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Show Every morning American business grinds to' a halt for a cup of coffee. How did this strange custom begin? Our intrepid roving reporter traveled from South American jungles to the wilds of Madison Avenue to bring you the story of Americas hottest fringe benefit LESLIE LIEBER By At approximately 10 oclock Monday morning, X 42,000,000 office and factory workers from coast to coast will suddenly drop their tools on workbenches, abandon typewriters in and leave telephones, bosses, and participles dangling in order to join that great democratic rite known as the coffee break. Before the year 1961 has passed into history, devotees of this a.m. mayhem will have gulped down a staggering 11 billion cups of coffee enough liquid refreshment to float a battleship through the St. Lawrence Seaway. Statistics reveal that it will take the entire days output of 120,960 American cows, munching grass at top speed, just to supply this country with enough milk and cream for the morning cofTee stampede. In the past decade the custom of taking time off for coffee has almost doubled its hold on the American working force. At least one fourth of all labor contracts, says the U.S. Department of Labor, now contain a kaffeeklatsch guarantee. In 1950, slightly less than half of all offices permitted them. Now, however, 94 per cent of all companies go which is just as well since a along with the idea recent survey found that in businesses not authorizing coffee breaks employees go ahead and take them anyway. mid-sentenc- e, Is this sip necessary? Furthermore, in nearly half the firms canvassed, coffee furthe staff got not one but two one in the morning and one in loughs a day the afternoon. This adds up to 16 full days a year with pay. of in paper cups, Many bosses, already wooden spoons, and lumps of sugar, are asking "Is But theres no doubt that the this sip necessary? is here to stay. cofTee break urn as you earn based on laboratory tests, is The theory behind it, r levels sink that, around and both mental in and people sag physical efficiency. CofTee acts as a leverage beverage. 'The results of coffee consumption, says Dr. Jean Spencer Felton, Professor of Occupational Health, Ifniversity of California, "are seen in clearer and more rapid thinking, forestalling of fatigue, and increased motor activity and a diminution of reaction time to stimuli. The biggest problem facing American industry today is simply this: Should coffee be delivered to the employees, or should the employees be delivered coffee-drinkin- g knee-dee- p mid-mornin- g, to the coffee? Heres the latest breakdown on how the coffee gets through to our parched personnel: ma11.760.000 get it from chines in the plant 10.920.000 employees buy and drink it at company cafeterias 7.560.000 make their own at their desk 5.460.000 troop out of building to nearest restaurant 2.940.000 flock to catering service carts on premises 1.275.000 send out for it 2,000,000 too busy drinking coffee to answer survey coffee-vendin- g It appears, by the way, that over 10,000 marriages per annum are now directly traceable to "caffein crushes romances which blossom quickly when secretary meets junior executive around the coffee urn. How did the coffee break become such a prodigious national institution? I have just completed an exhaustive study (relieved by countless coffee breaks, of course) on the subject My research took me from coffee plantations of Colombia, where I found that take coffee breaks, to the even the d boardrooms of our largest corporations. Here are some of the epic milestones that helped coffee seep into American industry. Arabia, 850 AD. (Approximately) . . . Coffee discovered by herd of goats. According to Andres Uribe, U.S. representative of the National Federation of s and one of the worlds Colombian coffee authorities, an Arabian herdsman leading named Kaldi noticed one afternoon that his goats became unusually frolicsome and frisky after nib- drip-grin- d coffee-picke- sauntering by later that afternoon, was astonished to see the herdsman prancing around in some sort of fandango with his goats. Later the Imam dried and boiled the berries into a beverage and began looking for a fandango partner of his own. Kaffia, or coffee, quickly spread throughout the Arab world, reached Europe around 1600. In 1652 the great craze began in London. coffee-hous- e Paris, 1720 . . . First coffee plant, granddaddy of the billions of coffee trees in Latin America which now yield 76 per cent of the worlds production, was smuggled to Western Hemisphere by a French naval officer named Gabriel Mathieu Desclieux stationed on the island of Martinique. Desclieux had petitioned King Louis XV for a seedling from a coffee plant which the Burgomeister of Amsterdam had sent Louis XIVs gardener in 1714. According to Mr. Uribe, w hen the King refused the request, Desclieux and a band of cloaked friends rs coffee-staine- Coffee-grower- blood-suga- sneaked into the royal greenhouse one night, stole a coffee tree, and later planted it in Martinique. Descendants of that tree were later transplanted to the mountain slopes of Brazil, Colombia, Costa which now Rica, and other supply the U.S. alone with 140 billion cups of coffee annually (one tree yields one pound a year). California, July, 1943 . . . The first inkling that something aromatic was brewing in American industry came in this labor-shoyear when 11 workers in an aircraft plant threatened a strike because there were grounds in the company coffee. Philadelphia, November, 1946 . . . The tremendous machines was ushpostwar boom in ered in when two wartime Air Force buddies, after machine experimenting with a battered and old auto parts in a garage behind their house, installed an automatic dispenser at a Philadelphia Bay Packers football game in Phila- rt coffee-vendin- g soft-drin- k bling the berries of a certain shrub called the Kaffia. Kaldi nibbled some and began getting frisky too. The Imam (head) of a nearby Moslem monastery. Eagles-Gree- n THIS WEEK Mogaxin April 2, 1961 |
