migration.
At the present rate this increase would account for about 17,000,000
pounds more coffee each year than was consumed in the year before.

The question is: Do Mr. Citizen, or Mrs. Citizen, or the little Citizens
growing up into the coffee-drinking age, pass his or her or their
respective cups along for a second pouring where they used to be
satisfied with one, or do they take a cup in the evening as well as in
the morning, or do they perhaps have it served to them at an afternoon
reception where they used to get something else? In other words, is the
coffee habit becoming more intensive as well as more extensive?

There are plenty of very good reasons why it should have become so in
the last twenty-five or thirty years; for the improvements in
distributing, packing, and preparing coffee have been many and notable.
It is a far cry these days from the times when the housewife snatched a
couple of minutes amid a hundred other kitchen duties to set a pan over
the fire to roast a handful of green coffee beans, and then took two or
three more minutes to pound or grind the crudely roasted product into
coarse granules for boiling.

For a good many years, the keenest wits of the coffee merchants, not
only of the United States but of Europe as well, have been at work to
refine the beverage as it comes to the consumer's cup; and their success
has been striking. Now the consumer can have his favorite brand not only
roasted but packed air-tight to preserve its flavor; and made up,
moreover, of growths brought from the four corners of the earth and
blended to suit the most exacting taste. He can buy it already ground,
or he can have it in the form of a soluble powder; he can even get it
with the caffein element ninety-nine percent removed. It is preserved
for his use in paper or tin or fiber boxes, with wrappings whose
attractive designs seem to add something in themselves to the quality.
Instead of the old coffee pot, black with long service, he has modern
shining percolators and filtration devices; with a new one coming out
every little while, to challenge even these. Last but not least, he is
being educated to make it properly--tuition free.

It would be surprising, with these and dozens of other refinements, if a
far better average cup of coffee were not produced than was served forty
years ago, and if the coffee drinker did not show his appreciation by
coming back for more.

As a matter of fact, the figures show th