124 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



more room for expansion. On the middle land in Ceylon tea and rubber 

 are seen side by side, but the interplanting of tea with rubber is rare. 

 After the rubber slump of a few years ago a certain amount of inter- 

 planted rubber was removed and the whole left to tea. Strong regionali- 

 sation, conforming to natural requirements, has been reached as the 

 outcome of experience. 



The Royal Commission on Labour in India continues : ' Factories 

 are to be found on certain plantations. Most tea gardens have their own 

 factories for dealing with the harvested crop. A number of the coffee 

 plantations in South India also have their own factories, but in them the 

 process of manufacture is only a preliminary stage, the coffee being cured 

 and finally prepared for export in factories outside the plantations ' 

 (p. 349). 9 This quotation calls attention to an important feature in tea. 

 Every tea estate has on it, or adjoining it, a tea factory ; and in this factory 

 tea leaf is carried to its final processed form. When it arrives overseas, 

 it only has to be blended to be ready for consumption. Moreover, when 

 blended it is ready for final consumption. It is not, like cocoa, the raw 

 material of a further industry such as chocolate. Coffee again is different ; 

 for on the coffee estate processing is confined to the removal of the two 

 coffee berries from the containing skin or cherry. When the cherry has 

 been removed, the berry is sent in parchment form to curers on the coast, 

 and finally is roasted and ground overseas. The coffee estate is very far 

 from turning out the finished article. Similarly with rubber the latex 

 comes in liquid form from the trees and, after the impurities have been 

 strained off, it is coagulated into sheet or crepe rubber, baled and exported. 

 These processes require a very elementary factory in comparison with 

 the sequence in a tea factory or rubber and tyre factory. 



As a plant, tea is distinguished by a further feature. It is a leaf and 

 not a fruit, and its yield is both continuous and reliable. It is like having 

 one's hair cut every week or fortnight. But a fruit such as the orange 

 or the coffee berry has a flowering season, and damage to flowering may 

 hurt the crop beyond remedy, whereas in a foliage crop, although certain 

 conditions may arrest growth and hurt the quality, yet these adverse con- 

 ditions may be followed by good conditions favourable to further growth 

 and a restoration of quality. Finally, because it is a leaf no spraying is 

 possible. To spray a whole tree would be too large a task and might leave 

 deleterious matter on the leaf. Of course, when the tree is being pruned 

 and out of use, this objection does not hold. 



4. The Tea Factory. 



Let us enter a South Indian or Ceylon tea factory and watch the 

 sequence of operations. 



1. Withering. — The leaf on entering the factory is taken to lofts where it 

 is spread on tats, strips of hessian cloth on which the leaf is thinly spread. 

 It remains here for a minimum period of eighteen hours, after which 

 it is in a withered state. The required degree of wither is checked by 



a Tea ' gardens ' I take to be the language of China and Assam. Does it derive 

 from the time when tea was grown by the villagers of China in little gardens ? 



