SECTION I.

INTRODUCTION INTO ENGLAND.--CONTINENTAL PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION.

The term chicory is an Anglicised French word, the original being chicorée. The plant is known to botanists by the name of Cichorium Intybus, and belongs to the natural order Compositæ, tribe Cichoreæ. It is an indigenous plant with a perennial root, better known probably to most readers by its English appellation of wild succory. The root is spindle-shaped, with a single or double head; externally it is whitish or greenish yellow; internally, whitish, fleshy, and milky. The roots grown in this country are smaller, and more woody or fibrous than those which are imported from the Continent.

The cultivation and consumption of chicory have now attained a very great importance, not only on the Continent, but also in the United Kingdom. Dating its extended use chiefly from the system pursued by the first Napoleon to substitute home-grown for colonial products, it has gradually become approved and popularised for a beverage, either used alone or more generally mixed with coffee, in numerous countries, where it can be sold far under the price of even the lowest grade coffees.

The manufacture of a factitious coffee from roasted chicory-root would seem to have originated in Holland, where it has been used for more than a century. It remained a secret until 1801, when it was introduced into France by M. Orban of Liége, and M. Giraud of Homing, a short distance from Valenciennes. This root is not superior to many others which possess sweet and mucous principles, but of all the plants which have been proposed as substitutes for coffee, and which, when roasted and steeped in boiling water, yield an infusion resembling the berry, it is the only one which has maintained its ground. The French, not satisfied with chicory, have recently introduced acorn coffee and roasted beetroot. The beet, it is asserted, besides communicating its hygienic qualities, also helps to sweeten the beverage. This new coffee is called “café de betterave,” as the old was called “café chicorée.” These distinctions will soon become as puzzling as those in America, which led the Irish waiter to ask if the gentleman would have coffee-tay or tay-tay.

Mr. George Phillips, when giving evidence before Mr. Scholefield’s Parliamentary Committee on Adulteration, in 1855, stated that, prior to the year 1832, little was heard of the use of chicory in this country, but in the subsequent three years its use had gradually so increased that the Board of Inland Revenue was obliged to take steps against the sale. “I have no doubt (he adds), from my own experience, that a very large bulk of the public prefer the mixture. That, however, is a matter of taste. The trade contend that good coffee, mixed with one-eighth part of chicory, and sold at a moderate price, makes a better beverage than ordinary coffee would do at the same price, and the great mass of the public prefer it. Chicory sold as coffee yields a certain profit, but probably it equalises itself in the general competition of trade. There is a large quantity of chicory sold by itself, and drank as a beverage in the neighbourhood of Manchester and Liverpool. I believe the price of a pound of the cheapest kind of coffee, purchased by the bulk of the poor people, and a pound of the mixture, is about the same. The trade say, when we use a portion of chicory we use a better coffee. I do not know the fact of my own knowledge. Whether the coffee sold in mixtures is of a superior quality to that sold as a pure article would be very difficult to ascertain; it depends upon the question of taste and aroma. The chicory itself is not always pure.”

On the first introduction of chicory into Great Britain a nominal duty of 20 per cent. was levied on it, which, owing to the representations of the coffee-planters, was afterwards increased to the same rate as that then payable on British plantation coffee. The high duty thus levied on foreign-grown chicory soon led to its cultivation in England, but so little was known of the plant that the farmers required the rent to be paid in advance for the use of their land. In the autumn of 1853 we find chicory grown in Kent, Surrey, and Essex, where the article was prepared, and met with a large sale. With the increasing demand for the root, its culture spread to Bedford, Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Leicestershire, Cheshire, and Yorkshire. At first the price realised was as high as 50l. per ton ground, and 20l. per ton in the root. But as the growth extended the price receded. The admission, duty free, of foreign-grown chicory, in 1854, led to the abandonment of much of the home culture.

In 1842, Mr. McCulloch assumed the growth and consumption of chicory in the United Kingdom to be 6¾ million pounds; in 1850, from careful inquiries I instituted, I estimated the consumption then to be double that amount. Mr. Braithwaite Poole, in his “Statistics of Commerce,” published in 1852, rated the actual production of chicory-root, made into powder in England and Guernsey, then as high as 14,000 tons, worth, at 22l. per ton, 308,000l. The gradually increasing imports of foreign-grown replaces much formerly produced at home, but the changes in legislative enactments have much interfered with the consumption of chicory here, and hence the import is not so remunerative. From 1856 to 1859 the imports of foreign chicory in the root rose from 81,721 cwts. to 267,000 cwts., but there has since been a gradual decline to 45,563 cwts. in 1862. The value has ranged from 6s. to 10s. 6d. per cwt.

The largest quantity comes from Belgium, the next from Holland, and a little from Hamburg and other quarters. There are also some considerable imports of roasted and ground chicory, which is chiefly re-exported; 76,206 lbs. of chicory-powder were imported in 1862.

Roasted and reduced to powder chicory is the most universal substitute for coffee in the chief continental countries, especially in France, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Russia, and other Northern States. In Germany, the ground chicory is made up into cakes, and sold in that form. Denmark and the Duchies consume about 3,000,000 lbs. annually. A few years ago the annual import of chicory-root into Hamburg was 24,600 cwts., and of ground chicory and other coffee substitutes 13,000 cwts.

Belgium exports 6,000,000 or 7,000,000 lbs. yearly. The quantity of the dried root consumed in France is about 16,000,000 lbs. a year. Formerly they were able to export 1,000,000 or 2,000,000 lbs., but now enough is not produced for home consumption. In 1860, about 10,000,000 lbs. of chicory-root was imported into France, chiefly from Belgium, and about 660,000 lbs. of chicory in powder was exported, chiefly to Algeria. Till within a few years the cultivation was carried on principally near Valenciennes, but lately manufactories have sprung up in several localities, especially at Arras, Cambray, Lille, Paris, Senlis, in Normandy, Brittany, &c. In some parts of Germany the women are becoming regular chicory-topers, making of it an important part of their daily sustenance.