Page:Cocoa and chocolate; a short history of their production and use (IA cocoachocolatesh01walt).pdf/11

 COCOA AND CHOCOLATE.

URING the last twenty-five years the consumption of cocoa in various forms has increased to an extraordinary extent not only in this country. but in the United Kingdom and Germany — countries in which the greatest progress is being made in the science of nutrition, and in the inventions which have done so much to cheapen the cost and improve the quality of articles of food. "This increase in consumption is due to several causes, among the most prominent of which are (1) a reduction in the retail price, bringing it within the means of the poorer classes: (2) a more general recognition of the value of cocoa as an article of food, and (3) improvements in methods of preparation, by which it is adapted to the wants of the different classes of consumers.

There is no doubt that, if it had not been for the monopoly of the production which Spain long possessed, and which kept the price, on its introduction into England, at a point where only the rich could afford to buy it, cocoa would have come into as general use there as it did in Spain, and would, perhaps, have been received with more favor than tea or coffee, which were introduced about the same time.

It appears that, in the time of Charles II., the price of the best chocolate (very crude undoubtedly, as compared with the present manufactures) was 6s. 8d. a pound, which, if we take into account the greater purchasing power of money at that time, would be equal to at least $5.00 a pound at this time for a very coarse article.

Humboldt estimated the consumption of cocoa in Europe, in 1806, as 23,000,000 pounds per annum, of which from 6,000,000 to 9,000,000 were supposed to be consumed in Spain. The estimated consumption in Europe at the present time is over 170,000,000 pounds.