F.— ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS 129 



the quality of your tea if you do not make your own leaf.' Mechanical 

 transport and electrical operation indicate a figure closer to 800 than to 

 500 acres as the optimum size of a single estate in the future. 



As the result of evolution there are four different types of plantation 

 to-day. 



1. The Proprietary Planter. — He is almost extinct. The man who is 

 called a planter is in fact a salaried superintendent. In 1909-10 perhaps 

 30 per cent, of the planters were proprietary planters (except in the coco-nut 

 plantations, which have always been either a village or a company enter- 

 prise). But to-day it is rare to meet one. 



2. The Small Companies. — These, with their agents at the coast, 

 are the most representative type of plantation in Ceylon to-day. They 

 have their London shareholders and directors and their agents in Ceylon, 

 and they may employ the services of visiting agents to report on the 

 condition of the estate from time to time. I visited the estates of two 

 such companies : the Nayabedde Estate Company Ltd. at Passara, Ceylon, 

 and the Dimbula Valley Tea Company Ltd. at Bearwell, Ceylon. 



3. The Large Companies. — Examples are the Ceylon Tea Plantations 

 Ltd., which acts as its own agent, and the Anglo-Ceylon and General 

 Estates Ltd. These large companies produce rubber and coco-nut as 

 well as tea, thus diversifying their interests. The Ceylon Tea Planta- 

 tions Company has the following acreage in bearing : tea, 9,456 ; rubber, 

 5,193 ; coco-nut, 2,414 acres. Its profits for 1935 were £54,000, dividend 

 10 per cent., by comparison with the prosperous days of the 1920's, when 

 — e.g. 1925 — profits were £332,000 and dividend 60 per cent. 



4. The Consumer Companies. — These companies have in Great Britain 

 their own wholesale and retail organisations for the disposal of tea, and 

 they operate estates from which they derive a portion of their supplies. 

 Such are Lipton, Brooke Bond, and the English and Scottish Joint 

 Co-operative Wholesale Society. 



The small companies above mentioned could hardly exist in their 

 present small form if they were not commercially integrated by the great 

 coastal agencies. These agents play a dominant part in the commercial 

 and industrial life of the East. The evolution of their contact with 

 plantation agriculture may be studied in the indigo industry. ' They 

 [the Calcutta agency houses of the 1830's] also became Calcutta agents 

 for the plantations and received commissions on purchases and various 

 other transactions, including 2 per cent, on all sales. Mortgages were taken 

 on the property, but the risks were great. The investments in buildings 

 and land were not nearly so substantial as the outlays for advances to 

 cultivators.' u And there is a strong analogy in the stock and station agents 

 of Australia and New Zealand, like Dalgety, Goldsbrough Mort and the 

 New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency, which have served as the 

 financial spine of the pastoral industry in those parts. The agents' 

 functions are very miscellaneous. They act as shipping agents, as import 

 agents and as export agents. Some of them are almost exclusively con- 

 nected with plantation produce, and in particular with tea. A large agency 



11 D. H. Buchanan, Development of Capitalistic Enterprise in India (1934), 

 P-37- 



