Smyrna times., 1882-05-03
Preparation Of Tea by Machinery.

E6pdTdLlUu Vi LED Ny MdGulueIy'
That there are many parts Of the South
in which tea plants can be grown and will
flourish luxuriantly has been proved by
experiments at various points running
through the past thirty years. Samples
of tea so grown have been submitted to
New York tea dealers, who pronounce
them equal in quality to the tea grown in
the Assam district of India and of like |
strength The Assam tea, because of this |
greater strength, fetches higher price in |
England, where it is mixed i'll the proper |
tion of One-third with the China tea, to |
give the latter more body. 1t is not there
fore the difficulty in growing the tea shrub |
in the United States, nor in respect to the
commercial quality of the tea, that stands
in the way of its introduction among as as
IL new and valuable industry. The great
and almost inseparable obstacle has been
the low price of the teas from China and
japan, owing to the amount Of human
labor required in the manipulation of the
tea to prepare it for market All the tea
from those countries is handmade from
the time when the season Of picking begins
until it is rolled, dried, stuffed and packed
for the sCabOard. 1t is in these processes
that the cheap labor of China and Japan
controls the price of the article, and until
tea plantations were opened in British
India, some forty years ago, all attempts
to grow tea to profit elsewhere than in
the aforementioned countries were futile.
Even the Assam companies, in spite of the
| eXcellency of its teas, would have been
driven out of the market if it had continu-
ed to prepare the tea by hand, as the
| Chinese have done for thousand years.
| Necessity forced them either to adopt new
! processes or to abandon the cultivation.
| The problem to be solved was whether it
was possible to make marketable tea other
wise than by hand. They have succeeded
in proving that it is possible. They have
made machinery compete with human
fingers, and in this way have so cheapened
production that the Assam tea sells tor
very little more than the Chinese tea in
England, the difference in price being
justified by the stronger flavor and greater
purity of the India tea. OF this tea Eng
land took last year 100000 pounds, and
new plantations are constantly being
opened. The London Daily NeWs says
the consumption of Assam tea has in
creased enormously" and that the planters
| olal Ia fO in Vyith ha
better qualities of Chinese tea. Machin.
cry is now largely used in the manufacture
of tea in India. A well-appOinted Indian
tea factory shows a steam engine of per-
haps 2O-horse power, wOrking-rollers
driers, qualizers, shifters, and what net
This gives the Indian planter a great ad
vantage in his race with China. As with
all Industries, so with tea; the work i!
done more regularly, better, in a more
c'eanly way, and far more economically
by machines than by hand. If India evel
vies with China in the aggregate of heI
tea exports, it will be due mainly to the
use of machinery in manufacture, fo
labor would fail otherwise" The practi
cability, therefore, Of doing by machinery
what the Chinese do by hand, and thu
reducing almost to an equality the cost o
production, being satisfactorily settled, 81
far as the planters in India are concerned
the question of the possibility of GROWN:
cheaply our own tea is presented in new
asp ct. If the use Of machinery SO re
duces the cost of production in India as t.
enable its tea to be exported at Il prize
very little above that from China, VIII!
: might not the adoption of similar process
es do the same thing for us? Ifit be con
tended that the wages of labor in Indi
>, itself are much lower than they are witt
us, there is still the compensatory fact t.
fall back upon that whereas the India te
has to bear the costs and charges of a lon
sea voyage to Europe, we should have tn
field of production and the market for it
sale almost at our doors.