Aug.  I,  1896.J  THE  TROPICAL  AGRICULTURIST. 
TEA  PLANTING  IN  DAUJEELING. 
(Continued  from  page  100.) 
Discussion, 
The  Chairman  said  they  had  lieard  about  as  good 
a paper  as  cou'd  possibly  bo  giveu  011  this  important 
subject,  a paper  abounding  not  oniy  iu  very  accu- 
rate description  and  practical  knowledge,  but  also 
illustrated  in  a very  elaborate  manner.  The  im- 
portant part  of  the  address — apart  from  the  labour 
question — lay,  not  so  much  in  the  preparation  of 
the  ground  for  the  tea  plants  as  in  the  preparation 
of  the  tea.  Of  course,  all  that  had  been  said  as 
to  forests,  buildings,  and  the  like,  was  very  interest- 
ing, but  that  one  could  imagine ; and,  no  doubt, 
in  these  respects  their  rivals  iu  China  could  show 
quite  as  good  a case  as  India.  He  ventured  to 
suggest  to  the  Hritish  public  that  the  real  hope  was 
iu  the  preparation  of  the  tea.  Xu  that  respect  they 
had  the  advantage,  and  'that  was  the  reason  why 
they  were  rapidly  gaini'.g  ground  over  China.  Many 
could,  no  doubt,  remember  when  the  tea  industry 
in  India  was  in  a very  low  state  ; but  now,  owing 
to  the  adoption  of  scientific  xirocesses,  that  condi- 
tion of  things  had  been  considerably  alttred.  It  was 
the  possession  of  superior  machinery  which  had  given 
India  the  advantage  over  China.  He  should  be  glad 
to  know  the  exact  number  of  acres  under  cultivation 
in  the  Darjeeling  district,  and  what  quantity  was 
still  available  for  the  purpose.  It  had  been  said 
that  tea  planting  was  almost  the  only  industry  iu 
Darjeeling  ; but  ho  could  recollect  the  time  when 
the  cultivation  of  cinchona  was  an  important  industry 
Sir  Steuart  Colvin  Bayley,  k.c.s.i.,  thought  they 
owed  a debt  of  gratitude  to  Mr.  Christison  for  his 
very  interesting  and  instructive  paper.  The  paper 
dealt  with  the  tea-planting  industry,  as  a whole,  in 
Darjeeling,  and  there  was  much  iu  it,  pardcularly 
iu  the  technical  portions,  as  to  which  tea  planters 
whose  experience  had  been  iu  other  provinces  would 
have  something  to  say.  Ho  had  hoped  to  hear  fix  m 
the  reader  of  the  paper  a little  more  upon  the  sub- 
ject of  labour — f or  in.stauce,  tea  method  of  recruitment, 
the  average  duration  of  contract — that  was  to  say, 
whether  tne  labourers  who  come  from  a distance 
stayed  any  time  iu  one  garden ; whether  they  took 
an  annual  holiday  to  vist  their  homes ; or  whether 
they  stayed  there  for  years  ? No  one  could  have 
told  us  better  about  the  Nepali  labourer  than  Mr. 
Christison,  for  no  one  knew  them  better  or  did  more 
for  them.  Perhaps  there  wore  many  who  had  at- 
tended the  annual  gathering  at  Tukvar,  which  was 
organised  by  Mr.  Christison,  and  to  which  many 
coloured  crowds  of  cheerful,  well-looking  labourers 
from  all  the  neighbouring  gardens  used  to  flock  for 
the  contest  iu  athletic  games  and  other  amusements 
promoted  by  their  guide,  philosopher,  and  friend, 
Mr.  Christison.  The  Nepalese  labourer  had  probably 
more  intelligence  and  industry  than  those  of  any 
other  part  of  India;  and  among  the  advantages 
which  the  Darjeeling  tea  planters  had  over  their 
neighbours  in  Assam — and  there  were  many — was 
the  fact  that  they  drew  their  labourers  from  the 
neighbouring  country.  There  was  a grievance  even 
in  regard  to  those  labourers — that  they  were  taken 
away  from  the  work  iu  the  tea  gardens  and  re- 
cruited for  military  police  in  other  parts  of  India. 
This  question  was  just  beginning  to  crop  up  when 
he  was  in  India.  He  fancied  it  had  become  more 
burning;  but  as  he  knew  nothing  of  its  recent 
developments,  he  would  leave  others  to  say  what 
there  was  to  be  said  about  it.  His  advice  to  the 
Darjeeling  tea  planters  would  be  that,  whatever 
pressure  they  might  fjut  upon  the  Government  to 
get  their  grievances  redressed,  they  should  not  fall 
into  the  snare  of  asking  for  a labour  law.  If  they 
did,  they  would  no  doubt  fina  their  labour  protected 
against  Government  or  other  competition,  but  they 
would  find  the  price  which  they  would  liavo  to  pay 
a very  heavy  one.  The  great  advantage  which  the 
Dai’jeeling  and  the  Dooars  gardens  enjoyed  over 
their  Eastern  rivals  was  the  fact  that  they  had  no 
labour  law.  In  Assam  there  was  no  indigenous  labour 
to  speak  of,  in  Upper  Assam  none  at  all.  If  the 
15 
tea  industry  was  to  live  labourers  had  to  be  im- 
ported at  very  great  expense  from  Bengal.  But 
having  gone  to  this  oximmse  the  planters  required, 
in  the  fierce  competition  that  existed,  to  be  protected 
from  desertion  and  from  the  allurements  of  other 
employers  of  labour.  Hence  the  contracts  were 
maintained  by  severe  communal  penalties,  but  if  the 
law  did  this  on  one  side  it  did  a great  deal  also 
on  the  other.  It  took  under  its  protection  the 
general  \vell-being  of  the  labourer,  his  wages,  his 
food,  his  clothing,  bis  housing,  his  sanitary  arrange- 
ments, his  medical  attendance,  &c.  These  were 
looked  after  by  means  of  inspection  and  minute  re- 
gulation, two  methods  which  inevitable  as  they  were 
for  the  purpose,  tended  no  less  inevitably  to  a 
considerable  amount  of  friction.  A worse  result  was 
that  the  labourer  when  thus  hedged  in  was  such  a 
valuable  asset  that  the  planter  was  willing  to  give 
a very  large  price  in  Upper  Assam,  over  a hundred 
rupees  for  each.  But  the  difference  between  this 
sum  and  the  actual  cost  of  conveying  the  labourers 
to  the  district  was  so  gi’eat  as  to  leave  a very 
large  margin,  and  inevitably  there  was  a fierce 
struggle  set  up  for  this  margin.  “ Where  the  car- 
case is  there  are  the  eagles  gathered  together,”  a 
whole  horde  of  middlemen,  contractors  and  their 
agents,  licensed  recruiters,  un'icened  recruiters,  garden 
sirdars,  and  what  not,  all  connected  for  the  corpus 
vile  which  was  to  yield  this  profit,  and  systematic 
recourse  to  fraudulent  recruiting  and  even  to  kid- 
napping,  become  common,  sufficiently  common  to  be 
felt  as  a discredit  to  the  administration,  and  one 
not  easily  to  be  put  down.  This  point  had  received 
very  great  attention  from  his  successor  (Sir  Charles 
Elliott) ; and  one  of  the  last  of  his  public  acts  had 
been  to  appoint  a committee,  which,  representing  all 
interests,  would  try  to  regulate  and  co-ordinate  the 
various  confficting  and  antagonistic  systems  by  which 
labour  for  the  eastern  gardens  was  collected,  recruited, 
and  sent  ujj.  Any  arrangement  by  which  these 
conflicting  and  ill-regulated  interest  could  be  brought 
into  a decent  system,  under  responsible  management, 
so  that  they  would  work  not  antagonistically,  but 
for  the  benefit  of  the  tea  xilanters,  would  be  an 
advantage  not  only  to  the  planter  but  to  the  labourer 
and  to  the  public.  He  should  be  glad  to  hear  about 
the  genesis  of  the  committee  and  what  its  results 
were  likely  to  be. 
Sir  Charles  Elliott,  k.c.s.i.,  said  the  information 
given  by  the  reader  of  the  paper  was  not  only  in- 
teresting to  those  present,  but  would  add  a good 
deal  to  the  interest  taken  throughout  England  by 
those  who  were  concerned  in  the  tea  industry — not 
only  with  regard  to  the  cultivation  of  the  land  and 
the  preparation  of  the  tea,  but  in  the  very  important 
question  of  the  way  iu  which  the  tea  was  treated 
when  it  came  to  Loudon.  In  reply  to  the  Chairman's 
inquiry  as  to  how  far  the  extension  of  the  Darjeel- 
ing district  was  possible  for  tea  cultivation,  he  might 
say  that  there  was  not  much  more  room  for  ex- 
tension. Almost  all  the  land  capable  of  being 
planted  with  tea  had  been  taken  ux).  The  only 
extention  possible,  with  a few  exceptions,  especially 
in  the  Daling  district,  where  the  area  reserved  for 
tea  had  not  all  been  taken  uji,  was  the  gradual 
slow  extension  which  went  on  from  year  to  year 
within  the  areas  of  the  different  plantations  when- 
ever labour  was  available  for  clearing  and  planting 
an  additional  25  or  50  acres.  But  there  was  an 
enormous  area  capable  of  tea  cultivation  in  the 
Dooars.  The  land  in  that  district  was  much  more 
suitable  for  tea  cultivation,  as  it  produced  a vastly 
larger  crop,  the  result  being  that  the  influx  of 
capital  necessarily  went  into  the  Dooars  instead  of 
in-o  the  Darjeeling  district.  The  Chairman  had 
also  referred  to  cinchona,  and  he  might  say  that 
the  Government  plantation  near  Darjeeling  was  the 
source  of  the  quinine  supply  from  Upper  India,  but 
the  price  of  bark  had  fallen  so  low  ohat  the  culti- 
vation of  cinchona  had  been  abindoned  in  all  the 
gardens.  He  wished  to  express  his  strong  agreement 
in  what  had  been  said  by  Mr.  Christison  as  to  the 
relations  1/ctween  the  tea  planters  and  the  popu- 
lation of  the  district,  and  the  great  utility  the  tea 
planters  were  in  the  administration  of  tlio^„country. 
