Just the Facts, Senhor

Brazil's Senate was coming to a boil over reports of U.S. investigations and potential boycotts of high-priced coffee. Then Senator Othon Mader rose to call attention to four U.S. housewives touring the coffee country as guests of the Brazilian government. "These donas de casa," said he. "represent a real power coming to examine our coffee problem. They may have such power as to change the opinion of the American Senate and even the Government itself!"

The four housewives were indeed something special--perhaps even formidable. They were Mrs. Theodore S. Chapman of Jerseyville, Ill., a widow, a successful farm operator and president-elect of the

General Federation of Women's Clubs (11 million members); Mrs. Zaio Woodford Schroeder, a practicing lawyer from Grosse Pointe, Mich, and the federation's international-affairs chairman; Mrs. Gilbert F. Loebs of Waterville, Me., wife of Colby College professor and chairman of the federation's consumer committee; and Mrs. Car E. Swanbeck of Huron, Ohio, a grandmother and Republican candidate for the Ohio legislature.

Tour of Duty. The four clubwomen had landed from a DC-6 at Rio's inter national airport with pencils and notebooks ready, determined to get the facts. Each had a few well-chosen words for airport interviewers, and "Grannie" Swanbeck, like a veteran politico, hugged the first Brazilian baby in sight. The visitors tasted their first Brazilian black coffee and duly noted that a small cup cost 6-c-. After that they firmly told their hosts to tear up the leisurely itinerary that had been prepared. Instead of sightseeing or sambaing in nightclubs with gallants from the Chamber of Commerce, they flew directly to Parana's coffee-raising center, 200 miles inland from Sao Paulo. Full of questions about fertilizers, wages, harvesting methods and crop yields, they covered 150 miles of frost-burned coffee-land by motorcade and afoot. Trudging down rows of tree skeletons, Mrs. Chapman said: "This is very distressing--worse than we had imagined."

Round of Cheers. Next day, the tireless clubwomen watched coffee-loading on the wharves of Santos, poked into almost empty warehouses and listened to the bidding on the coffee exchange, where they were roundly cheered. In coffee-conscious Sao Paulo, they were a bigger hit than a gaggle of movie starlets from Italy, France and Japan just in for the Quadricentennial Film Festival.

In the end, Mrs. Chapman promised the coffeemen: "Our first duty will be to tell American housewives that the [frost blight] reports are true." Mrs. Swanbeck summed up: "The hearts of women beat the same all over the world. We are going to keep our friendship, and it is not going to dissolve in a cup of coffee."

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