the nearest railroad or river.

Brazil, as the world's largest producer of coffee, has the most highly
developed buying system. Coffee cultivation has been the chief
agricultural pursuit in that country for many years; and large amounts
of government and private capital have been invested in growing,
transportation, storage, and ship-loading facilities, particularly in
the state of Sao Paulo.

The usual method in Brazil is for the _fazendeiro_ (coffee-grower) or
the _commisario_ (commission merchant) to load his shipments of coffee
at an interior railroad station. If his consignee is in Santos, he
generally deposits the bill of lading with a bank and draws a draft,
usually payable after thirty days, against the consignee. When the
consignee accepts the draft, he receives the bill of lading, and is then
permitted to put the coffee in a warehouse.

_Storing at Santos_

At Santos most of the storing is done in the steel warehouses of the
City Dock Company, a private corporation whose warehouses extend for
three miles along the waterfront at one end of the town. Railroad
switches lead to these warehouses, so that the coffee is brought to
storage in the same cars in which it was originally loaded up-country.
The warehouses are leased by _commisarios_. There are also many old
warehouses, built of wood, still operated in Santos, and to these the
coffee is transferred from the railroad station either by mule carts or
by automobile trucks.

At the receiving warehouses, samples of each bag are taken; the tester,
or sampler, standing at the door with a sharp tool, resembling a
cheese-tester, which he thrusts into the center of the bag as the men
pass him with the bags of coffee on their heads, removing a double
handful of the contents. The samples are divided into two parts; one for
the seller, and one that the _commisario_ retains until he has sold the
consignment of coffee covered by that particular lot of samples.

[Illustration: THE LAST SAMPLE BEFORE EXPORT, SANTOS]

_The Disappearing Ensaccador_

In the old days it was the custom every morning for the _ensaccadores_,
or baggers, and the exporters or their brokers, to visit the
_commisarios'_ warehouses and to bargain for lots of coffee made up by
the _commisario_.

In the Santos market, until recent years, the _ensaccador_, or
coffee-bagger, often stood between the _commisario_ and exporter. When
American importing houses began to establish their own buying of