Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1890-05-15

since at least three crops year are gath
cred 10 Little care must be exercised In
this matter of irrigation and subsequent
driving; for the growing fruit must not
suffer for moisture, neither must the ma
turing crop be allowed to freshen and con-
tinue green and since this problem in
wolves treatment of the single tree, on
which. green, half grown and matured
COTE: is hanging, one can see that the
most skillful treatment is required. Ma
tive farmers in Brazil, away from the
large plantations, raise their coffee in
much the same slipshod manner which OBJ
tains among negro or Indian farmers in
America. They do not trim their trees
very carefully, they only manage to raise
one full crop a year, and they do not get
the best price for that since they do not
thoroughly clean it. But at Rio and San
tos, as we'll as at Java and Sumatra, rich
companies own their own plantations
where all is done with the best business
methods, and not a penny is lost which
care and skill and money can save.
A good many people try to pick out cof
fee by the color; but this is misleading
Ali cotfees in this market, excepting Bios,
are called mild. and these latter are most
popular. They are naturally less dark in
color than the Bios. The Mocha grain is
small and gray, inclined almost to green.
The Java and the East Indians are larger
and are yellow in color, while the Surinan
coffee has the largest grain, and approaches
a brown in shade. The West India and
South and Central American coffees are as
large as the Java and are generally much
darker In color. Yet they are not nearly
so strong. Coffee buyers know that pre-
jGdice exists in favor of dark brown grains,
and so the crop of this present year in
Java will be held as long as is convenient,
and then in nearly every case it will be
shipped to America in sailing vessels, so
that, with matches battened down and the
heat below decks raising. plenty of time
may be given the grain to go through a
sweat which shall leave it at last just as
the critics in America want it to be. Now
the quality of the coffee has not changed,
the color has simply deepened. When
the shiftless farmers of Brazil bring in
their crop in bags and baskets and square
pieces of cloth, driving it over the noun
tain In mule train Or floating it down
the river on a raft, they sell as quick as
they can and the overseer at the warehouse
HAY dump ten bushels of Parana Santa
coffee into the same heap with four tons
from Bahia. simply because they look alike;
yet they will differ vastly in strength. Oc-
casionally, too, coffee is colored. This is
thing which all good importers deprecate,
yet it cannot be entirely avoided, as
wishy-washy grain would lie in grocery
unsold forever, when little doctoring to
oh ,4c would ,,,o1,o
like hot cakes.
AS to bogus coffee. one can find it in the
market any day 1t is always roasted and
ground. Back in war times a good many
people were glad to find any kind Of a
getting gray can remember the days when
he was lad too small for service in the
army, that parched corn, burned rye
dandelion root. blackened molasses and
meal, and such things, doctored at rare and
prosperous intervals with a coffee
essence or preparation of chicory They
beat nothing little, but they were not
coffee, and they didn't serve to patch out
the supply of coffee very successfully,
either. But in the latter days small per
cent. of the bogus may be mixed with a
bulk of genuine and not be detected till
you look in the coffee pot. 1t shows up
there, a lot of floating particles of dark
brown paste. But the active principle Of
coffee, the caffeine, exists only in this
plant of the vegetable kingdom. and
nothing else tastes or smells or acts like it.
The price of coffee is believed right now
to be about as high as it will go. The
new crop begins to market July l, and
every indication at present points to a
good crop throughout the coffee producing
belt of the West Indies, Brazil and Central
America. The product in Mocha and
Java and in the whole Dutch controlled
region never varies much; but coffee
Brazilian coffee is selling for % cents they
know Mocha and Java is worth 81 or 28
and they get it, too. Yet they would have
sold for a profit at "a cents had Brazil
coffee sold for II or Is cents.