Valorization was undertaken to save the coffee industry. Its intent was good, even if the theory was bad. The scheme was not new, and there were no encouraging precedents to augur its success. The situation was desperate and seemed to justify the trial of a desperate remedy. São Paulo attempted to carry the load; but her resources were insufficient.
The bumper world crop of 19,090,000 bags in 1901–02 was followed, in 1906–07, with another extraordinary yield of 24,307,000 bags, of which Brazil alone produced 20,192,000 bags. To make good its promise to the planters, ready cash was needed; and so the São Paulo government sent a special commissioner to Europe to get it. For sixty years the Rothschilds had acted as Brazil's bankers. The commissioner went to the Rothschilds first. He was flatly refused. After that, he was turned down by practically every bank on the continent. It looked as if the bankers had entered into a gentlemen's agreement to make it unanimous. Then the commissioner bethought himself of the coffee merchants; and that thought naturally suggested Hermann Sielcken, who, singularly enough, happened to be conveniently resting at nearby Baden-Baden. In August, 1906, the commissioner waited upon Mr. Sielcken and begged his aid.
It was Sielcken's hour of triumph. For years he had been soliciting Brazil. Now the tables were turned, and Brazil was asking favors of Sielcken.
The rest of the story is best told by Robert Sloss, who wrote it for World's Work from information furnished by trade authorities—and even by Mr. Sielcken, himself, in various speeches, newspaper articles, and on the witness stand. It is presented here with certain minor corrections by the author:
"Well, what do you want me to do?" asked Hermann Sielcken of the commissioner from the state of São Paulo.
"We want you to finance for us five to eight million bags of coffee," said the commissioner blandly.
Here was an adventure. Here was a proposition to lift bodily out of the market half as much coffee as the world's total production had averaged for the ten preceding years when prices had been so low. Presumably, if this were done, prices would be doubled. But Hermann Sielcken shook his head.
"No," he said, "there is not the slightest chance for it, not the slightest." And then he pointed out that there would be "no financial assistance coming from anywhere" if the São Paulo planters kept on raising such ridiculously large crops of coffee.
The commissioner assured him that the prospect was for smaller crops in future. Hermann Sielcken was not so sure about it "At a price low enough," he mused, "I might be able to raise funds to pay eighty percent on a value of seven cents a pound for Rio No. 5."