The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1901-05-15
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The answers / received enlightened me
as to the wherefore of the present de-
pression in coffee. SOS
The Hawaiian berry has never been
properly placed upon the market The
grocers have never been approached up
on the reciprocity basis that have sug-
gested until now; Hawaiian coffee has
been placed at too high figures, and diff
ferent lots of the product that have
reached San Francisco have not been
hand picked; that is, the badly dried or
sour berries have not been eliminated
after fermentation has taken place
Native coffee is by Coast dealers plac-
ed upon the same basis as Central
Americans and the price thus graduated
has been less, on account of the sour
berries, than the planters expected or
were willing to accept. The brokers
generally have given black eye to Ia
waiian coffee. They have all of them
made their money through Central
Americans and it is perhaps only natur-
al that they should be Indifferent to our
claims.
ITO be successful, all our coffee should
be handled through one broker who
would be willing to devote his entire in
have found this man. The badly selected
coffee that has reached the market has
been largely the product of the small
growers mostly Portuguese, who have
not the proper means of drying the ber-
ry, and do not attempt to take the nee
essary care, often leaving the drying cof-
fee exposed on the mating to the dews
and rain, and then piing up the berries
in heaps. until the sun comes out again,
thus getting them musty. 1t would De
my idea for the larger planters to buy
F,-r, IL,
the cherry or while the berry is ripe
but still uncrushed, then pulping and
preparing the coffee for the market in
their own dTying-rooms. The picking
over by hand of the berries is most i'm
porta Mt matter, only costing about one
cent a pound to do, and bringing three
or four cents extra for the selected crop
1.-THE broker too is another essential
feature, the larger firms refusing to
buy through any other source.
THE broker who Is interested in the
future of Hawaii as a coffee-producer
suggested what ! consider a very prac-
ticable plan. To raise among the plant
ers and agents here a sum of money, say
about 5000 or even $4,000, to be expend-
ed in articles to be placed in the promi-
nent Eastern monthlies. The articles
would be illustrated, of course, and
should do much toward interesting the
public in general in Hawaiian coffee.
Coffee is not a particularly hard plant
to cultivate on the generous soil of the
attitudes of these Islands. 1t requires
some money, of course to start with,
but not any more than the capital avail
able to the class of agriculturists that
planted the orange groves of Florida and
California. Far more certain are the
profits and far less the labor.
after the first rough work of telling
the trees is accomplished, there is little
to be done that even the women of the
household could not handle. The work,
out of doors in the finest climate of the
world would build up a mans constitu-
ton while also building up his fortune.
The ideal climate for coffee-growing is
an ideal climate as far as health is con-
cerned. There is no better climate in the
world than that to be found in the up
land coffee belts of these Islands.
"Coffee-growing has been presented
hitherto in discouraging light to those
making enquiries. Everything else has
been lost sight of in the light of the SUI
gar industry. Folks taking up the cof-
fee lands have been strongly urged by
the sugar planters to grow cane, on the
principle of course, that the more cane
is grown the better for the mill. It Is
the sugar company that absorbs the
profits, not the small grower. As you
stated in your article, the enlarging of
the coffee industry would result In bring
ing to the Islands the most desirable ele-
ment Of colonists, exactly the style of