TEA, COFFEE, AND WHISKY.
When and by whom were tea, coffee, and whisky first used as a beverage?
H. G. Clayton.
Answer.—The use of tea among the Chinese, from whom it has extended to all parts of the world, cannot be traced with certainty further back than to 350 A. D., or thereabouts. This use did not become general in China until about A. D. 800. It was first introduced into Europe by the Dutch in 1610. How long coffee has been used in Arabia, its native country, is not certainly known. It was introduced into Egypt in the sixteenth century. The first coffee house in Europe was established in Constantinople in 1551. The first person to make it known to Western Europe seems to have been Leonhard Rauwolf, a German physician, a great traveler. Once introduced, the use of this delightful beverage extended rapidly. Coffee houses sprung up in all the chief cities. The first one in London was opened by a Greek in Newman’s court, Cornhill, in 1652; the first one in France was opened in Marseilles in 1671; the first one in Paris in 1672. The earliest manufacture of whisky is generally referred to the middle of the sixteenth century, but there are some reasons for believing that it had an earlier origin. It was made by the Gaels from barley, which still yields the best quality, and was called by them uisge beatha, later usque baugh, the water of life—of which first word “whisky” is a corruption.
CONVICT LABOR.
Rutland, Ill.
If convicts can make a better article than those who are not convicts, why should other mechanics complain? At least, why shouldn’t the public be permitted to utilize the labor of convicts for its own good?
Wm. Marshall.
Answer.—No doubt it is sound policy to make use of convict labor for the public good and the improvement of the criminals themselves, but the real question is, How is this to be done? Manufacturers and honest mechanics complain that the present system of hiring out convicts to contractors puts the labor of the untaxed criminals, housed at the expense of the State, without families to support, and free from all social and civil burdens, in unfair competition with the labor or industrial products of honest workmen who have families to maintain, taxes to pay, and social and civil duties to perform. Whether the contract system can be so adjusted as to remove any just ground of complaint of the nature here pointed out is a question that is eliciting the earnest study of some of our most profound social and political economists. We cannot discuss it in this place, nor have we any dictum to proclaim. It must be said for the system that it is the only one, with few, if any, exceptions, that has rendered American penitentiaries self-sustaining.