588 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. -March t, 1895. 
in various years past, together with the 
duty at present levied upon tea : — 
rates of 
s c 
•0 ■c 
as 
0.2 
Cl-3 
1> P. 3 
J= o o 
ft "-3 
ft = 
•3 ° 
> r 
ft o co ■* H ^ W » ^ f f ^ ^1 r- p- r- r. CO /. T. X - 
Tj _ T e - — 
h o 35 c> o H 5 ^' '5 '* ' "• Stria 
c?5 h * i» 5 '/) i> n ^ r. ^ - - c _ = 
o O O r-^W l- t>- CC " X 1 - O •"- _ 
, - - x* co *S c: 
Ol o cS 01 00 I- 
oi a3 
: '• -f -** -o 
! 2? » » 5 1 
> O »•- «-H O O Ol CO X >0 C- r- — X 3 C. 3. I - 0) ' -1 — 
1 c; o « o x m n -t * n 7i 7; - ^ 1.*. ■■; o •-. - — x — 1 - 
ih«o»-oc.^i; xij • /_ : : -f — • 0. 3 — * 5 » bo » 
feo r**p ©J* o lot^t? o6*o*ee o » -r* cf / g i-Tcg i-* « / *'. 
IHOJMOC. « C! H K "/J P- II '- t ^ C ^ •M T. t r- r- 
<o 10 -f :i h 1- c M a 1 
X X C 
co crT C- ci h m o ■} c m im ^ h ti n: ? u-. i - if. w m p; 
in a 1^. 1- «ra c h o oi o ir, 1- -m -f sj c. ~ ■ -m <r. 
c- « ft o: 7) f -to t c - n h r- c - - '■: x p- :i :^ »i r- 
|oftNHHO'»i«fl«Nt«'/)«oCM?:i3^?:i!H 
^^-^^^COpHi^OP^Q303C33©©r3r a b 3 
10 co 55 is, 25 o 3 3. co o 3 h ct. c: i - x x j - i - ~. p- oj 3 - 1 
. O •# o O O p* <D X X ?0 -r ph f-« C-) 55 X_ X c? i- 
x" t^J i C co •>{ os &5] cf c'co'x »«fgf?s so 2 -r" 
I 'tMftHXiCOHHpiO ici^- Tl h ?l h 3_t- r-1 r^O 
I ph"** co" x"CiiffpH 
00 
t ^ 
CO O X 
to o-i co r- co o oi ph oi i- ^5 co c 
O 3 
— ~ 
o of 
0 Q 
01 Gi 
oooo-^co— co3 z: — oocoooCp^: 
ooqoi-hi-cc:ooco— 3 — ioscfla: 
iO CO O O CO CO C- .O X C. C O 3 -f 'O O X Cvl c; i 
C3 M ^ O 'C O » I' X M © O ri CI 
— —(NO - - - 
X o 
m >c >r. c c; : 
1pH/.hh3i 
Total 
all 
Tea.. 
Briti'h 
Grown 
China, 
&c. 
J "A1 
lew § , 
5 tS 
I §S & 
J e 
3 ^ 
7? 2 e 3 Ubrg 
1880-84. 
359,385,593 
53,ono,nno 
306,385,5!)3 
1885-89. 
396,951,647 
94,000,000 
302,951,647 
1890. 
u 
OS 
1891. 
Roc 
415,970,297 419;514,604 
I50,00f),00o'l70,000,000 
1892. 
205,970,297 249,514,604 
NATIONAL IMPORTANCE 0*P TKA INDUSTRY. 
442,862,485 
193,000,000 
249,862,485 
The welfare of the tea industry is of very great 
importance to the nation, for the amount of British 
capital embarked in the enterprise is enormous, that 
in India probably reaching £15,000,000, and in 
: Ceylon, £11,000000, making a grand total of £26,000,000, 
4 and this sum is largely held by proprietors at home. 
Besides this, as a field of enterprise and 
employment for the rising generation, the tea 
industry furnishes a most important outlet to 
the mother country. There are, perhaps, few amongst 
us who have not friends or relations working under 
a tropical sun in tbe tea dibtricts, thu6 imparting to 
most of us a personal interest in tbe welfare of this 
great industry. 
The hundreds of thousands of native* in our Eastern 
dependencies who derive their livelihood from it marks 
another feature in which its welfare assumes a 
national character, the native labourers employed in 
India and Ceylon together aggregating about one 
million people, besides the children who liavc to be 
provided for by these labourers and actually dwell 
upon the tea estates. 
If we were to add to these the numbers who earn 
their livelihood through its instrumentality in this 
country by the manufacture of machinery, and the 
export of various necestariea, as well as those dis- 
tributing tea in Australasia, the imperial character 
of its welfare would be still more noticeable, and 
would show even more forcibly the debt of gratitude 
the nation owes to those who first proved the practica- 
bility of cultivating the tea plant in India and Ceylon. 
Considering the amount of capital embarked in tea 
cultivatinn.it iH, perhaps strange that so little pecuniary 
interest in the various producing companies has hitherto 
been held by the general public. This is probably most 
easily accounted for by the fact of very few of the 
shares being quoted on the London Stock Exchange, 
and the consequent fear that they should not prove 
easily marketable. But during recent years this 
difficulty has to a great extent been overcome, and 
at the present moment securities of this kind are 
dealt in with considerable ease, a fair price being 
now almost always obtainable for good tea com- 
panies' shares, while there are strong reasons for 
believing that still greater facilities will be forth- 
coming in the near future ; so that tea securities 
appear likely to become as readily marketable as 
many other shaies. 
At a time when the difficulty of obtaining more 
than an extremely small rate of interest on capital 
is felt by the public as keenly as it is at the pre- 
sent moment, there certainly appear to be many 
inducoments for more general investment in tea- 
producing concerns. By many of these a very 
t{ood annual return is obtainable at the present 
market value of the shares, while severaf have 
large accumulated reserve funds for equalisation 
of dividends, added to which the security offered by 
the possession of actual landed property, with 
buildings, machinery, and crops, should tend to draw 
the attention of the public more forceablv than hitherto 
to this class of investment. 
From an imperial point of view, the greater the pe- 
cuniary interest the public hold in so far-reaching an 
industry, the more benefit is the Empire likely to de- 
rive from it; for, while it is the natural wish and ex- 
pectation of British tea growers that the mother coun- 
try will support their efforts to the fullest extent, still 
there is nothing like pecuniary interest to induce a de- 
sire for the well-being of an industry. The greater 
this interest is, the more is British grown tea likely 
not only to be consumed by our fellow-countrymen at 
home but to be asked for and demanded in foreign 
countries. The public thus become instrumental in 
that most important office of assisting in the opening 
up of new markets, and a commercial bond is formed 
between the mother country and her possessions — 
which strengthened by ties of relationship, as well as 
by the knowledge that almost 90 per cent, of the tea 
we use is now grown in our own dependencies, should 
tend more and more to increase that much-needed 
feeling of unity between Great Britain and her 
Colonies, which is the desire of all who wish for the 
continued prosperity of the British Empire. 
TABLE SHOWING THE ABEA UNDER CULTIVATION OF 
TEA IN NATAL FROM 1880 TO 1808. 
Year. 
Acres in 
Year. 
Acres in 
Cultivation. 
Cultivation 
1880 
8 
1888 
801 
1883 
149 
1889 
1,090 
1885 
340 
1890-91 
1,765 
1886 
410 
1891-92 
1,673 
1887 
.. 576 
1891-93 
2.200 
