126 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



will be a little way inside the limits of the estate, and usually near the 

 bottom of it, and it is reached by a winding road. Near-by are the super- 

 intendent's bungalow, the coolie lines and a store. The chug of the 

 engine is audible some distance away. 



Where, as in tea- or butter-making, the raw material is processed close 

 to its place of growth, the conveyance of the raw material to the factory 

 is economically important. There are five different ways in which the 

 tea leaf may come to the factory : (i) the whole way in baskets on the heads 

 of the girls, to be weighed at the factory door ; (2) on the bullock with 

 side bags, which is now out of date ; (3) in the bullock cart ; (4) on the 

 wire shoot, using gravity, with overhead carriages, resembling the ap- 

 paratus on which cheese is slung in the Alps ; (5) in the motor truck. The 

 truck is now ousting the bullock cart and represents the best modern 

 practice. The tea is weighed from the basket into the truck at the road- 

 side, and the babies are fed at the same time ! Lorry leaf, because it comes 

 so expeditiously, arrives in better condition. Similarly, the source of 

 power for the operation of the factory is closely bound up with its neigh- 

 bourhood. The usual fuel is wood taken from the jungle, or stump wood 

 from the estate itself, when it is being cleared. Wood fuel favours the 

 dispersion of factories in such a way that each will have around it an 

 adequate fuel supply. The wood is used in two forms : (1) as heated 

 charcoal, made by estate labour, which gives off gas for the generation of 

 power in an internal combustion engine ; (2) as logs for firing the furnaces 

 which heat the pipes through which air is taken into the drying machines. 

 But in the Anamalais (South India) group of the English and Scottish 

 Joint Co-operative Wholesale Society, Ltd., three factories have been 

 recently electrified to take power from the Pykara Dam, and in its Manan- 

 toddy group the possibilities of Cauvery water have been considered. 

 Ceylon is rich in hydro-electric power, but very little has been developed. 

 Any general adoption of hydro-electric power would be a force favouring 

 the concentration of production at one or more central points in a group 

 of estates. 



The work on the estate embraces three distinct tasks : (1) clearance and 

 planting ; (2) cultivation and soil conservation ; (3) the plucking of the 

 leaf. 



(1) A planter must be an engineer, road-builder, technical agriculturist 

 and labour manager all in one ; and at the outset a labour force must be 

 assembled which is ready to turn its hand to every task that is required. 

 The area to be cleared is first of all surveyed for roads and levelled. The 

 jungle wood is felled, dried and burnt ; unburnt residue being cut up 

 and reburnt. Large roots are taken out. Lines are then laid, normally 

 north-south, and pitted for tea bushes. The estate is roaded, drained and 

 planted. All this requires a period of about six months, from felling in 

 October to planting in May, in readiness for the south-west monsoon. 

 In the same interval protective trees are planted. 



The tea seed either is raised in a nursery and the plant lifted after eighteen 

 months or more, or else after germination it is put in a basket in which 

 it is shortly taken to its position in the field. It is then left to grow for 

 a period (during which the planted area is weeded, dug and cleaned), 



