May 1, 1901.] 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
757 
ill Carolina, of coui'se as ornamental oriental 
garden plants. The Agricultural Department 
tirst tried tea culture in 1881 ; but the ex- 
periment was abandoned in 1883. We our- 
selves saw a very fine tea bush in 
the Garden of the A.o-ricultural De- 
partment, at Washino;fcon, in 1884. — 
Then we learn from the Ewiew how Dr. 
Shephard took up the cultivation ; but no 
mention is made of th-; part played by an 
old Ceylon planter— Mr. He iry Cottam -who, 
in the course of his multit idinous wander- 
inf<3, found his way to Piuehurst, and we 
believe helped Dr Shephard in some of his 
early operations and led him to (U'der the 
Tropical Agrvmlturist. To show that there 
is an idea of Dr. Shephard's 6'J to 70 acres pi ov- 
ing the beginning of a great industry, we 
quote as follows : — 
"If America were now raising her own tea, from l.S 
to 15 miUion dollars per aonam would lie kepc 
in this country that under present c^mditions woes 
from us into foreign coffers. The sum is modest 
when comp ired with those representel by the ^reat 
staples of America— wheat, meat, and cotton. But 
it is quite large enongli for us eagerly t > desire to 
keep it at home, especially when we'refle:'.t that if 
kept here it would go to supp )rt tlie tillers of the 
sod in tliu agricultural South. Over half of these 
snug millions of good American money we now 
send to John Chinaman, who raises 49,678,577 
pounds of tea out of our average yearly coniyuuiption 
of 92,782,175 pounds. Would not this money 
make better count for civilisation in building up 
the hoires of our poor white and black toUers ? In 
regard to our supplying other markets than the 
American, we shall at present venture nothing 
further than the statement that it is by no means 
nut of the range of possibilities for us ultimately to 
reach and claim our share also in them. At this 
a laugh may go around ; for it cannot be denied 
that one successful tea-garden in all this great 
country seems a fragile base to build great expecta- 
tions upon. But hark back to the handful of 
Smyrna cotton seed sown in a Virginia garden in the 
Hrst quarter of the seventeenth century and carried 
thence, after many unsuccessful generations of the 
weed, to the Carolina and (Jeorjia plantations, 
which seemed to have no need of the insignificant 
new plant, as their tillers were finding ready wealth 
in tobacco, rice, indigo and the silk mulberry. At 
the end of one hundred and fifty years from that 
first planting of cotton, its harvests were still only 
slight gleanings from odd corner patches, a pvirely 
domestic ci op, and by no means a general one. Yet 
today, a century and a quarter later, undertake to 
eliminate this weed from the agricultural resources 
of the South-Atlantic and sister States, and what 
a transformation must be wroushb in the farming; 
life of the section which produces three-fourths of 
the world's annual cotton crop— what'an U|jlieaval, 
indeed, in the commerce of the world ?" 
But practical men must be satisfied there is 
not much in the Pinehiu'st experiment so 
far as wide extension goes, when they read 
the conclusion of the article before us :— 
" The qnestion of lalior has been dealt with quite 
as .skilfully as the natural problems of heat and 
moisture; and while it still costs sometliiuK like 
eiabt times as much to have a pound of tea 
picked iu South Carolina as the same service would 
demand in Asia, yet much of this comparative loss 
has already been balanced— and much more it is 
hoped will aooa be balanced— by greater produc- 
tiveness in the field, by the substitution of machin- 
ery for hand labor in tie factory, and by the 
manufacture of vari-!ties of teas which, from in- 
herent chemical causes, cannot be brought from 
the Orient. 
" We may not d Will now upon other points, in- 
terestini; as they are. The practical results of these 
ten trial years are before us, and tea culture on a 
business basis is an actuality in the United States. 
Abeady rivals of the Fineliurst gardens are being 
inaugurated in a quiet way— one in Louisiana — • 
another in South Carolina, a third at the Georgia 
e.\'perimeat starion. Dr. Sluphard writes, under 
recent date, that he iias this year increased iiis tea 
acreage, outside of the hedges in his park, from 60 
acres to 75 and that the crop of 1905 is decidedly 
laroer than in any previous year. Nor did he raise 
the price of his teas when the Eastern varieties 
recently wsnt up, a fluctuation due rather more to 
the short crop in Jap in than to the Chinese en- 
tanglement. 
" Dasirinj^ top)pularizi the American product, 
Dr. .Shep'iard is holding his prices just where a 
c ireful calculation of expenses shows lie can alt'ord 
to lix them. His actual cost of production and 
preparation for mirkeL is now 27| cents per pound, 
tie hop is to re luce this shortly to 14 cents At 
present, the letail price of the ' Standard Pine- 
hurst Black Tea' is .$1 per pound. Toe mirgin 
between these figures of cost and selling price must, 
of course, be shired with the vadous middlemen 
wl'.o form the chain from producer to consumer, 
but even after the division a fair portion is left to 
the tea gardener. The wholesale selling-price, at a 
conservative estimate, will average up to 50 cents a 
jjound, allowing the producers a profit of 22i cents 
per pound, even at the present high cost of pro- 
duction. 
" Dr. Shephard's ' Rose Garden ' of Assam-Hy- 
brids may be taken as a fair illustration of the pos- 
sibilities in this new industry of our section. The 
K'jse Garden is a little less than an acre in extent, 
and was set out in I8i)0 with nearly 1,000 plants. 
In 1892 it yielded 56 pounds of green leaves. 
Nearly doubling its yield every year since 189.^, 
except in 1897, a year of prolonged autumnal drouth, 
it closely approximated 1,200 pounds in 1898, an 
amount of green leaf which affords about 300 |)ound3 
of the Staadard iJlack, Here, then, was a profit 
in 18!T8 'if nearly $70 to less than an acre. The 
present year the productivity is much increased, 
while the price remains the same. It should be 
noted in this connection that the most profitable 
crops in Japan are gathered from plants two hundred 
yeats old. 
" As;ain, if the plants in the ' Rose Garden ' were 
placed at shorter distances apart, as is the rule in 
the Orient and'now at Pinehurst, the yield would 
be proportionately greater each year. But make 
the most conservative estimate and say 400 pounds 
ciired to the acre, at a profit of only ten cents per 
pound. Yet, is $40 an acre clear profit regarded 
as bad farming in this section ? We merely hint 
at s he possibilities of expansion when we add that 
on many estates in Ceylon and India, more than 
1,000 pounds to the acre is the annual harvest, and 
Sliat the his;he<t product per bush in those coa-i r es 
has already bsen reached at Pinehurst. T i -a 
has been a ready seller at $1 per pjun:!, and ais 
deinandfor it, stimulated by a growing acquaint- 
ance with its purity an 1 its delicate and pleasing 
flavor, is increasing, so dealers testify, more rapidly 
than the Pinehurst gardens can expand. The lessoq 
