416 
THE TROPICAL AGEICULTURIST. [Dtc. 1, 1^99. 
which no ordinary circumstances are likely to 
upset, while with the seller, everything is against 
a. fair marginal profit at all commensurate with 
his outlying capital and yearly cost of produc- 
tion : so the only way this can with any perma- 
nency be retained must be by some collective 
means. 
PROPRIETORS NOW RESIDENT IN LONDON. 
•The present system was unavoidable when the 
grower and proprietor lived abroad ; but now the 
proprietary of tea-gardens chiefly rests in London, 
lb is time more up-to-date and equitable terms of 
business were instituted between buyer and seller. 
If for no other reason, at least to be prepared for 
differential actions of Government and adverse de- 
fensive measures of trade. 
It might be asked why sellers should not exer- 
cise the same controlling influence over the mar- 
kets of wheat, sugar, coffee, cocoa, etc. The 
reply is : other markets compete with London in 
these, but London practically has the mono- 
poly of British-grown teas ; neither are these 
other products so favourably situated for 
the purpose, their growers being too much 
scattered. 
Anyhow British tea-growers have object lessons 
before them, in closed mints and sugar bounties ; 
so may rest assured that any satisfactory 
countervailing influence will not arise unless they 
take a lesson from the owners of British indus- 
tries and either rise as one man and protect 
themselves, or allow the interests of the consumer 
to be alone considered, as with the West Indian 
sugar industry. 
ASSOCIATIONS IN LONDON. 
- Tea-growers or their representatives do business 
with brokers, dock-owners, etc., who all have their 
unions r>r associations ; and there are also very 
distinctly arranged understandings among toa- 
dealers and grocers ; perhaps, not so defi- 
nitely arranged, but they exist, or, as they 
know very well, trade would not be so 
advantageously done : unwise competition 
would as soon, with tea growers, make their 
business unsteady and insufKciently profit- 
able. 
Political economists lay down a maxim, that 
what is division of labour in the individual 
becomes Free Trade in the State : so surely it is 
within the legitimate function of the seller, to regu- 
late his sales to the requirements of the market, 
without infringing the laws of Free Trade ; and if 
so individually with division of labour, collective 
action does not alter the principle but merely 
increases the numbers in operation. 
Indeed, no principle of Free Trade is infringed 
and the evidence of one of the first Professors of 
Political Economy, on combining to regulate the 
ales of the tea market, is that it would be wise 
rade to do so. 
It is certain that the ordinary operation of na- 
tural trade cannot fight against the differential 
impositions of tlie Indian Government, any more 
than a man who does not fully protect his own 
business! can expect to compete with another wha 
defends his at every turn. 
No )natter how necessary for the financial 
arrangements of India, it is not likely that the 
protective action of ihe Indian Government would 
have been so widely approved, were it not that 
It gives immediate benefit to the oflicial classes^ 
and to British investors in Indian finances. If 
the measures taken by India were necessary and 
so right, a similar course under the circumstan- 
ces by the British Tea Industry ivill not is less 
right ; federated too, it will have sufficient power 
to carry out the measure. 
SOMETHING MUST BE DONE. 
Tjnder any circumstances, as British growers are 
at present placed, with a practically differential 
tax against their own products, with continued 
falls in price, irrespective of favourable statistical 
conditions, something must be done to prevent 
this continual downward tendency of the market. 
Last year, between May and August, tea fell ^d 
and there is no reason, as the market is at present 
constituted, that it should not continue doing 'o 
unless come collective means are adopted to meet 
the situation. 
SUTJM CU IQUE. 
■ ■ ♦ 
A KEPLY TO "SUUM CUIQUE." 
Colombo, Nov. 22. 
Dear Sir, — Your article appearing in today's 
paper signed "Sunm Cuique" is indubitably a 
most interesting and able communication. It 
brings into prominence the leading features of the 
position of tea and the factors that effect its 
price. 
I tiiink, however, that the table of comparison 
of prices and proportion of stock to consumption 
is not carried far enough to prove that .stock has 
no, or even little, effect upon the prices which 
the " Buyers' Combination " is prepared to pay. 
This is not fault of your correspondent because 
the proportion of stock to consumption has only 
lately, namely, at the end of 1898, dropped 
materially below the proportion shewn in 1892, 
which was, (I quote his figures), then 45 per cent 
aa-ainst 43 per cent in 1898 : the effect of this 
falling-off of stock at the end of 1898 has been 
that during the current year the average price 
of tea has risen, and if the Calcutta export 
falls off a little and we do not go ahead too fast, 
there is no doubt whatever that the price of tea 
will still further advance ; but these are big " ifs." 
But, as your correspondent says, the constant flow 
of tea into the consuming markets (there is no 
off-season now to give a buyer a chance of holding) 
prevents any distributor feeling that he is bound 
to stock ; and the markets, are therefore, inime- 
diately affected by an excess in the offerings over 
and above the immediate hand-to-mouth demand. 
I think that sellers and buyers are agreed that 
there is no more sensitive market than the 
the tea market, nor any market where the pro- 
spects of supplies are more studied and the effects 
more anticipated or discounted ; but as the trade 
are forced to buy every year during the months 
of September, October, November, December, and 
January, 20 per cent more tea than they can 
deliver, it is not to be wondered at that however 
sanguine the buyers may be as to the cheapness of 
the article, there is bound to arrive a time each 
year when the price is forced down below 
the level which the estimate of the crops war- 
rant. 
The position would be improved for the planter 
if there were a buffer between him and the 
distributor ^uch as there is in every other largo 
article of produce ; I refer to merchants, specu- 
lators , men who seeing that a position was_ un- 
Warra ntableas regards prices, could have facilities of 
