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| arting in the 18th century, chocolate production was improved. In the 19th century, engine-powered milling was developed. In 1828, Coenraad Johannes van Houten received a patent for a process making Dutch cocoa. This removed cocoa butter from chocolate liquor (the product of milling), and permitted large scale production of chocolate. Other developments in the 19th century, including the melanger (a mixing machine), modern milk chocolate, the conching process to make chocolate smoother and change the flavor meant a worker in 1890 could produce fifty times more chocolate with the same labor than they could before the Industrial Revolution, and chocolate became a food to be eaten rather than drunk. As production moved from the Americas to Asia and Africa, mass markets in Western nations for chocolate opened up. In the early 20th century, British chocolate producers including Cadbury and Fry's faced controversy over the labor conditions in the Portuguese cacao industry in Africa. A 1908 report by a Cadbury agent described conditions as "de facto slavery." While conditions somewhat improved with a boycott by chocolate makers, slave labor among African cacao growers again gained public attention in the ear |