chapter XXXI

. (See page 538.)

The first gear-driven electric coffee mill was introduced to the trade by the Enterprise Manufacturing Company of Pennsylvania in 1900.

In 1901, there appeared in New York the first issue of _The Tea and Coffee Trade Journal_, devoted to the interests of the tea and coffee trades.

In 1900-01, Santos permanently displaced Rio as the world's largest source of supply.

In 1901, the American Can Company began the manufacture and sale of tin coffee cans in the United States. In this year Landers, Frary & Clark's Universal coffee percolator was granted a United States patent; and Joseph Lambert, of Marshall, Mich., brought out one of the earliest machines to employ gas as a fuel for the indirect roasting of coffee. It was in 1901, also, that F.T. Holmes joined the Huntley Manufacturing Company, of Silver Creek, N.Y., which began to build the Monitor gas-fired direct-flame coffee roasters.

In 1902, the Coles Manufacturing Company (Braun Company, successor) and Henry Troemner, of Philadelphia, began the manufacture and sale of gear-driven electric coffee grinders.

As a result of the agitation for some way to deal with the overproduction of coffee, the Pan-American Congress, meeting in Mexico City in 1902, called an international coffee congress for New York in the fall of that same year. It met from October 1 to October 30; but at the close, the problem seemed no nearer solution than at the beginning. In 1906, Brazil produced its record-breaking crop of 20,000,000 bags, and the state of São Paulo inaugurated a plan to valorize coffee.

In 1902, the first fancy duplex paper bag made by machinery from a roll of paper was produced by the Union Bag & Paper Corporation. It was of sulphite fiber inside, and glassine outside; a style afterward reversed, so as to have the glassine the inner tube.

In 1902, the Jagenberg Machine Company, Inc. (absorbed by the Pneumatic Scale Corporation in 1921) began the introduction to the trade of the United States of a line of German-made automatic packaging-and-labeling machines for coffee. Subsequently, the Johnson Automatic Sealer Company, Battle Creek, Mich., became well known as manufacturers of a line of automatic adjustable carton-sealing, wax-wrapping machines, package conveyors, and automatic scales. Among other automatic weighers that have figured in the development of the coffee business, mention should be made of The National Packaging Machinery Company's Scott machine, of E.D. Anderson's Triumph, and of Hoepner's Unit System.

In 1903, as a result of overproduction in Brazil, Santos 4's dropped to three and fifty-five hundredths cents on the New York Coffee Exchange, the lowest price ever recorded for coffee.

In 1903, also, there was granted the first United States patent on an electric coffee-roaster, the patentee being George C. Lester of New York.

In 1904, green coffee prices on the New York Coffee Exchange were forced up to eleven and eighty-five hundredths cents by a speculative clique led by D.J. Sully.

In 1905, the A.J. Deer Co., Buffalo, N. Y. (now of Hornell, N.Y.) began the sale of its Royal electric coffee mills direct to dealers on the instalment plan, revolutionizing the former practise of selling coffee mills through hardware jobbers.

In 1905, F.A. Cauchois introduced to the trade his Private Estate coffee maker, a filtration device employing Japanese filter paper. Finley Acker, of Philadelphia, obtained a patent the same year on a side-perforation percolator employing "porous or bibulous paper" as a filtering medium.

In 1906, H.D. Kelly, of Kansas City, was granted a United States patent on an urn coffee machine employing a coffee extractor in which the ground coffee was continually agitated before percolation by a vacuum process.

In 1907, P.E. Edtbauer (Mrs. E. Edtbauer), of Chicago, was granted a United States patent on a duplex automatic weighing machine, the first simple, fast, accurate and moderate-priced machine for weighing coffee. Eight others followed up to 1920.

In 1907, the new Pure Food and Drugs Act came into force in the United States, making it obligatory to label all coffees correctly and causing many trade practises to be altered or thrown into the discard. The most important rulings that followed are referred to in more detail in

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