Part 10 (2/2)

This state is a little larger than Colorado and is the most powerful state of the twenty that make up the United States of Brazil. The name of the capital is the same as that of the state and the city of Sao Paulo is about as large as Saint Paul, Minnesota. It is noted for its beauty and industry. The climate is delightful, always cool, but never freezing cold. With more than one hundred elementary schools besides numerous high schools and colleges it is perhaps the greatest educational center of the country. Near this city is the largest coffee plantation in the world. It contains something like eight million trees and takes about eight thousand people to run it. This one plantation produces twenty million pounds of coffee annually and there are thirty railroad stations upon it.

A well kept coffee tree is about twelve feet high when full grown. The leaves are a s.h.i.+ny green, a little like holly. The trees bloom in September and fill the air with fragrance. As the white blossoms fade the berries begin to form. May is the harvest time. Harvest hands come in large numbers as they do in Kansas or the Dakotas during the wheat harvest. Workmen are paid according to the amount they gather and some of them gather fifty pounds a day.

The coffee berries are first stripped from the tree then raked and piled into baskets. Next they are run through a machine that takes the bean out of the covering, then into tanks of water where they are thoroughly washed and then comes the drying process. It used to take weeks to get the coffee beans well dried and men had to watch and keep stirring the piles continually, but quite recently a new process was discovered by which they are dried by steam.

After the coffee beans are thoroughly dried they are run through rollers that break the skin covering and great ventilators blow the chaff away.

Then the beans are poured into a gigantic sieve with different sized holes which are chutes in reality and from which endless streams of coffee graded according to size run into a large room. At each stream stand women who pick out imperfect or damaged grains. The coffee is then sacked and is ready for s.h.i.+pment. The ordinary bag of coffee weighs about one hundred and twenty pounds. Santo is the great coffee port and here can be seen s.h.i.+ps from every civilized land taking on cargoes of coffee. If it is well kept coffee gets better with age, so it can be piled in great warehouses for months or even years and not deteriorate.

Nearly a dozen million bags of coffee are s.h.i.+pped from Santo annually and as we are the greatest coffee drinkers in the world about half of the entire crop comes to us.

Formerly many of the coffee plantations were worked by slaves. Negroes were brought from South Africa, as they were brought to work in the cotton fields in the south in anti-slavery days. In the year 1888 Brazil freed her slaves and the sudden freeing of a half million slaves almost demoralized the coffee and sugar industries of the country. Many of these negroes thought that freedom meant that they would never have to work any more and they became loafers and often criminals. Of course thousands of them drifted to the great centers of population and Brazil has had and is still having her share of race troubles.

Many of the workers on the coffee plantations at present are Italians.

They come in large numbers to work on these estates. Each family is given a certain number of trees to look after; sometimes a single family will take care of several thousand trees. They have to do a lot of hoeing and weeding. The soil is almost red and these workmen take on largely the color of the soil as their faces and clothes are stained with red dust and water. Families are furnished houses to live in and they live their own lives as if they were in their home country.

After coffee and rubber comes sugar. For many years Brazil furnished more sugar than any other country; now there are a half dozen countries ahead of her in the production of sugar. This is largely accounted for, not so much because of inability to produce, as because of the antiquated methods in use. There are places in the country where it is said that the same variety of sugar has been grown for two hundred years and that without any attempt on the part of the planters to restore the soil.

One of the first things ever exported from Brazil was tobacco. This weed has been grown there ever since the country was discovered. Modern methods of culture are now being used so more of it will be produced than ever. They say, too, that Brazil produces as fine a quality of tobacco as Cuba. Cotton is also produced in large quant.i.ties.

The Brazilians are an interesting people. I like them. They are always courteous and polite. Men often tip their hats to each other and kiss each other's hands. In Rio de Janeiro nearly everyone is well dressed.

The women are good looking. The Brazil people are more friendly than any other South American people. The language, except among the Italians and other foreigners, is largely Portuguese while in practically all other South American countries the people speak Spanish.

Although Brazil has millions of acres of the best timber in the world I never saw a wooden building in their great capital city. In Rio, nearly every automobile factory in the United States is represented. In this land of rubber they have no manufacturing plants to utilize it. Wages for common laborers are low and yet the people only work part of the time. In coaling a s.h.i.+p the men will work like beavers for a couple of hours and then sit down and smoke and talk as long and no urging them to work seems to do any good. One can make a living there with half the work it takes here and that is all they care for.

The Brazilians have some odd customs. People always carry their burdens on their heads. Baskets as large as barrels are carried in this way without a bit of trouble. They say that four men will carry a heavy piano on their heads but I never saw them moving one. On almost every street there are venders of sweetmeats, vegetables, brooms, baskets and furniture. I saw one vender with two dozen brooms, a dozen mops, two chairs, and a lot of other truck on his head. He had the chairs hooked on the brooms, baskets on the chairs and a lot of other stuff piled up so that he looked like a moving express wagon.

Streets in Brazilian cities are often named for days or months. I noticed one of the prominent streets in Rio named ”13th of September,”

another ”15th of November.” Rio de Janeiro means ”River of January.” I never saw a chimney in the city, yet the streets and many of the houses are washed every night. Everything is s.h.i.+ning. They seem to have a wonderful appreciation of beauty and never in any other city in the world have I seen more beautiful or artistic shop windows.

Everybody seemed to be in a good humor. Policemen are small of stature, but they direct the street traffic in a most wonderful way. Everybody smiles and there is no loud talking, or drunkenness. The national drink is coffee and there are coffee shops with tables and cups everywhere.

Men often drink a cup or two of coffee a dozen times a day. There are hundreds of coffee shops in Rio. Of course, liquor is sold in many places, but it is mostly drunk by foreigners. I never saw a Brazilian drinking liquor in their capital city.

CHAPTER XXI

URUGUAY AND PARAGUAY

Uruguay is the smallest of the South American republics. It is just a little larger than the state of Oklahoma. It is a little wedge between Brazil and Argentina and is, all in all, the most advanced country in South America. At the time of the visit of the writer it was the only country in South America whose dollar was worth a hundred cents. The population is about a million and a quarter--eighteen to the square mile. The princ.i.p.al industry is stock raising. The country has something like nine million head of cattle and fifteen million head of sheep. The meat packing business is enormous for such a small country.

Fray Bentos, a town near Montevideo, boasts of the largest establishment in the world for the preparation of beef extract. The tall chimneys of this great factory make it look like a large city. The employees number thousands. They are well cared for and contented. There are no strikes there. They are well paid while able to work and pensioned when they reach old age.

Thus, the Leibig company, has given all South America an example of the better way to treat men and women who toil. Schools are provided for the children. The religious nature is looked after, the company furnis.h.i.+ng a church building. The company also provides hospitals for the sick. The cottages of the working people are supplied with electricity and are quite comfortable.

This company has its own gas and water systems. In the great slaughter house many hundred head of cattle are killed each day. It only takes eight minutes from the time an animal is killed until it is in the refrigerating rooms ready to be made into beef extract. Every drop of blood is saved in this factory, being dried and made into chicken feed or something else that is useful. Chicago, however, goes Fray Bentos one better for there you know the squeal is caught by the phonograph and the records sold for grand opera.

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