son, F.B. Arnold. He died in New York, December 10, 1894, in
his eighty-second year. The son died in Rome in 1906. The business which
the father founded, however, continues today as Arnold, Dorr & Co., one
of the most honored and respected names in Front Street.

_Hermann Sielcken, the Last Coffee King_

If B.G. Arnold was first coffee king, Hermann Sielcken was last, for it
is unlikely that ever again, in the United States, will it be possible
for one man to achieve so absolute a dictatorship of the green coffee
business.

There never was a coffee romance like that of Hermann Sielcken's. Coming
to America a poor boy in 1869, forty-five years later, he left it many
times a millionaire. For a time, he ruled the coffee markets of the
world with a kind of autocracy such as the trade had never seen before
and probably will not see again. And when, just before the outbreak of
the World War, he returned to Germany for the annual visit to his
Baden-Baden estate, from which he was destined never again to sally
forth to deeds of financial prowess, his subsequent involuntary
retirement found him a huge commercial success, where B.G. Arnold was a
colossal failure. It was the World War and a lingering illness that, at
the end, stopped Hermann Sielcken. But, though he had to admit himself
bested by the fortunes of war, he was still undefeated in the world of
commerce. He died in his native Germany in 1917, the most commanding,
and the most cordially disliked, figure ever produced by the coffee
trade.

Hermann Sielcken was born in Hamburg in 1847, and so was seventy years
old when he died at Baden-Baden, October 8, 1917. He was the son of a
small baker in Hamburg; and before he was twenty-one, he went to Costa
Rica to work for a German firm there. He did not like Costa Rica, and
within a year he went to San Francisco, where, with a knowledge of
English already acquired, he got a job as a shipping clerk. This was in
1869. A wool concern engaged him as buyer, and for about six years he
covered the territory between the Rockies and the Pacific, buying wool.
On one of these trips he was in a stage-coach wreck in Oregon and nearly
lost his life. He received injuries affecting his back from which he
never fully recovered, and which caused the stooped posture which marked
his carriage through life thereafter. When he recovered, he came to New
York seeking employment, and obtained a clerical position with L.
Strauss & Sons, importers o