape, color and printed pattern, each
representing a particular lot of coffee, and they are firmly fixed at
the part of the pier where those bags sho