Coffee Drinking by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 25, 1899

Coffee Drinking.

By Editor

The importation of coffee was the heaviest last year that it has ever been, reaching the enormous quantity of 800,000,000 pounds, or 400,000 tons, requiring for its transportation 27,000 cars. It makes an average of eleven pounds of coffee for every man, woman, and child in the United States. It means an expense, at 35 cents a pound, of $3.85 per capita, or an aggregate of $280,000,000. How much did this "Christian" nation spend for missions? Great Britain uses an average of one pound per capita. This country imported 68,000,000 pounds of tea, or one pound a person. At 40 to 50 cents a pound, here is $30,000,000 more. Now if not one ounce of coffee or tea had been used, the people would have been better off. Think of the amount of gossip set free by the caffein and thein, the active poisons of these beverages. Think of the racked and weakened nerves, the rasped feelings, the fretful words, the headaches, enfeebled livers, the weakened digestion, the enormous expense, the sallow complexions, which may be legitimately charged to the use of these stimulants. Reader, quit them; you do not need them. You would be better without them.

Where Found.

Some persons have asked us if there is any book which will give the important archaeological discoveries as found in our Quarter-Centennial issue, page 32. We know of none. Nor do we know of any work which gives in concise form the "Important Items in Astronomical Progress" (pages 8, 31), or items showing the progress of union in Church and State (page 14), or "Foreign Historical Events of Note" (pages 13, 30), or "Noted Inventions for Quarter Century" (pages 17, 30). These were gleaned from various sources, at the expense of much labor and research; and great pains were taken to have them reliable. The reader will little know the labor which some of these articles mean, even with good reference libraries at hand.

"The People's Friend," a poem found on another page of this paper, is from James Arthur Edgerton, Lincoln, Neb., author of a beautiful little volume of poems entitled "Voices of the Morning." Mr. Edgerton looks for better, brighter days, when poverty, vice, misery, injustice, and slavery will give place to justice, freedom, virtue, and happiness; and he sings sweetly of that better time, and mournfully, almost bitterly, of the time that is. There are also beautiful touches of God's works in nature. While we can not agree with the author in all things as to how the good time is to come, we sympathize with him in his sympathy for the poor and his condemnation of many existing conditions. The good time is coming, because Jesus Christ is coming. He is coming to put down all wrong, to punish all injustice, to render to every man according to his work, and to gather to that eternal kingdom, invested with eternal existence, those who by faith have imbibed His Spirit, and are by the power of His Word made like Him. And these signs of trouble and calamity, of complaint and hopefulness, which we see and hear around us, are heralds of the coming day. The hopeful little book may be obtained for seventy-five cents of Charles H. Kerr & Co., Chicago.