Chapter XXIX
THE COFFEE TRADE IN THE UNITED STATES
The coffee business started by Dorothy Jones of Boston—Some early sales—Taxes imposed by Congress in war and peace—The first coffee plantation-machine, coffee-roaster, coffee-grinder, and coffee-pot patents—Early trade marks for coffee—Beginnings of the coffee urn, the coffee container, and the soluble-coffee business—Statistics of distribution of coffee-roasting establishments in the trade from the eighteenth century to the twentieth
It appears from the best evidence obtainable that the coffee trade of the United States was started by a woman, one Dorothy Jones of Boston. At least, Dorothy Jones was the first person in the colonies to whom a license was issued, in 1670, to sell coffee. It is not clear whether she sold the product in the green bean, roasted, "garbled" (ground), or "ungarbled".
Soon after the introduction of the coffee drink into the New England, New York, and Pennsylvania colonies, trading began in the raw product. William Penn bought his green coffee supplies in the New York market in 1683, paying for them at the rate of $4.68 a pound. Benjamin Franklin engaged in the retail coffee business in Philadelphia, in 1740, as a kind of side line to his printing business.
"Tea, coffee, indigo, nutmegs, sugar etc." were being advertised for sale in 1748 at a shop in Boston, "under the vendue-room in Dock-Square." Coffee was also to be had in that year at the shop of Ebenezer Lowell in King Street, and at the Sign of the Four Sugar Loaves near the head of Long Wharf.
During the sway of the coffee houses, coffee fell from $4.68 a pound to 40 cents a pound in 1750, and to 22 cents a pound just before the Revolution. As the war came on, however, dealers began to force up prices on a dwindling market. The situation became so serious that in January, 1776, the Philadelphia Commission of Inspection issued a fair-price list, setting an arbitrary price of eleven pence per pound on coffee in bag lots. Persons found violating this price were to be "exposed to public view as sordid vultures preying on the vitals of the country."
Despite this threat, J. Peters in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, wrote to a Philadelphia friend, "I cannot purchase any coffee without taking, too, one bill a tierce of Claret & Sour, and at £6.8 per gall.... I have been trying day for day, & never could get a grain of Coffee so as to sell it at the limited price these six weeks. It may be bought, but at 25/ per lb."