Coffee spread through the Islamic world in the 16th century, moving from Yemen to Cairo, then to Syria and Istanbul. Istanbul's first coffeehouse opened around 1554, and within about fifteen years there were more than 600. Turkish coffee is brewed with very finely ground beans simmered with water and served unfiltered, so the grounds settle in the cup. The Ottoman coffeehouse became a centre of conversation, and authorities who feared political dissent tried to suppress it, but they often ended up taxing it instead. Europeans later adapted the drink with milk and sugar.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.