TEA MACHINERY. 26l 



taught MS to do it twenty to thirty years ago. The pupil in this case 

 has certainly beaten his master. We have made some improvements 

 in Tea planting and Tea cultivation, but where we have left our 

 teachers far behind is in manufacture. "Johnny" makes his Tea as 

 his father made it before him, taught by his grandfather who made it 

 the same way ; and, for aught we know, no improvements, in that way, 

 have taken place in the course of many centuries. All is hand labour; 

 machinery to them is unknown. The most primitive ideas in Tea 

 manufacture are still adhered to. In support of the latter, I will quote 

 one instance : Tea, from time immemorial, has always been dried by 

 charcoal in China ; no other way is known there now. How is it here 

 in India ? A large proportion of the produce is fired with other fuel, 

 aided by machinery ; and it is only a question of time (and a very 

 short time) when the whole of it will be thus prepared. I could quote 

 other instances : let this suffice, for no comparison can be draw r n 

 between Tea manufacture as followed out in China and India in this 

 year 1881. The former is as crude as it was two or five hundred 

 years ago : the latter (though still far from perfection) in its many 

 details, in its numerous machines cleverly contrived to save labour and 

 better the Teas, is a striking illustration of the activity, the energy, the 

 inventive genius of the Anglo-Saxon race ! 



An Indian Tea factory, well set up with machinery that is to say 

 with a green-leaf drying apparatus, rolling machines, Tea dryers, 

 equalisers, and sifting and sorting machines, all driven by an engine of 

 i5-horse power offers a wonderful contrast to a Chinese Tea factory, 

 where all is handwork. But more strange still is the comparison 

 alongside of the fact, that in the former case the industry dates back 

 only some thirty years ; in the latter many centuries. 



Tea machinery is destined to work great results in India. When 

 brought to perfection (it is far on the road now), it will so cheapen the 

 cost of manufacture that, though labour is dearer with us than in 

 China, we shall, thanks thereto, be able to lay down our Teas at 

 cheaper rates than the produce of the Flowery Land. If Indian Tea 

 ever vies in quantity with China in the Tea-consuming countries of the 

 world, it will be due entirely to the economy effected by our machinery. 

 I do not myself anticipate that Indian Teas will ever beat China out 

 of the field, but, inasmuch as our Teas are better, because the taste 

 for Indian Tea is growing apace, I do believe the day will come (it will 

 scarcely be in our time) that the Tea exports from India will equal 



