The Calcutta Tea Syndicate.
We are glad to learn that this most useful body intends to continue its operations in opening up, wherever possible, new markets, although there will be no more soliciting supplies of Tea for Australia—the feeling being that the trade in this direction may now be left to take care of itself.
The Tea Syndicate has done a great good, and those able to ship to Australia should at once arrange to take the fullest advantage of the opening made for them. We would have wished that the Syndicate had continued actively its operations there, but perhaps they are right in leaving, now, the further development of the trade they have so successfully founded to private enterprise. It will be the fault of owners themselves if they do not take advantage of the large market opened to them.
I conclude my notice of Australia as a market by the following, also from the Tea Gazette. Matters there certainly look promising for the Indian planter:—
The new Australian Tea Association.
Our friends in Australia, now that they are convinced of the purity and good quality of our Indian Teas, have determined, we are glad to see, to follow in the wake of the Calcutta Tea Syndicate, and push by united effort Indian Teas throughout the Australian Colonies. Knowing full well that no half-hearted measures would be likely to succeed, and that the efforts of a few individuals would not meet the requirements of the market, our friends in Victoria and New South Wales have combined, and formed an association under the title of the “Calcutta Tea Association,” for the sale of pure and unadulterated Indian Teas to wholesale merchants, storekeepers, and customers in general. Large and handsome premises have been taken in King Street, Melbourne, and Charlotte Place, Sydney, in which the operations of the Association are to be carried on on a large scale.
America.
The following is from the Daily News—a Calcutta paper:—
We were glad to note that our American cousins were being induced to give some orders. If only Indian Tea was once taken up, and became popular, its future would be secured. The teeming masses of people in the States would consume more Tea we should imagine than all the English public, provided Indian Tea took the place of China. Australia so far has done well, but the market there would be easily glutted, whereas, if its use became general, it would be almost impossible to glut the American market. The millions of settlers in America and in Canada all use Tea at their meals very much as an Englishman takes his beer, so that the inland consumption must be very large. In Australia, every shepherd carries his pannikin of Tea, and the amount he swallows in twelve months must be pretty considerable. In the backwoods of America and Canada, each woodcutter consumes nearly half a pound of Tea weekly, so that, with its millions of people, America could easily dispose of millions of pounds of Tea, which would not only clear off all the surplus Tea in the London market, but would probably cause a deficit. We wonder if in our time this golden era will take place.
This from the Tea Gazette:—