Open the list with the names of the three gardens I represent (as per enclosure), equivalent at once to a subscription of Rs. 360.
Now, as to the question—how to do it? I give you my views, but let them be criticised and discussed. We want to do it, and to do it the best way.
What I have been suggesting for months in the Tea Gazette, as the best thing to do in India—viz., to sell Tea by auction in convenient forms as to quantity for native consumption—is really what I advise for England. I am quite at one with Mr. Drews on this point. (I wish you would reprint his valuable letter above, and then my allusions to it would be understood.) Retail shops and all they would entail, viz., intricate supervision, rents, establishments, and what not, necessitate details quite outside our legitimate sphere as producers. No organisation we could devise would carry on successfully two or three hundred shops at home. We (that is, the company or the association) could not efficiently superintend such a complicated business, and we should be cheated right and left. But let others, I say, do the work for us at their own risk, as follows:—
Sell Teas in whole, half, and quarter chests, in tins of 10, 5, and 1 lbs., in packets of 8, 4, and 2 ounces once a week (the market day) in country towns; daily, in different localities in London, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dublin, and such like cities—all by auction to the highest bidder for cash, in lots which would suit both retail dealers and retail purchasers. Never mind if there be a loss at the commencement; the quantities sold, till we felt our way, need not be large.
What would be the result? Retail dealers would shortly sell as much Indian as China Tea, if they could get it. Our Teas would go into thousands of houses where it has never been tasted yet. The demand would increase on all sides; prices in Mincing Lane, and consequently in Calcutta, would rise, and no fear of a glutted market could then exist. In two words, Indian Teas would, I believe, six months after such operations were commenced, become the rage in England, and we, the owners of Tea property, would add 50 per cent. to the value of our estates.
Is not even the chance of all this worth an outlay of Rs. 120 for each garden? I am proud to head the list with my Rs. 360, and I do beg of all interested in Tea to follow my lead.
In the plan I have sketched, like Mr. Drews, all the operations would be simple. The necessary supervision would be small: the details easily arranged. The Teas would of course be bought in the open market in London and distributed for public auction to the different localities. There might be some loss at first (it is for this the capital is wanted), but if always sold to the highest bidder, there would be none—nay, a handsome profit after a time; and though I do not think with Mr. Drews, nor should I wish, that the prices would eventually equal Cooper and Cooper’s, I do think that the said firm would soon find it useless to advertise their cheapest Indian Tea at 3 shillings a pound—Tea for which they certainly paid no more than 13 pence!
I may add that I quite agree with the last paragraph of Mr. Drews’ letter; but a sale for India and a sale for England are two different things, and I will not treat of both together.
Edward Money.
Western Dooars, January 7, 1882.