Dec. 1, 1899.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
401 
deal of mischief, by imposinw a pennv stamp on 
delivery orders for fjoods issued on vvarehouses 
where rent is taken. Tea at that time was 
delivered in grea*; detail to the retail buyers, 
who kept stock in bond in London, often for 
long periods, in the charge of the wholesale 
dealers. This system still continues, and the 
quantities in which tea is cleared* are proportio- 
nately smaller than is the case witli other 
articles of gri^cery produce. Representations 
were made to Mr. Gladstone as to the injurious 
bearing of the penny stamp on delivery orders 
in the case of tea, and it was agreed that the 
warrant stamp of 3d should, as a compromise, 
cover all deliveries made on the face of that 
document. It has been argued over and over 
again at the Board of Inland Revenue, that 
the stamp having been paid on the warrant as 
a compromise for separate deliveries, a penny 
stamp should not be required when separate 
pieces of paper are nsed for delivery orders, 
instead of th'e deliveries being written oli on 
the warrants thetnselves. The authorities at 
Somerset House, however, held a difi'eient opinion, 
and it has not been considered worth while to 
go to law to test their right to make the charge 
though it appears to be very doubtful. The re- 
sult of this is the maintenance of an extremely 
complicated system in the clearing of tea. The 
warrant, with the order to deliver written upon 
it, has to be lodged at the Clearing House, 
from whence it is sent on to the wharf, and 
subsequent to the delivery of the tea, the 
warrant is returned to the Clearing House, from 
whence, in due course, the wholesale dealer 
fetches it back. The delays and expense caused 
by this little obstacle fo business, devised by 
the perverse ingenuity of our Revenue depart- 
ments, are inconceiviible to those-who have been 
accustomed to the bioader, easier, and far 
cheaper systeni used with all otlier grocery goods. 
If it were not for this stupid piece of ob- 
struction on the part of onr Government to 
a rational system of delivery, there would be 
no necessity whatever for sncli an institution 
as the Clearing House, and the home trade would 
not only move as smoothly again but be 
conducted at much less cost. 
DELAYS IN GKTTING WARRANTS. 
The warrants and weight notes are nob only 
obsolete and obstrnctivs in themselves, but there 
is a quite objectless delay in obtaining them. In 
all other trades that we know of piyments for 
wairants as they are required are made to the 
actual holders of the documents. A notice is sent 
them in the morning that such-and-such warrants 
are required. They are at once sent on by hand 
to the applicant, and handed over in excliange for 
a cheque. In Tea, this is not the ca;.e, and 
endless loss of time and temper results. The im- 
porters shoirld do one of two things: either trust 
their brokers with their warrants if they cannot 
manage the details themselves, or elf e accept direct 
payments. Their can be no doubt that the second 
is the proper plan to adopt, and it} is surprising 
that the wholesale Tea trade have not long since 
insisted on the lemoval of this great hindrance to 
business. It is true that a poor compromise was 
adopted f onie years back, by which it was ar- 
ranged, that wlien payments were made to the 
brokers before noon, the brokers would procure the 
wariants from the merchants by 2 p m. This plan 
constantly leads to a day being lost in the 
delivery of Tea, to tlje loss of both the wholesale 
and the retail buyers. We, are, of course, fully 
aware that one cause of these delays, is the fact 
that such a large proportion of warrants are 
pawned by their holders. When tliey are their 
own property there is no objection to ihi than to 
any other legitimate pawnbroking opjra{,i(m. But 
when the pawners are not the owners of the 
goods other considerations arise, and after the sale 
of Tea, the original owners have no right to leave 
it in pawn than they have to mortgfige some one 
else's house. 
THE PUELIC SALE SYSTEM. 
The system of disposing of Tea almost exclu- 
sively by public sale lends itself to much criticism. 
It will be seen above that the cost of arranging 
Teas for public sale is no less than 4d per chest, 
so far as the docks and wharves are concerned. 
For the work done, the charge is not out of the 
way, but the question is whether the whole 
system might not be greatly simplilied and more 
closely approximated to other cognate trades. 
First, there is the payment to the brokers for the 
hire of rooms, and for the printing of the catar 
logues, and for their distrib^'tion, often to a very 
unnecessary extent. Tea catalogues are printed in. 
a dillerent; way to those current with other., 
groceries. We do not know whether the system 
of printing and the sort of paper is more or less 
costly, but this deserves looking into. There is 
one very obvious source of vt^asteiri Tea catalogues, 
which are often very small documents, but iu 
which two pages are always given, first for 
the names of the brokers and rough particulars, 
and next for the conditions of sale, which 
are given in full in every catalogue. These par- 
ticulaisit is surely unnecessary to piint in every 
catalogue in detail, especially when, as they 
often do, they take up from 20 to 50 per cent of, 
the paper used. The catalogues are not, it is true, 
in such minute detail as was the ca<e years ago, 
butic is questionable whether tliis does not still ad- 
mit of a great deal of simplification. 
The brokers' charge for public sales, in addition, 
to their brokerage, is 9d per lot of six chests. It 
would be interesting to comijare this with the 
public sale charges on other Mincing Lane pro- 
duce, and the materials could easily be collected. 
On 2,000,000 chests a year sold publicly, 9d tor sin 
chests represents a cost of £11,000. 
A great deal of the work connected with cata- 
logues is due to the separation of the teas into 
miserable little lots, which are supposed to be of 
different qualities, thous-h the teas are very fre- 
quently ail plucked at the same time, from the 
same bushes, and on the same gardens. Owing to 
the inethcient appliances in Indi.i, Indian teas 
have, as a rule, to be rebulked in London, and 
while this operation is being conducted, we feel sure 
it would lie in the interests of every one concerned — 
planters, importers, and dealers alike — to put an 
end to these separations, and to make larger 
breaks for one average sort of tea. The cost to 
the wholesale trade of distributing these trifling 
lots is out of all proportion to the profit to be 
obtained upon them. Probably the old days wiien 
China teas reached us in bieaks of 300 fo 600 
chests, which could be judged of l)y a single small 
sample, will never return, but the Indian tea trade" 
will never be in a satisfactory condition until a" 
minimum parcel of one quality should be repre- 
sented by quite 100 chests. This cannot be don« 
till teas are bulked at the gardens, and so tared 
that each chest does not require to be turned out 
here for separate taring, at an enormous cost tq 
