i 2 8 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



the regular plucking once every week or ten days or more until the tree 

 is rested for pruning — provided of course that, as in Ceylon, all-year 

 picking is possible. Only the tips of the bush (' two leaves and the bud ') 

 are picked. The small tap leaf (which is about the size of one's little 

 finger), together with one leaf above that, is left on the bush, and only 

 -the tender leaves at the top are taken for manufacture. Inside these leaves 

 rests the orange-coloured bud. The lower leaves would be too coarse 

 and bitter ; they are not left because of any scheme of restriction. 



Plucking is done by women under the supervision of a maistry or 

 foreman, and is the crucial operation on which the wage economy of the 

 plantation rests. It corresponds to the shearing of sheep, the harvesting 

 of wheat, and the stripping of cotton. Shearing is done once a year by 

 itinerant shearers using machine clippers, harvesting by the aid of the 

 harvester which both strips (or cuts) and thrashes, cotton-picking either 

 by hand or by the mechanical stripper. But there is no machine for 

 tea-picking, and for technical reasons there is never likely to be one. If 

 there were, it would upset the balance of the labour force. For the men 

 workers and women workers with their families live and work on the estate. 



6. Optimum Size and the Agency System. 



What is the optimum size of the tea plantation ? The figure generally 

 given for a mature estate is 500 acres. In East Africa, where tea-planting 

 is new, there is no restriction of export as such, but a recent arrangement 10 

 provides that planters with 100 acres and upwards shall be allowed to 

 expand to 500 acres, which is conceived of as the working optimum. 

 In India and Ceylon it was determined historically by the capacity of the 

 individual planter in pre-motor days to finance and supervise the develop- 

 ment of the estate, its cultivation and working and the treatment of its 

 product in the factory on the estate. With primitive roads and bullock 

 carts the daily delivery of the leaf made an estate of much over 500 acres 

 impracticable ; and many private estates lacking finance would remain 

 smaller than this. But the days of the proprietary planter are over, and 

 now one meets not with planter owners but salaried superintendents — one 

 superintendent to each estate. Moreover, several estates, say two, three 

 or four, are grouped together to form a ' group ' with a group manager. 

 The latter superintends the other estates on his group and in addition 

 manages one estate directly. A large company will have a number of 

 groups in different districts. 



Normally the position still is one estate, one tea factory, but not always. 

 There is a growing tendency for the factory to be enlarged, so that it can 

 take the produce of several estates. For example, recently in the Sheikal- 

 mudi (Anamalais) group of the English and Scottish Joint Co-operative 

 Wholesale Society in South India, four estates have been feeding one 

 factory, and the two factories thereby put out of action are kept as stand- 

 bys for use in the rush season. From the estate superintendent's 

 point of view this development may be unwelcome. As one of them 

 (not in this group) said to me, ' You will have no end of complaints about 

 10 Report of the International Tea Committee, 1934-35, p. 7. 



