An article about the cocoa trade in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 24, 1928 reported that
“Half of the cocoa of the world is consumed in the United States, Half of the cocoa used in the United States came into Brooklyn piers up to a few months ago.” The drop in in cocoa imports to Brooklyn is linked to the US Department of Agriculture rules on importing moldy or wormy beans. This is diverting African cocoa first to Europe where it is sorted and then shipped to America, but not to Brooklyn piers.

The enormous size of Brooklyn's cocoa holdings, the article notes, “is indicated by the fact that one seller once owned 400,000 bags of cocoa, all of warehouses of the New York Dock Company in Brooklyn. Boston, San Francisco, and Philadelphia also get a little cocoa but is it trifling compared with this port.” The very large Bull West African pier in Erie Basin is “sometimes been completely filled with nothing but cocoa beans.”

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Excerpts from the article: "African Scorns Cocoa He Grows For U. S. Volstead Thirst," The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 24, 1928

Brooklyn Big Cocoa Port.

"Accra, one of the chief cocoa ports, is a city of about 40,000, about 800 of whom are white," said Mr. Knust, continuing his story. "The city has electric lights and is connected by rail with Kumassi and Sekondi. They have regular parlor car service on the trains that is very comfortable. "The cocoa grows a short distance on the interior, on trees 40 or 50 feet high. The cocoa beans are the seeds of-the trees and are found in big pods about eight inches long. "They are harvested by the natives and spread out to dry and then bagged and taken down to the sea. Small surf boats are then used to take them out to ships that would bring them to Brooklyn. Now much of it goes by rail to the warehouses behind the newly constructed piers. "The enormous size of Brooklyn's cocoa holdings is indicated by the fact that one seller once owned 400,000 bags of cocoa, all in warehouses of the New York Dock Company in Brooklyn.  Boston, San Francisco and Philadelphia also get a little cocoa, but it is trifling compared with this port." 

Nothing to $80,000,000.

Any one who frequents the Bull West African pier in ErieBasin knows that this very large dock has sometimes been completely filled with nothing but cocoa beans. The cocoa bean is about half butter. For ordinary cocoa for household use 22 percent of butter is left in the cocoa. For chocolate the cocoa butter is more than half, the two commodities about balance each other.