Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-07-23

u II ANY people thlnk OF tea as an eX-
INA clusively Chinese product and one
1--WE of the imports to the United
Il States 1t may be a surprise to a
good many people to learn that
tea has been successfully cultivated in the
United States for the past hundred years,
and that there are now raised about 10000
pounds annually on one plantation in the
south alone. The Department of Agricul
| ture has been working on the tea problem
| for the past twenty-five or thirty years, and
just now it looks though tea were to be
| another of the exotics transplanted to this
country and raised successfully to compete
with that from the foreign market
There is at present no tax on tea in the
United States, as up to date the raising of
the product has not been considered in
FAINT industry" worthy of protection. But
tea is higher-priced here than in any other
country in the world 1t is believed that
an import tax on tea would result in our
getting better tea in this country and
cheaper than 1t is now sold without tax.
1t will likely be of the problems
before the tariff revision workers at the
next Congressional is, If the tariff revision
gets show at all AS We are now spend
ing about S40,OOOO00 year on tea a small
tax would considerably increase the reve-
nue.. Notwithstanding the large amount
spent, America is not nation of tea drink
eTS. we SpenQ Slhb,pu,OtU year Tor
coffee and make on the average better
coffee than any other people. Great
Britain uses about six pounds of tea an
nually per capita to one. Tea in that
country is subject to a fairly high duty,
and yet it is declared that one can buy
better tea in England for Al cents pound
than can be had here for $50.
The United States imports as a rule only
the cheaper grades of foreign teas. and the
average cost is about IS cents a pound.
The difference between this and the price
that the consumer has to pay in the. stores
represents the profits of the middleman and
retailer. The cost of raising the tea grown
in the United States Is about what the
imported lower grades cost, so that 1t
would not take very heavy duty to make
the homegrown tea equally profitable with
the imported.
The largest single tea garden In the
United States is at Pinehurst, S. c., where
DR.. Charles Shepard has for the past five
or six years been experimenting first en-
tlrely at his own expense. but later with
the generous assistance of the Department
of Agriculture. Prior to that time by al
most hundred years tea had been intro
duced at Middleton Barony on the Ashley
river near Charleston. In the forties also
Mr.. Junius Smith experimental with tea at
Greenville, s. G. Later the United States
government collected seed in China and
distributed 1t through the patent office, this
being prior to the establishment of the Ag-
ricultural Department, and as q result there
were many small gardens started through
the gulf states, some of which still exist
and are just sufficient to supply domestic
needs.
But in the meantime the palm of tea rails
ing has been wrested from China by the
British colonies. Ceylon, after the wreck
of her coffee plantations. turned her at
tention to tea raising, and India followed.
So rapidly has the growing of tea in India