Cocoa And Chocolate
The Tree, The Bean The Beverage

26 THE COCOA AND CHOCOLATE INDUSTRY 5s. 10d. a Ib. if from foreign countries, while the customs also claimed 2|d. a Ib. on entry for home consumption. Commerce in cacao was unsettled by the continual alteration of these duties, until in 1853, Gladstone fixed the uniform rate of Id. a Ib. This remained constant for over 60 years, and would doubtless have continued to the present day but for the Great War. Under these fair conditions the charms and virtues of cocoa and chocolate have become universally recognised and the consumption has increased by leaps and bounds, until to-day it is four hundred times as great as it was a Century ago. Much has been written in praise of cocoa and chocolate. To those who have examined the dry statistics of consumption all these words are unnecessary. It is one of those cases where a column of figures is more convincing than a volume of rhetoric. A Hundred Years of Cacao Consumption in Great Britain. Tons. 1822 . 126 1830 . 176 1840 . 910 1850 . 1,375 1860 . 1,442 1870 . 3,099 1880 . 4,713 1890 . 9,029 1900 . 16,888 1910 . 24,596 1920 . 50,651 1922 . 50,530 To the planter with his eye ever on the market price, who knows how rapidly the production of cacao beans has increased, the above figures are cheering. He likes to hear that plenty of cocoa is being drunk, for he knows that it takes 2 Ibs. of beans to produce 1 1b. of cocoa-powder. He is not so much interested in chocolate, because it takes only about 10 ozs. of beans to produce