and Magazine of the Ceylon Agricultural Society.— January, 1911, 89 



--'Tabloid' Medical Outfits <t 



Measurements : Sj X *j X 5| in. 



'TABLOID 1 MEDICINE CASE 

 No. 258 (The Settler's) 



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Price in London 2,8 j 



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293 



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ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



IDEAL FOR TROPICAL AGRICULTURISTS 



WORLD'S TEA TRADE. 



GREAT DEVELOPMENTS. 



Ceylon's Thriving Industry. 



There have been times when it was needful 

 to draw upon one's imagination in order to 

 write a review of the tea trade that would in- 

 terest anyone not actively engaged in it— years 

 of superabundant supply, monotonous markets 

 and nothing to relate about prices except their 

 invariable tendency to decline. , 



Those times have passed. The difficulty now 

 is to decide what to select and what to reject 

 from the mass of matter and the strings of 

 statistics to be dealt with ; for the tea trade 

 has grown, and has become a subject of wide- 

 spread interest. 



What has caused the change ? Is it the 

 growing use of tea; the attractien of fresh 

 sources of supply ; the rise of new markets ; the 

 discovery that tea is something that we cannot 

 do without? These all contribute to the inter- 

 est, but there is another reason, namely, that 

 whereas the tea trade was once a close pre- 

 serve, difficult for anyone to enter or under- 

 stand except the China merchants who im- 

 ported the tea, the brokers who sold it, and 

 the London dealers who bought it— all this is 

 now altered. 



The Open Door. 

 Only those who knew the days when the 

 middlemen were practically limited to a select 



12 



body of wholesale dealers, and when it was 

 deemed illicit for a broker to sell to any- 

 one else, can realise the extent of the 

 change of policy and practice that has 

 opened our market to everyone with money or 

 credit. The change dates from the year when 

 "the five hours" refused to pay the corn- 

 broker by each buyer, which released the 

 brokers from their obligation to sell to no one 

 but a dealer. This opened the door to Scottish, 

 Irish, and country buyers, whose entry into the 

 market was followed by large grocers, packet 

 companies, licensed victuallers, co-operative 

 societies, and stores, one after another ; then 

 came the new school of blenders, the nation's 

 victualling departments, Mr. Lipton, precursor 

 of the multiple-shop concerns that followed 

 where he led, steamship companies, caterers, 

 dairymen, provision dealers, and foreign 

 merchants. 



Markets and Prices. 

 Loudon's affairs come first. It holds its place, 

 and is still the centre of the world's tea busi- 

 ness, to which all markets but the Japanese 

 adjust themselves. Nearly one half comes here 

 of all the toa exported from the East, of which 

 the whole approaches 700,000,000 lb., not count- 

 ing the 80,000,00'J of tablets and bricks made 

 and consumed in Asia. The average of our 

 figures for the last two completed years showed 

 337,000,000 lb. a year brought in, and 338,500,000 

 lb. taken out— and all but a fraction of it passed 

 through London. There has only been a slight 



