Joel O. Cheek, Nashville
President of the National Coffee Roasters Association, 1922
The Industrial Exposition included displays by twenty-eight manufacturers of machinery and supplies, and was voted a success. Many of the exhibits were of a distinctly educational character.
The following officers were elected for 1921–22: President, Joel O. Cheek, Nashville, Tenn.; first vice-president, Webster Jones, San Francisco; second vice-president, Joseph E. Maury, Memphis, Tenn.; treasurer, Frank Ennis, Kansas City.
Coffee Roaster Statistics
As might be expected, considering the leading place that New York holds as a port of entry for coffee, the roasting and grinding of coffee is more important in the eastern section of the country than in any other. But there are many establishments for preparing coffee scattered throughout the south and the middle west, and the business has grown to considerable proportions on the Pacific coast. New York state leads in number of establishments and is followed by Pennsylvania, California, Missouri, Ohio, and Illinois. The chief southern state is Texas, followed by Louisiana and Kentucky, although Maryland and Louisiana lead in value of product. Missouri has more plants than any other state in the middle west, and is followed by Illinois, though the capital invested and the value of the output are much greater in the latter than in the former.
| Coffee and Spice Roasting and Grinding Establishments—Census of 1914 | |||
| States | Number | Capital | Value of product |
| Alabama | 8 | $155,000 | $331,000 |
| California | 43 | 3,619,000 | 9,584,000 |
| Colorado | 9 | 445,000 | 1,168,000 |
| Connecticut | 7 | 136,000 | 435,000 |
| Dist. of Col. | 5 | 294,000 | 428,000 |
| Florida | 19 | 219,000 | 697,000 |
| Georgia | 6 | 80,000 | 169,000 |
| Illinois | 34 | 8,159,000 | 22,045,000 |
| Indiana | 12 | 941,000 | 1,790,000 |
| Iowa | 14 | 1,752,000 | 3,804,000 |
| Kansas | 6 | 144,000 | 396,000 |
| Kentucky | 17 | 541,000 | 1,561,000 |
| Louisiana | 17 | 1,657,000 | 4,241,000 |
| Maryland | 14 | 1,643,000 | 4,393,000 |
| Massachusetts | 21 | 3,678,000 | 8,675,000 |
| Michigan | 16 | 502,000 | 1,618,000 |
| Minnesota | 11 | 1,531,000 | 4,729,000 |
| Mississippi | 5 | 27,000 | 94,000 |
| Missouri | 37 | 6,152,000 | 14,299,000 |
| Nebraska | 6 | 405,000 | 1,262,000 |
| New Jersey | 17 | 828,000 | 3,451,000 |
| New York | 136 | 9,910,000 | 31,675,000 |
| Ohio | 35 | 6,578,000 | 13,312,000 |
| Oklahoma | 6 | 191,000 | 757,000 |
| Oregon | 9 | 757,000 | 2,050,000 |
| Pennsylvania | 77 | 2,454,000 | 6,967,000 |
| Tennessee | 7 | 465,000 | 1,648,000 |
| Texas | 36 | 970,000 | 3,326,000 |
| Virginia | 9 | 413,000 | 1,137,000 |
| Washington | 25 | 1,023,000 | 2,237,000 |
| West Virginia | 3 | 73,000 | 71,000 |
| Wisconsin | 8 | 362,000 | 809,000 |
| Other states | 21 | 492,000 | 1,590,000 |
| —— | ————— | ————— | |
| Total | 696 | $56,596,000 | $150,749,000 |
The distribution of the business of preparing coffee is shown by the figures of the Census Bureau, which reports for 1914 a total of 696 establishments under the designation "Coffee and spice, roasting and grinding." It was found to be necessary to adopt this classification inasmuch as most establishments handle both coffee and spices. Of the 696, however, 658 had coffee as their principal product, and the figures may thus be taken as indicating fairly well the general distribution of the coffee-manufacturing industry. These figures, for the various states, are shown on page 515.
Preliminary figures for the 1919 census show that the value of the product almost doubled in the five years 1914–19, amounting to $304,740,000 in 1919, while the number of establishments increased from 696 to 794, of which 769 specialize in coffee.
