ii and the Philippines, also were to have
benefited by the protection asked for. The Congress failed to grant the
planters' prayer. This appeal for protection was repeated in 1921, when
the Congress was asked to place a duty of five cents a pound on all
foreign coffees.

In 1908, J.C. Prims, of Battle Creek, Mich. was granted a United States
patent on a corrugated cylinder improvement for a gas and coal coffee
roaster of fifty to one hundred and thirty pounds capacity designed for
retail stores. This machine was acquired the year following by the A.J.
Deer Company, and was re-introduced to the trade as the Royal roaster.

In 1908, Brazil's valorization-of-coffee enterprise was saved from
disaster by a combination of bankers and the Brazil Government. A loan
of $75,000,000 was placed, through Hermann Sielcken of New York, with
banking houses in England, Germany, France, Belgium, and America. The
complete story of this undertaking is told in chapter XXXI.

In 1909, Ludwig Roselius brought to America from Germany the
caffein-free coffee which for several years had been manufactured and
sold in Bremen under the Myer, Roselius, and Wimmer patent. In 1910, the
product was first sold here by Merck & Company under the name of Dekafa,
later Dekofa, and in 1914, by the Kaffee Hag Corporation as Kaffee Hag.

In 1911 all-fiber parchment-lined Damptite cans for coffee were
introduced to the trade by the American Can Company.

As a result of preliminary meetings of Mississippi Valley coffee
roasters held in St. Louis in May and June, 1911, when the Coffee
Roasters Traffic and Pure Food Association was organized, a national
association under the same name was started in Chicago, November 16-17,
1911. The complete story of the growth of this most important coffee
trade organization in the United States is told in the next chapter.

In 1912, the United States government, after having examined into the
valorization enterprise, brought suit against Hermann Sielcken, _et
al._, to force the sale of valorized coffee stocks held in this country
under the valorization agreement.

In October, 1914, the first national coffee week to advertise coffee was
promoted by the National Coffee Roasters Association.

_Merchants Coffee House Memorial_

On May 23, 1914, the Lower Wall Street Business Men's Association
unveiled a bronze memorial tablet set in the wall of the nine-story
office building occupied by the Federal Refining Company on th