This consists of a beam pivoted on an upright upon which it moves freely up and down. On one end of the beam is an open bucket; and on the other, a heavy stone. Water runs into the bucket until its weight causes the stone end of the beam to rise. When the bucket reaches the ground, the water is emptied, and the stone crashes down on the coffee cherries lying in a large mortar. [Illustration: FERMENTING AND WASHING TANKS ON A SAO PAULO FAZENDA] The workers on some of the largest Brazilian _fazendas_ would constitute the population of a small city--more than a thousand families often finding continuous employment in cultivating, harvesting, cleaning, and transporting the coffee to market. For the most part, the workers are of Italian extraction, who have almost altogether superseded the Indian and Negro laborers of the early days. The workers live on the _fazendas_ in quarters provided by the _fazendeiros_, and are paid a weekly or monthly wage for their services; or they may enter upon a year's contract to cultivate the trees, receiving extra pay for picking and other work. Brazil in the past has experimented with the slave system, with government colonization, with co-operative planting, with the harvesting system, and with the share system. And some features of all these plans--except slavery, which was abolished in 1888--are still employed in various parts of the country, although the wage system predominates. [Illustration: By Courtesy of J. Aron & Co. DRYING GROUNDS ON FAZENDA SCHMIDT, THE LARGEST IN BRAZIL] Brazil has six gradings for its Sao Paulo coffees, which are also classified as Bourbon Santos, Flat Bean Santos, and Mocha-seed Santos. Rio coffees are graded by the number of imperfections for New York, and as washed and unwashed for Havre. (See chapter XXIV.) COLOMBIA. Practically all the countries of the western hemisphere producing coffee in large quantities for export trade use the cleaning-and-grading machines specified in the first part of this chapter; and the installation of the equipment is increasing as its advantages become better known. In Colombia, now (1922), next to Brazil the world's largest producer, the wet method of preparing the coffee for market is most generally followed, the drying processes often being a combination of sun and drying machines. Many plantations have their own hulling equipment; but much of the crop goes in the cherry to local commercial centers where there are establishments that make a specialty of cleaning and grading the coffee.