Pre-War Consumption and Price Chart

Import price and per capita consumption of coffee in the United States for the fiscal years 1851 to 1914, in five-year averages. Solid line represents import price per pound. Dotted line represents per capita consumption

But the apparent growth in any given year is a matter of comparison with a nearby year, and there are declines as well as jumps; and, as for the gradual growth, it must always be remembered that, according to the Census Bureau, some 1,400,000 more people are born into this country every year, or enter its ports, than are removed by death or emigration. At the present rate this increase would account for about 17,000,000 pounds more coffee each year than was consumed in the year before.

The question is: Do Mr. Citizen, or Mrs. Citizen, or the little Citizens growing up into the coffee-drinking age, pass his or her or their respective cups along for a second pouring where they used to be satisfied with one, or do they take a cup in the evening as well as in the morning, or do they perhaps have it served to them at an afternoon reception where they used to get something else? In other words, is the coffee habit becoming more intensive as well as more extensive?

There are plenty of very good reasons why it should have become so in the last twenty-five or thirty years; for the improvements in distributing, packing, and preparing coffee have been many and notable. It is a far cry these days from the times when the housewife snatched a couple of minutes amid a hundred other kitchen duties to set a pan over the fire to roast a handful of green coffee beans, and then took two or three more minutes to pound or grind the crudely roasted product into coarse granules for boiling.

For a good many years, the keenest wits of the coffee merchants, not only of the United States but of Europe as well, have been at work to refine the beverage as it comes to the consumer's cup; and their success has been striking. Now the consumer can have his favorite brand not only roasted but packed air-tight to preserve its flavor; and made up, moreover, of growths brought from the four corners of the earth and blended to suit the most exacting taste. He can buy it already ground, or he can have it in the form of a soluble powder; he can even get it with the caffein element ninety-nine percent removed. It is preserved for his use in paper or tin or fiber boxes, with wrappings whose attractive designs seem to add something in themselves to the quality. Instead of the old coffee pot, black with long service, he has modern shining percolators and filtration devices; with a new one coming out every little while, to challenge even these. Last but not least, he is being educated to make it properly—tuition free.

It would be surprising, with these and dozens of other refinements, if a far better average cup of coffee were not produced than was served forty years ago, and if the coffee drinker did not show his appreciation by coming back for more.

As a matter of fact, the figures show that he does come back for more. We do not refer to the figures of the last two years, which indeed are higher than those for many preceding years, but to the only averages that are of much significance in this connection; namely, those for periods of years going back half a century or more. Five-year averages back to the Civil War show increasing per capita consumption for continental United States (see table).

Five-Year Per Capita Consumption Figures
Five-year
Period		Per capita
Five-year
Period		Per capita
1867–716.381897–190110.52
1872–767.031902–0611.50
1877–817.531907–1110.21
1882–869.091912–1610.02
1887–918.071917–2111.39
1892–968.63