Coffee: The Epic of a Commodity (43 page)

Our conversation grew transcendental.

We were strolling hither and thither through the town. Suddenly Hennig broke off with the words: “Where had we got to? I mean, to what point in Brazilian economic history?”

“We had reached the collapse of the Defesa, in 1929. This is April 1932. Little is known in Europe as to what has happened in the interim. Nothing more than conflicting newspaper reports. It is impossible to form a clear picture from them.”

“No, there is something better than that available,” said Carlos Hennig. “The London and Cambridge Economic Service has published a memorandum about recent happenings. I will order a copy for you.”

Next afternoon, the pamphlet was brought to me in the hotel. The author’s name was I. W. F. Rowe.

From it I learned that when, in 1929, the Defesa collapsed, and there was imminent danger that a huge harvest would be poured into the market, a certain Charles Murray came forward with a proposal to solve the joint problem of “coffee and currency” at one stroke. His scheme was as simple as it was bold. The chief wonder was that no such proposal had ever been mooted before.

The export value of the coffee-crop, said Murray, was estimated in 1930 at one-third more than it had been in 1929. To maintain the old price would endanger the stability of the currency. “But,” said Charles Murray, “besides that, if we keep the price of coffee at its former level, the whole crop will, once more, be extremely lucrative. This will lead to further plantation, and the situation will grow steadily worse. Now we find that consumption throughout the world is increasing, steadily though slowly. High prices, strangely enough, do not check the growth of consumption; whereas (and that is still more remarkable) low prices do not markedly stimulate consumption. Consumption, therefore, does not play the part attributed to it by free-trade philosophers. But that is a side-issue. Our immediate object must be to find means: first of bringing back the gold-price of coffee to its former level; and, nevertheless, secondly, of avoiding any stimulus to the planters to extend the area of plantation. On the contrary, it is indispensable that they should make so little out of their coffee as to incline them to reduce plantation. Apparently there must be discovered some effective way of diminishing supply, since it is excessive supply which forces down prices. Well and good; but how is all this to be managed?”

Murray’s plan was that for the following two years every sack of coffee should pay an export tax of one hundred per cent ad valorem. In that case, he calculated, the gold price would, after six months, attain the level of the preceding year, whereas the planters would receive only the present lower price, and would, as a psychological consequence of this, proceed to restrict production. The revenue derived from this export tax would provide the government with funds for the purchase and destruction of the surplus crop. After the glut had been reduced by destruction of surplus coffee and after the production of coffee had been restricted, the export tax could be withdrawn, and the price of coffee be left to adjust itself freely in accordance with liberal principles. This scheme was to run for only two years.

When it was bruited abroad in Brazil that Charles Murray had suggested such a plan to the Coffee Institute, there was a storm of indignation. Everyone knew that, since the collapse of the Defesa, the Institute had been on the lookout for a new economic scheme—but this one would never do. The planters threatened revolution. To appease them, Whittaker, the new minister for finance, made an agreement with the United States to exchange Brazilian coffee for American wheat, and he was able to buy the harvest at a fairly good price.

But this expedient was successful for no more than another six months. The fundamental notion of Charles Murray had, at length, to be adopted. The government decided to compel the planters to deliver one-fifth of their total harvest in kind, and this fifth was to be destroyed. The planters raised a cry of fury. Were they to surrender one-fifth of their crops to the government for nothing? And were they, over and above this, to bear the cost of production and transport? No parliament would have approved the plan, and no police force could have carried it into execution. Since, however, something had to be done to prevent coffee becoming valueless, a compromise was reached. Charles Murray’s scheme seemed not so bad after all. In April 1931, a congress from the coffee-growing provinces unanimously accepted the essence of it: the levying of an export duty whose proceeds were to be devoted to the purchase of coffee for destruction.

“Who, then,” I asked, lifting my eyes from the Cambridge pamphlet, “really paid the expenses of the quemada?”

“The producer and the consumer have joined forces,” replied Carlos Hennig. “First of all, the exporter pays, since upon every sack that is sent out of the country an export duty of ten shillings sterling is levied. The exporter does what he can to shift this burden upon the shoulders of the planter. The proceeds of the tax are used by the Brazilian government to finance the destruction of surplus coffee.”

“How many sacks,” I inquired, “does the government propose to destroy?”

“The Supreme Coffee Council in Rio has pledged itself to destroy within the year twelve million sacks. I believe, however, that this estimate will be exceeded. The coming crop is once more enormous; the planters must export coffee, and for each sack that is exported, ten shillings automatically drop into the treasury. Automatically, therefore, the process of destruction continues.”

I was dumbfounded as I stared at Carlos Hennig. I found myself repeating the words which the German airman had used three days ago: “The plans of the Coffee Council may be extremely reasonable. All the same, they are preposterous, since they ignore the understanding, the morality, and the sentiment of the plain man.”

Hennig dropped his eyeglass, and in his turn looked at me with astonishment. He nodded twice, as if in approval, and then restored the eyeglass to its place. For some reason, today, he looked to me extremely old, much older than he had looked the day before in Campinas. His eyebrows had worn thin, just as a fine piece of furniture will grow shabby during long years of use. But his countenance was placid, as if he felt glad that it was unlikely he would survive to witness the “regression of the world into simplicity.”

“What hopeless anarchy!” I thought to myself, as I walked through the streets of São Paulo.

Yet there was nothing anarchical about the aspect of the town. It was a clean, tidy place, with its white buildings; much cleaner and tidier than most towns I have seen, the towns of southern Europe especially. Tropical cities have to keep themselves clean. Dirt in the tropics gives rise to epidemics. And tropical epidemics entail a very high mortality.

São Paulo, however, which is a good way south of the equator, on the tropic of Capricorn, does not resemble other tropical towns, at any rate in its central part. Its policemen and taxis, its restaurants and shops, are as spruce as those of a well-to-do town in the temperate zone; and, though the morning sun shone brightly, the atmosphere was pleasantly cool. We were fully three thousand feet above the sea, and at that altitude the tropical heat is tempered.

For the casual visitor in the business quarter of São Paulo, the errors of the coffee-dictatorship were as invisible as were the flaws of tropical life. The house in the Rua Wenceslau Braz, which since 1906 has been the headquarters of state intervention in the coffee-plantations (though, since the collapse of the Defesa, part of its powers has been surrendered to the Supreme Coffee Council in Rio de Janeiro), looked like an ordinary house of business. Schedules of one sort and another ornamented the walls of the room, and the courteous officials were seated at inoffensive-looking desks. Calendars were also posted up. Some of the employees were ticking away at typewriters. The work was done at an easy pace, as usual among the upper grades of employees in the tropics.

A good deal of their work obviously must be calculations, to ascertain how much coffee, during the next few weeks, had to be shovelled into bonfires or dumped into the sea. Fire and water were of equal importance as destroyers of the glut. Clerks were also drawing up plans for commercial treaties, organizing a system by which coffee could be exchanged for imports: for North American wheat, for coal from the Ruhr and German manufactures, for electrical machinery from Austria, for whatever Turkey could export—but the most dependable partners of these regulators of the coffee-market were two of the four primary elements, fire and water.

When I got back to the hotel, a queer type of fellow was awaiting me. Long and lean as Don Quixote, he was clad in white tropical raiment, which was however both ravelled and soiled. This was unusual here, for anyone who has pretensions to be a “gentleman,” since the majority of such buy their coats and trousers by the dozen and put on a clean suit every morning.

“Good day to you,” said this phenomenon in my native tongue. “I speak German, for my mother was German. My name is Gonçalves.” Short pause, while he waited for me to reply. Since I said nothing, he went on: “My name is Simone Gonçalves, lieutenant-colonel on half pay.”

I bowed. “What can I do for you?”

“The hotel porter, who is an acquaintance of mine, told me of your arrival. Is it true that you contribute to the newspapers over there?”

Over there. He uttered the words in a tone like that in which many people in Europe are apt to pronounce the name of America—in a tone of envy and respect. The tone made me prick up my ears.

“Won’t you take a seat, colonel?”

“I’d rather stand,” said he, “if you don’t mind.” He flushed a little. “I should probably get up again very soon.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, and continued speaking furtively, almost in a whisper: “I have reason to suppose that you are being misinformed. All the Europeans who come here are humbugged. I suppose they have told you that the government is destroying twelve million sacks of coffee every year. Let me assure you, sir, that that is untrue. The government does not destroy six million, barely two million.”

“I don’t understand . . .” I murmured.

He looked at me with a distressful expression: “Let me tell you the facts. The coffee is secretly shipped away. It is simply stolen by the government; by these . . .”—vainly he sought a term of abuse strong enough for his liking—“who subsequently speculate with it!”

By this time I realized that my visitor was a lunatic. His delusion played with him as strings pull the limbs of a puppet. For a moment every nerve in him, every muscle, seemed to be twitching. He swallowed two or three times. Then he grew calmer, and sat down, unbidden.

“I see that you don’t believe me. Of course I cannot prove what I am telling you; but you can see, at least, how probable it is that some hanky-panky is going on. Otherwise the government would not have recourse to so unserviceable an instrument as fire. . . .” He searched his pockets, produced a notebook, a corkscrew, a couple of handkerchiefs. His hands flew from one part of his coat to another, but he could not find that of which he was in search.

“I used to be a planter. In one of the years when prices fell almost to nothing, I was ruined, had to discharge my workers, and quit. My nearest neighbour, a fellow from Alagoas, bought my estate for a song. Now he goes on growing my coffee.” The poor fellow stared thoughtfully into vacancy.

“Coffee is our national misfortune in Brazil. The government does not play straight. It is in league with the rich planters. Ah, here it is!” he said triumphantly. “It” was a small pasteboard box with a glass cover. He handed this to me, and a magnifying-glass as well.

“That is the broca do café.”

“The coffee-borer?” I asked. “A noxious beetle, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it made its first appearance about ten years ago. In the Campinas district alone it has destroyed a hundred thousand coffee-trees. But that is far too few, nothing at all.”

“I have heard of it,” said I, “and I have also been told what strong measures have been taken to fight the pest. I understand that every plantation has a disinfection-outfit provided at the cost of the state.”

My interlocutor laughed scornfully, and said: “Senhores Lopes de Oliveira and Antonio de Queiroz Telles, two famous coleopterists, have actually prepared a motion-picture to warn everyone against the broca.”

The story of the ruin of the plantations in Ceylon came into my mind. There have been great advances during the last fifty years. Means of defence are put into operation far more quickly. My thoughts wandered. As if from a great distance I heard the colonel saying: “Nothing should be done to resist the onslaught of the broca. If the government really wants to save the country, it will take up loads of the eggs of this beetle in airplanes, and strew them far and wide over the plantations.”

“You don’t say so!” I interposed, rising.

Stuttering in his haste, he said: “Let me beg you to write about this matter when you return to Europe.”

Turning the door-handle to usher him out, I replied: “Certainly I will do what you ask.”

The night-train to Rio was scheduled to start at ten o’clock. It was known as the “Cruzeiro do Sul,” the Southern Cross. Its bright blue carriages revived memories of taking train to the Riviera. Soon I was on my way back towards the Atlantic, to Rio the hothouse, whence you see the sun rising out of the sea. We passed through Taubaté, where, in 1906, the three state presidents met in council. I asked the attendant to call me when the train reached Tuba Ton, at which place rocks and palm-trees begin.

As noon struck, I drove to Independencia Park, to see the monument to the independence of Brazil. It consists of stone figures of goddesses, warriors, and symbols of one sort and another. A pair of Indians in feathered robes participate in the commemoration of liberty. The whole is eloquently decorated with Portuguese inscriptions.

I sat down upon a bench at a convenient distance, gazing at the monument. My thoughts turned to Gonçalves, the lunatic who had called on me the previous day; and to what he had in his pocket.