THE WORLD'S COFFEE TOWER COMPARED WITH THE EIFFEL AND WOOLWORTH TOWERS
The Woolworth Building, the world's loftiest office structure is 792 feet high from street to top of tower; its main section of 151 by 196 feet stretches up 386 feet, and its volume equals a total of 13,110,942 cubic feet. But a tower made of the year's supply of bags of green coffee (132 pounds each) would equal 73,649,115 cubic feet, or nearly six times the bulk of the Woolworth Building. In the same proportions it would rise 1,386 feet, with the lower section 260 by 340 feet and 670 feet high. Its dimensions would be nearly double those of the Woolworth Building in every direction. And the Eiffel Tower, reaching up 1,000 feet toward the sky would be lost in a tower made of a year's bags of coffee. Such a tower would stand 1,425 feet high on a base area of 230 feet square, the size of the Eiffel's first floor.
CHAPTER XXII
THE PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION OF COFFEE
A statistical study of world production of coffee by countries—Per capita figures of the leading consuming countries—Coffee-consumption figures compared with tea-consumption figures in the United States and the United Kingdom—Three centuries of coffee trading—Coffee drinking in the United States, past and present—Reviewing the 1921 trade in the United States
The world's yearly production of coffee is on the average considerably more than one million tons. If this were all made up into the refreshing drink we get at our breakfast tables, there would be enough to supply every inhabitant of the earth with some sixty cups a year, representing a total of more than ninety billion cups. In terms of pounds the annual world output amounts to about two and a quarter billions—an amount so large that if it were done up in the familiar one-pound paper packages; and if these packages were laid end to end in a row; they would form a line long enough to reach to the moon. If this average yearly production were left in the sacks in which the coffee is shipped, the total of 17,500,000 would be enough to form a broad six-foot pavement reaching entirely across the United States, upon which a man could walk steadily for more than five months at the rate of twenty miles a day. This vast amount of coffee comes very largely from the western hemisphere; and about three-fourths of it, from a single country. The production, shipment, and preparation of this coffee, directly and indirectly support millions of workers; and many countries are entirely dependent on it for their prosperity and economic well-being.
During the crop year that ended June 30, 1921, this million-ton average was considerably exceeded, though it did not approach the record yield of all time in the crop year 1906–07, when the total amounted to almost 24,000,000 sacks; or, in round numbers, 3,000,000,000 pounds.