MARKETS OUTSIDE GREAT BRITAIN. 215 



for it seems, as regards Indian Tea, the smallest quantity that can 

 be bought is one pound, whereas an ounce of China Tea can be pur- 

 chased." 



Further on, the Statesman kindly alludes to my advocacy in the 

 Tea Gazette of a company to sell Tea in small packages to the natives, 

 stating also that such a trade is " capable of almost unlimited expansion 

 at a fair profit," which is exactly what I have, for some time, been 

 trying to hammer into the heads of those interested in the Tea industry 

 of India. 



Now, Sir, is it not absurd that while the bete noir of our industry is 

 "supply in excess of demand," and while, with this dread, we are 

 trying (it seems with success) to open up new markets at the Antipodes 

 and in America, we are neglecting a market at our very doors, the 

 limits of which, I hold, no man can foresee, for is it not a market where 

 the possible buyers number 200 millions ? 



Is it not also more than absurd, nay a very shame to those inte- 

 rested in our industry, that while we have a better article than China 

 Tea, we allow, by our supineness and lack of enterprise, more than 

 three million pounds of an inferior article to be sold in the birth place 

 of the better ? And why ? simply because we will not supply it in the 

 form the teeming crowd of natives willing, nay anxious, to buy can 

 avail themselves of it ! 



Since I advocated in your paper the formation of a company 

 to sell Tea to natives in small packets, and showed, I thought 

 conclusively : i That the capital required was not large (say one 

 and a-half lakhs). 2 That the shareholders might expect very fair 

 dividends. 3 That there was no assignable limit to the trade which 

 might be developed. 4 That if such a company was started and 

 worked well, all fear for the future of Indian Tea would be at an end. 

 5 That every Tea owner, who became a shareholder, would advance 

 his own interests by many times more than the dividends he would 

 receive since then I have obtained from England estimates of all 

 the machinery required to bulk and pack the Teas, advice from the 

 best firms as to the mode so successful in England, and I am more than 

 ever convinced that the company would be a money-making one, and 

 that, in two words, we shall sadly neglect our own interests if we do 

 not accomplish it. 



Again, since my former articles I have spoken to dozens of Tea 

 planters and Tea owners on the subject, and all of them think highly 

 of the scheme, while many only wait for the company to be launched 



