A Dunham Tavern Museum Exhibit Spotlight

Duncan Virostko, Museum Assistant

The question of tea or coffee may seem like a simple matter of taste to you today. But for a person from the 19th century, the question may have been one of morals.

And, perhaps, it still ought to be. Unfortunately, both the tea and coffee industries still have problems with unfree labor. And it is just as difficult to navigate a system of commerce suffused with unfair business practices now as it was two hundred years ago.

*The Washington Family , Edward Savage, Oil, American, 1789-96*
George Washington, in spite of his Revolutionary leanings, drank tea. His children would grow up in a nation where tea and coffee were both commonly available and consumed. The slave in the background, who may be Washington’s manservant Christopher Sheels, is representative of the system which produced coffee in the early United States.

*Wedgewood Tea Service, English, ca. 1780*

The early United States consumed Coffee and Tea in equally large quantities. Coffee drinking began as a patriotic protest of British tea during the Revolutionary War. Older generations often continued to drink tea however, including George Washington himself. Younger Americans meanwhile consumed whichever caffeinated beverage they could get their hands on.

Yet, even one's choice of Tea or Coffee could not escape the central issue which the new republic was grappling with: Slavery.

Coffee’s use as a beverage by the Western world is inextricably linked to Slavery, and the Slave trade. The Coffea plant was originally introduced to Europeans by Ethiopians that had cultivated it for millennia. Subsequently, plantations were established in the Caribbean, South America, and other colonial holdings of European empires, with enslaved peoples being forced to work on them.

*Coffee Plantation in Brazil, Lithograph, American, ca. 1889*

For the United States during the 19th century, most coffee was thus imported from plantations in Brazil. Brazil, although independent from Portugal after 1822, was one of the few powers in the 19th century which continued to espouse slavery, alongside the United States.

This was in contrast to a growing number nations which abolished the practice. The policy largely enforced by the preeminent power in the world at the time, Great Britain. The dominance of the Royal Navy following Nelson’s victory at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, and the abolition of the Slave Trade in 1807, allowed them to pressure foreign nations into abolition. Slavery had been abolished in 1102 in England, but was not abolished until 1833 in its colonies.

Brazil’s position on slavery resulted from the country’s reliance upon the coffee trade and thus slavery to sustain its economy. Brazil did not abolish slavery until 1888.

*Clipper Ship SEA WITCH Coming to Anchor At Whampoa, Oil, Chinese, ca. 1840s.*
Launched in 1846, at a 170ft long and 908 tons burthen, *Sea Witch* was one of the largest and fastest Clipper ships of her day, designed to bring tea from China to the United States in bulk quantities. She made the passage between China and the US in just 74 days in 1849, a speed record which stood until 2003!

Tea in contrast was largely produced using free labor. In the 19th century the United States imported it from China and later Japan, using large and fast sailing ships known as Clippers. Slavery was abolished in Japan in 1556 by Shogun Totoyomi Hideyoshi. China in contrast did not officially abolish slavery until 1910. However, forced labor was not used in the tea production industry. Instead, forced labor was used on large, national construction projects or was domestic in nature.

The 19th century tea trade, however, had its own injustices. It was based on unequal and unfair treaties between the United States, China and Japan. In the case of Japan, those treaties were forced upon them by the US Navy in an act of literal gunboat diplomacy overseen by Commodore Mathew Perry (cousin of Oliver Hazard Perry) in 1854.

Sugar, a sweetener for tea and coffee alike, was equally a product of slavery. Most sugar consumed in the 19th century US was produced in either Brazil or Louisiana. Sugar plantations were well known to be the most brutal to be enslaved upon,. This was due to the horrific injuries that molten sugar from the production process could lead to.

*A Representation of Sugar-Cane and the Art of Making Sugar, Engraving, British, ca. 1700s*
Molten sugar used during the refining process led to horrific injuries on sugar plantations, making them the worst plantations to be enslaved on.

*“Arms of the Temperance Movement”, Purple Luster Cups & Saucers, American, ca. 1850. (67.D)*

It is ironic then that Tea and Coffee were the drinks of choice for the early Temperance movement, the first mass moral reform movement in the United States. In 1832, the first temperance club in Cleveland was formed, the year before Rufus Dunham obtained his first license to keep a tavern.

“Teetotalers” greatest impact on 19th century America were in the later social movements they inspired: the Abolitionist and Women’s Rights movements. The Temperance Movement served to position American women as advocates for social reform, and empowered them politically to use their social positions as the moral center of society to exert influence on major political and social questions of the day. Abolition, by way of Temperance, became the cause to which many 19th century women devoted themselves. The Women’s Rights movement, in turn, grew from frustration with the sexism women encountered from men who were abolitionists and their similar situation of lacking rights compared to white men.

The majority of settlers in the Western Reserve were, to varying degrees, opposed to slavery. They came from New England states with long traditions of opposition to slavery on moral grounds. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 also banned slavery in Ohio. Slavery has never been legal in the states of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, or Illinois, a point which Abraham Lincoln would later argue indicated the Founders intent to limit the spread of slavery. But avoiding slavery was not so simple as outlawing it in one's home state. More worldly Abolitionists no doubt would thus have found the Tea or Coffee question a fraught decision.

*“Increase Wilson’s, Best Quality, New London”, Wall Mounted Coffee Grinder, American, ca. 1850. (280.C)*

The complexity and nuisance of the issue of Slavery and one’s beverage choice is captured in a single artifact in this latest exhibit: a wall mounted coffee grinder marked “Increase Wilson’s, Best Quality, New London”. Increase Wilson of New London, Connecticut was first granted Patent No. 2924X for the steel wall mounted coffee grinder on March 6th, 1818. Coffee grinders of this design are known as Burr mills, and were originally developed by the English blacksmith Richard Dearmann in 1799. Wilson’s company produced this style of Coffee grinder into the mid 19th century, alongside bit & brace hand drills. There was one product, however, he pointedly refused to produce: manacles for slaves. Wilson was an ardent abolitionist.

Yet, his profits came largely from sales of his Coffee Mills, used to grind Coffee which was a product of slavery. No doubt, he was also a Coffee drinker. This would seem to contradict his views on slavery. This seeming conflict of views and actions reveals the complexities which decoupling from the vast institution of slavery presented to those who opposed it. Perhaps Wilson's views were a form of penance, as it were, for the means by which he acquired his fortune. Certainly, he was consistent in his opposition to slavery, even after he became a prominent businessman. During the Civil War, his company was making boarding pikes and bronze gun carriages for the US. Navy, to help take the fight to the very heart of slavery. His words, and earlier resistance, had now turned to action.

Like Increase, today we face a similar problem as consumers when we choose Coffee or Tea.

Slavery is illegal globally in the 21st century, but it is still practiced in modified forms. This usually takes the form of debt slavery, in which an debt which cannot be repaid is imposed on someone in order to control them. This debt then transfers to their children, resulting in the same hereditary enslavement seen in other forms of slavery.

There is also unfree labor, a blanket term which covers all forms of modern forced labor. These take many forms. Generally, however, they all involve using a variety of different threats to the well being and safety of a person to force them to work without compensation or the ability to change jobs. Victims of this type of slavery are often refugees, migrant workers, children, or other members of vulnerable populations. The most pernicious type of unfree labor is fraud slavery, in which victims are enslaved and forced to commit fraud against internet users around the world in so called “fraud factories”.

Brazil continues to use slave labor to produce coffee, amid increased demand from international corporations. It presently supplies approximately a third of the world’s supply of coffee. As recently as 2019, 59 slaves were found to be working on a single plantation in Minas Gerais, Brazil in a raid by Brazilian authorities. Although large coffee companies have worked to cut ties with suppliers that produce coffee using slave labor, the practice is endemic to the industry. Furthermore, such efforts have only come about recently as the result of pressure from the public in Brazil and abroad. It is thus almost certain that any coffee from Brazil was produced using slave labor.

Tea production is no less tainted, unfortunately. Today, the majority of tea which is drunk in the United States is Black Tea, which is largely produced in India. This is the result of World War Two, which cut off the supply of Japanese green tea, and the lingering racism after the war which discouraged people from drinking green tea. Today, India is the second largest producer of tea in the world.

Unfortunately, India has a long history of debt slavery in the agricultural industry, and tea production is no exception in this regard. Worse yet, the low wages of tea pickers have also fueled child slavery. Impoverished families are prayed upon by enslavers, who convince parents to unknowingly sell their daughters into domestic slavery.

In light of this knowledge what can we, the average consumer, do? Increase Wilson’s case provides us with some insight. It is unlikely that a boycott would be sufficient upheaval to undo the systemic nature of slavery in the Coffee and Tea industries. It is difficult as an individual to disentangle oneself from the tendrils of unfair, illegal, and unjust labor practices from around the world. Like Increase, we find ourselves forced to reckon with the uncomfortable intersection of morality and mundanity that existing in our present world presents us with. We can learn, however, from Increase’s own solutions and compromises. Like Increase, we should use our work and our voices to resist slavery in all its forms. And we can try to be knowledgeable about our own choices in who we choose to do business with, and refuse to do business with those who support slavery. We may not, on our own, be able to defeat such great injustice. But by our own small, personal acts of resistance, we can gain peace of mind, and create for ourselves a legacy which future generations can be proud of.