The 19^th century fits in a single price series: that of Rio “fair to prime” in New York, given by Thurber and taken up by Walsh. One origin, one quality, one market. That is enough, because everything that shakes the world market ends up passing through this column of figures.

11.04 cents a pound in 1857. 42.5 cents in 1864, in the midst of the Civil War, a price that says as much about the depreciation of the currency as about the scarcity of coffee. Then 13.25 cents in September 1879.

Thurber 1881; Ukers 1922, pp. 797-803, 810; ICO 2002; Covoya; Barchart; ICO CMR 2026

And in the middle, one day. On September 18, 1873, the day of the Jay Cooke panic, American banks stop lending. Without credit, no buyer can finance a shipment, so all of them withdraw at the same time. Rio falls from 24 to 15 cents in a single session.

The same year, the first international coffee syndicate forms in Europe. A syndicate, in this trade, is a group of houses that buy and sell as one, to bear on the price instead of being subject to it.

This one is financed by the Deutsche Handelsgesellschaft of Frankfurt, with agencies in London, Rotterdam, Antwerp and Brazil. It will control the main markets for more than eight years.

Thurber, Coffee: From Plantation to Cup (1881), pp. 186-188; Walsh 1894, pp. 286-287; Ukers, All About Coffee (1922), ch. XXXV, p. 797 (print)

Benjamin Green Arnold, who came from Rhode Island in 1836 as bookkeeper for a grocer on the East Side, runs the firm in 1868 with a line of credit of half a million dollars. He enters coffee speculation in 1869 and holds the market for ten years; a single year of operations earns his firm 1.2 million dollars. His method is that of all corners: buy massively, take the goods off the market, let the price rise with the value of the stock one holds.

Thurber, who knew him, reports his motto: he will act on his own judgment and by it “sink or swim.” The high prices he created set off a planting fever in the producing countries; the overproduction that results floods the market.

Thurber 1881, p. 219; Ukers 1922, ch. XXXI, pp. 779-780 (print); LC ch. 11

The New York syndicate, known as the “trinity” (O. G. Kimball, B. G. Arnold, Bowie Dash), carries in January 1880 a visible stock of about 767,000 bags. It has to let go of the Javas, which fall from 24 ¾ cents in January 1880 to 16 cents in December, and remains the sole buyer of the Brazils, of which Rio falls from 14 ½ to 12 ¾ cents. The first failure is that of C. Risley & Co. on October 27, 1880, with 800,000 dollars in liabilities; the death of Kimball in Boston on December 4 precipitates the crash of December 7, when B. G. Arnold & Co., the largest house in New York, suspends payments with official liabilities of 2,157,914 dollars; Bowie Dash & Co. follows within three days with 1.4 million.

The losses of the New York and Boston trade between July 1880 and January 1881 are estimated at between 5 and 7 million dollars. For weeks, there is no market at all.

Ukers 1922, ch. XXXV, pp. 797-799 (print); Thurber 1881, pp. 195, 220