poisonless," and the "only pure
coffee." A New Yorker, not to be out-done, brought out a coffee that he
said contained all the stimulative properties of the original coffee
berries, but with every trace of acid removed, every undesirable element
eliminated. "Also," he added for good measure, "this coffee may be used
freely without harming the digestive organs or impairing the nervous
system."

And one package-coffee man became so exercised over cereal competition
that he brought out a _grain_ "coffee" of his own, which he actually
advertised as "the nearest approach to coffee ever put on the market,
having all the merits without any objectionable features, strengthening
without stimulating, satisfying without shattering the nerves."

And so history again repeated itself in America. Five hundred years
after the first religious persecution of the drink in Arabia, we find it
being persecuted by commercial zealots in the United States. And even in
the house of its friends, coffee was being stabbed in the back. The
coffee merchants themselves presented the spectacle of "knocking" it by
inference and innuendo.

Something had to be done. As cereal drinks, standing on their own feet,
the coffee "substitutes" would have attracted little notice. It was only
by trading on the allegation that they were _substitutes for coffee_
that they made any headway. The original offender sold his product as
"coffee," which was an untruth, as he later admitted there was not a
bean of coffee in it. He boldly advertised: "Blank coffee for persons
who can't digest ordinary coffee."

When it became no longer possible to perpetrate an untruth on the
package label, there still remained the newspapers and billboards. For
years before fake-advertising laws and an outraged public opinion made
recourse to these no longer possible, it was a common practise to use
the newspapers and billboards to promote the idea that here was a
different coffee; and in this way to create a demand for a package,
which, when purchased, was found to tell a different story.

[Illustration: A CHASE & SANBORN ADVERTISEMENT, 1888

As printed in _Harper's_ and _Scribner's Magazines_]

As late as 1911, one of our most respected New York dailies was carrying
an advertisement calling the product "coffee," although fairness
demands it be recorded that the coffee part of the announcement was
stricken out when _The Tea and Coffee Trade Journal_ called the
attention of the publi