offee consisting of coarsely grinding ten percent
of the product and finely grinding ninety percent.

The most notable event of the year 1919 was the inauguration by the
Brazil planters, in co-operation with an American joint coffee trade
publicity committee, of the million-dollar campaign to advertise coffee
in the United States.

In 1919, as a result of frost damage, and of an orgy of speculation in
Brazil, prices for green coffee on the New York Exchange were forced to
the highest levels since 1870; and a new high record was established for
futures, twenty-four and sixty-five hundredths cents for July contracts.

In 1919, Floyd W. Robison, of Detroit, was granted a United States
patent on a process for aging green coffee by treating it with
micro-organisms, the product being known as Cultured coffee.

In the spring of 1920, there was held the third national coffee week,
this time under the auspices of the Joint Coffee Trade Publicity
Committee.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXX

DEVELOPMENT OF THE GREEN AND ROASTED COFFEE BUSINESS IN THE UNITED
STATES

_A brief history of the growth of coffee trading--Notable firms and
personalities that have played important parts in green coffee in
the principal coffee centers--Green coffee trade
organizations--Growth of the wholesale coffee-roasting trade, and
names of those who have made history in it--The National Coffee
Roasters Association--Statistics of distribution of coffee-roasting
establishments in the United States_

Coffee trading in the American colonies probably had its beginnings
about the middle of the seventeenth century. Tea seems to have preceded
coffee as an article of merchandise. Several merchants in the New
England and New York settlements imported small quantities of coffee
with other foodstuffs toward the close of the seventeenth century.

The early supplies of the green bean were brought from the Dutch East
Indies, Arabia, Haiti, and Jamaica. About 1787, the French opened
Mauritius and Bourbon to American ships, which then began to bring back
coffee and tea to the Atlantic-coast cities. Mocha coffee was being
imported direct in American bottoms about 1804. Coffee from Brazil was
first imported by the United States in 1809. Central America began
shipping coffee to the United States in 1840. The total coffee imports
in 1876 were 339,789,246 pounds, valued at $56,788,997, and received
chiefly from Brazil, Hai