MARKETS OUTSIDE GREAT BRITAIN. 213 



THE LOCAL MARKET. 



The following is from the Calcutta Englishman on the 

 subject : 



The letter of our correspondent " A. E. T." calls attention for the 

 hundredth time to the failure of the planting interest to make the most 

 of the local demand for Indian Teas. It is only necessary to compare 

 the prices realised at the public auctions with those at which even the 

 most liberal of our retail firms offer to supply their customers with such 

 Teas to see that but a very small fraction of the difference between the 

 prime cost of the Tea and what the consumer has to pay for it goes 

 into the pocket of the planter. It is probably no exaggeration to say 

 that while the consumer pays, on the average, from twelve annas to a 

 rupee per pound more than the actual cost of the Tea laid down in 

 Calcutta, the planter may think himself fortunate if he can appropriate 

 from half an anna to an anna of this sum. By whatever course of 

 argument the fact may be justified, it is certainly not justifiable by the 

 equity of the case as it appears to ordinary minds. For it is the planter 

 who has borne the heat and burden of the day, and the proportion 

 which the capital invested by him bears to the ultimate return is 

 immensely greater in his case than in that of the retail dealer. 



On whom does the blame for the continuance of this state of things, 

 if blame there be in the matter, rest ? Hardly on the public. They 

 would only be too glad to allow the Tea planter, say, four times his 

 present profit instead of allowing twelve times that profit to a middle- 

 man or a series of middlemen. The public, however, can give their 

 custom only to those who bid for it, and who consult their convenience 

 in the arrangements they make to secure it. 



It is evidently the planter, and the planter alone, who can move in 

 the matter. But whether out of regard for the interests of the retail 

 dealer, or from a belief that the game is not worth the candle, he does 

 not move. If there were a retail Tea trade worthy of the name, in the 

 proper sense of the term, in Calcutta, it would probably not be to the 

 interest of planters to enter into competition with it. But though we 

 have many retail establishments who deal in Tea, its sale is, in the 

 great majority of cases, only one item of a very multifarious business, 

 the profit on which, as a whole, is probably not excessive under all the 

 circumstances of the case. 



