Sept. i, 1886.3 



THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST^ 



205 



either knows how or where, he cau do better; the 

 negotation will assuredly tail. It is best for both 

 parties that there should be no unacknowledged per- 

 quisites. 



Salary settled by mutual consent. 



Cook house cooly — general custom. 



Tappal cooly — general custom. 



Hoise keep or equivalent travelling allowance when 

 it is a part of the superintendent's duty to travel on 

 estate's business — general custom. 



Keep of a cow. — Special where the estate keeps no 

 cattle. 



Cultivation of a vegetable garden — special. 



The estate usually finds the heavier articles of 

 furniture, as chairs, tables, couches, beds, almirahs, cash- 

 box, &c, all other necessaries the superintendent finds 

 for himself. 



I would never give any sort of work on contract 

 that I had labour enough to do myself. Contract 

 work to get it well done needs even more supervi- 

 sion than day labour and with a properly organized 

 establishment will in no case be cheaper. A contractor 

 means scamped work, if he can po.ssibly get it passed 

 and a constant pressure for advances beyond the value 

 of work performed. 



ESTIMATES. 



I have put no faith in estimates, since a time I 

 remember in Ceylon when one very simple one served 

 all intending planters the terms were. It will take 

 £10 to plant and bring a coffee estate into bearing 

 per contra. The average crops of a coffee estate 

 will be 10 cwt. When the test came no estate planted 

 during the Forties cost less than £30 per acre,— many 

 of them much more, — and only a few favoured localities, 

 ever yielded 10 cwt. per acre or over in rarely favour- 

 able seasons. So far as current expenditure is concerned 

 it is easy for.a planter who has the accounts of the estate 

 for a series of years to tell now much money he 

 needs for the next twelve months, but he who attempts 

 to estimate crops before they are on the trees is 

 certain to blunder ; indeed it is only an experienced 

 eye that can make a near approximation, with all 

 the crop of the season before it. True the expend- 

 iture required to open an estate may be readily enough 

 asccrtaint'd but practically, no man works on another 

 man's estimate, unless titd down by stringent orders 

 in which those who give the orders assumed the 

 responsibility as for a cut and dry estimate pre- 

 pared before the laud is selected, setting forth the 

 amount and value of the average crops it must range 

 in trustworthiness with a present estimate, of the 

 rainfiiU of 1885 in a given locality. 



(7o be continved.) 



TEA AND THE EASTERN EXCHANGES. 



The somewhat bewildering effects of the state of the 

 exchanges with the East have a highly important bear- 

 ing upon the Tea market. The increasing scarcity, or 

 greater purchasing power, of gold, which tends of itself 

 to lower the price of siiver, and to lessen the quantify 

 of commodities that can be bought by the latter, has 

 been accompanied by a much gi-eater production of 

 silver. The result of these two causes has been that 

 the silver rupee, the par value of which used to be 2s, 

 as expressed in gold, has fallen below Is 5d for some 

 time, and has recently even been only Is 4gd or Is 4|d. 

 Without going into a tedious dissertation upon the 

 various ways in which this remarkable change has come 

 about, it is eufiicient to say that it means that a sover- 

 eign, the exchange value of which was formerly 20s in 

 India, is now worth 25 per cent more, or 25s. A price 

 of Is per lb. for Tea when paid in this country is worth 

 Is 3d to the producer in India, as compared with former 

 times. It follows that the gain by the exchange has 

 become a most important item, as a matter of ancount. 

 in calculating the profits of the various Tea Companies, 

 whose books are kept in ru)iee.'5, and not in pounds 

 sterling. Indeed, the Indian Tea Gazette says that there 

 is now more profit from this source, than the difi'er- 

 enee between the cost at the gardens and the Calcutta 

 sale price. In fact, with an average cost of something 

 ike lOd. per lb. for Indian Tea, as made by some of 



the chief Companies and laid down in London, the present 

 exchange alone means a return of not far short oi 2S 

 pf-r cent. It is to be remembereit, however, that the 

 greater portion of the Indian Tea gardens have been 

 planted long since the rupee was at par, and probably 

 at a time when its value w.is about Is 9d or Is lOd. 

 Still J a fall to Is Jjd from those j^rioes represents a 

 great difference. 



The first effect of such a remarkable state of things 

 is to cause unexpected prosperity among the i^rodu- 

 cers, at a period when they looked for bad times in 

 consequence of the greater general production of Tea. 

 The usual results, however, of a depreciated currency 

 may be expected to follow. If so, the growth of Tea 

 cultivation will continue till a point is reached, when 

 the benefit through the exchange will be neutralised, 

 partly by a fall in value here, and partly by a rise in 

 the cost of production in India ; for the greater de- 

 mand for land, appliances, labour tr.tnsit, &c., iu the 

 Tea gardens, will of c^iurse. be reflected there by some 

 rise in the amount of money which has to be spent iu 

 the manufacture of a given weight. It may atpiesent 

 be said that where there was formerly one rupee in 

 Ii dia, there is now (judged by the exchanges) material 

 in silver for a rupee and a quarter. In a country 

 where the supply of the circulating medium is ample, 

 such a state of thiug? would immediately be followed 

 by a corresponding rise iu money values on the spot. 

 When the Uniterl States issued a forced paper cur- 

 rency, it will be in the recollection of most readers how 

 immediately prices, as expressed in paper rose, and 

 how a similar change followed the fresh issues, and 

 also how the reverse took place as the Washington 

 Government paid off the greenbacks. Simil.ar results, 

 doubtless, are following in India in the veiled barter 

 by means of silver, in which trade there is carried on. 

 Indeisd, though food and wages have apparently not 

 recently riseu in the Tea districts, one of the common 

 subjects of talk among Anglo-Indians is the increased 

 dearness of living in India at present as compared 

 with twenty or thirty years back. In short, as the 

 relation of the supply of silver to other commodities 

 increases, money prices ultimately rise and wages follow. 

 Tiie effect of such events in a vast empire like India 

 is, however, immensely slower than iu an European 

 country. Suppose that in this kingdom all trading 

 transactions were carried out, not by cheques, bills, 

 bank-notes, or gold, but that they had to be trans- 

 acted by carrying about florins, the equivalent of the 

 rupee, in canvas bags; that the population was in- 

 creased to 3.50,000,000 ; that the area of the country 

 was increased twenty-fold ; that there were few rail- 

 roads, and, broadly speakmg, no proper roads ; that 

 over a hundred different distinct languages were spoken 

 within our borders, and that there were endless re- 

 strictions imposed by religion and by caste, on inter- 

 course between man and man ; and, above all, that our 

 natural slowness to change, were indefinitely multiplied 

 liy the ingrained conservatism of the unchanging East — 

 if all these causes were put together we should better 

 be able to realise the length of time required to bring 

 about a change iu values, expressed in money, in India, 

 as compared with the period requisite to bring about 

 similar results in England or in other European coun- 

 tries. Why, till quite a few years ago, if the Govern- 

 ment at Calcutta wished to p.ay a sum of money in the 

 north of India, the actual rupees were packed in _ bags 

 and sent in carts drawn by bullocks and guarded by 

 sepoys, who marched on foot in charge of the treasure 

 for some six months, before their goal was reached. 

 The Government for the same reason — the scarcity of 

 currency — even now only makes its own bank-notes 

 legal tender within a limited circle from each of the 

 issuing points. Further, the poverty of the people, 

 according to our ideas, renders alterations in the rel- 

 ations of currency to values even slower, for a rup^e al- 

 m.)st represents wealth to a nation, where a rioh man 

 spends 4d a dn y on his eating, and where in some of 

 the provinces the labourer gets 30s a v/cn;- as wages and 

 keeps himself. Where any currency at all is common, 

 copper of course plays a far more important part than 

 with us, and it is supplemented not only by the far- 

 things and mites, of which w« see so little in this 



