Emotional Ersatz

Some products sell particularly well in depressions: neckties--because they are a cheaper way of sprucing up than new suits of clothes; cans--because canned food is generally cheaper than fresh. From an announcement last week by the New York Coffee & Sugar Exchange, it appears that coffee may also belong in this special group. As it has in several depression years since 1929, U. S. coffee consumption last year set a new high. The 1938 figure was 14.38 lbs. per person, up 1.34 lb. since 1937.

There are other explanations--that Prohibition gave coffee drinking a big boost, that high-pressure advertising plus cheap retail prices has put it over, that the nervous national tempo leads to excessive use of all stimulants. But it also may be that when depression nips an average man's buying power, he finds a 5-c- cup of coffee a sort of emotional ersatz for more expensive things.

That the U. S. became a nation of coffee-swizzlers was no more accident than Great Britain's taking to tea. Coffee reached England about 1650 from Arabia, tea about 1857 from China. In the interval, England's great East India Company let Dutch and French exporters grab most of the coffee trade. So British patriots turned to tea. Later, the East India Company tried to force its monopoly on the American Colonies under the notorious Tea Act. So American patriots held the Boston Tea Party and turned to coffee.

Today hot coffee is served in 96.4% of U. S. homes, hot tea in 87.5%, but the quantity of coffee drunk is far greater. While the U. S. has contrived no coffee ceremony to parallel the Japanese tea ceremony, it has paid coffee a typical American tribute: in Massachusetts in 1865 the percolator was invented. And nowadays a cornerstone of economic solidarity between the 21 American republics is the annual purchase of 13,000,000 bags of coffee--mostly the lower-priced coffees of Brazil, partly the quality coffees of Colombia, which are frequently used, as Turkish tobacco is used in cigarets, for blending purposes.

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