Since the above was written, further improvements and alterations (suggested by Mr. Ansell, the Tea engineer, and Mr. Pillans, manager at Phoolbarry) have been carried out. The machine is now very perfect, and I consider it the best Dryer at present in the market.
Mr. Kinmond has invented quite lately a coke-burning Dryer. He is now taking this with him to India to try it, and has sent me the following prospectus of it:—
The Coke Burning Tea Dryer has been made to meet the want of Tea districts where wood fuel is scarce, and coke can be obtained at a reasonable price. The upper part of the Coke Burning Tea Dryer is exactly the same as the No. 2 Wood Burning Dryer, which is adapted to burn any kind of fuel, but its capacity is a little more, being from 2¼ to 2½ maunds pucka Tea per hour. One maund of pucka Tea can be dried with the consumption of about ¼ maund of coke. Besides its large capacity for doing work, and its small consumption of coke, the Coke Burning Dryer has other advantages. It is nearly one-half less in weight than the Wood Burning Dryer, which means one-half saving in freight. It requires no foundation or brickwork of any kind; and taking into consideration the quantity of work it does, it is the cheapest Dryer in the market—costing only £180, f.o.b. in England.
I know nothing of this Coke Dryer. Its price compares favourably with his other Dryers.
In April, 1881, the following leader, written by me, appeared in the Calcutta Statesman. Though other Tea matters are included (all of interest), I give it here as further testimony to the merits of Kinmond’s Dryer:—
The days are passed when Tea planters hoped to make a fortune in a few years. There are mainly two reasons for this. Firstly, the prices of Tea have fallen greatly, in many cases 30 and 40 per cent. This is due to the fact that supply, in the case of Indian Tea, has overtaken demand. Still, there is some comfort to all interested in the industry to be derived from the low prices which have ruled during the last two years. So cheap have Indian Teas been that the attention of the trade has thereby been directed to them, and consequently the deliveries of the last few months have exceeded any known previously.[99] It is calculated by those best able to judge, that if the present rate of deliveries in London continues, the stock in June next will not exceed twelve million pounds, and the truth is, strange as it may appear, that below this point it is not well that the stock in hand should fall, because, if it does, dealers will not be able to meet their requirements, and will then perforce buy more China. Low as prices are, we therefore, nevertheless, consider the statistical position of Tea to-day as good. There is another point which should give comfort and hope to the Indian planter, in spite of the fact that we are heavily handicapped in our race with China, inasmuch as owing to more expensive labour our cost of production must exceed theirs. This source of hope is the great point now generally admitted, that Indian Tea is better and goes further than China Tea. The experience of each of us can quote instances of individuals dropping China Tea, and taking to India; who knows of anyone doing the reverse? We admit the taste for Indian Tea is more or less an acquired one. Still, the public at home have already been educated to the taste by the yearly increasing proportion of Indian mixed with China Tea. Speaking generally (though the exceptions are many and increase yearly), it is true that Indian Tea is not obtainable pure, but no more is China. The bulk of the Tea now sold to the public in the United Kingdom is a mixture, three parts China and one Indian, and all points to the fact that in a few more years the general mixture will be half-and-half.
We are thus surely paving the way, in other words, teaching the English public to like Indian Tea, and the broad fact that, once used, it is never abandoned for its rival is surely a very hopeful feature. The truth is that were it possible to make the population of England, Australia, and America drink Indian Tea for one week only, the demand after that week would be enormous, and we should hear no more of “supply exceeding demand;” nay, more, many thousands of, acres would at once be added to the present cultivation in India.
But we have somewhat wandered from the question we set out with, viz., why Tea does not pay now as it once did. The first reason we have given; the second is that there is now no market for Tea seed. This last reason is little dwelt on, but it is a very important factor. The days were when Rs. 300 per maund, and even more, were paid for Tea seed, and though this did not last long, the price for many years up to 1878 was about Rs. 100. Now it is simply unsaleable. The receipts for Tea seed, during all these years, formed a large part of mature garden earnings, and, to quote one instance, thereto in a great measure were due the big dividends paid by the Assam Company.
But though Tea prices may, and we think will, improve, it is not likely we shall ever again see the rates obtainable formerly. This being so, it is probable that only those plantations in the future will pay that produce Tea cheaply. How is this to be done? Those gardens that are heavily weighted by unsuitable climates, by a bad class of plant, by slopes which are too steep, by inordinately expensive labour, or other causes, will have a hard time of it, but plantations with natural advantages need in no way despair. Though, as we said above, we cannot, in the matter of cheap labour, vie with China, we have a great advantage over the Flowery Land as regards economy of production in another respect. We allude to the use of machinery, which does much now, and will do more and more as each year passes, to reduce the cost of production. Machinery in the manufacture of Tea is, we believe, almost unknown in China. There each and every operation is performed by hand; here in India many now do, and eventually all will, wither, roll, fire, and sort by the help of machines. It says not a little for the enterprise and the inventive genius of the Anglo-Saxon race that, while in China the manufacture of Tea dates back many centuries, and yet all the Tea is still made by hand, we in India, who have only planted Tea some forty years, have invented machines and use them to-day for each and every operation in manufacture. It is but as yesterday that we imported Chinamen to teach us the modus operandi. We now know far more than they do on the subject, and verily the pupil has beaten his master.
Though machinery reduces the cost of production, and in more than one case improves the quality of Tea, and planters know it, the difficulty before them to-day is to know which is the best machine for each operation. Unanimity on this point is not to be expected yet. One swears by Jackson, another by Kinmond, others by Ansell, Barry, Lyle, the inventor of the Sirocco, and so on. The machines and names of inventors are many, and each has its disciples. Perhaps the most favourite rolling machines are Jackson’s and Kinmond’s, but we see the latter has just produced what he calls a “Centrifugal Rolling Machine” which he thinks will supersede all others. We have not seen it, though it is at work on several gardens, and so can give no opinion about it; but another of Kinmond’s machines, his Dryer, we know well. It was long a moot point if Tea could be efficiently fired by any other agent than charcoal. Many affirmed that the fumes of charcoal were necessary; and when, years ago, Colonel Money, so well known by his writings in Tea matters, affirmed from experiments that charcoal was not necessary, but that any fuel would do the work, few believed him, for people said it was impossible to credit that the Chinese would have gone on using charcoal (so much more expensive than other fuel) for centuries, were it not a necessity. What Colonel Money then predicted has already come to pass. Much of the Tea now produced in India never sees charcoal at all, and it is very certain that in two or three years all Indian Tea will be fired by machinery. We say this is certain simply because, apart from the saving effected by using other fuel, the value of Teas fired by machinery is increased. It is natural it should be so because, by the use of the best machines invented for that purpose, the heat can be regulated to a nicety, an impossibility by the old mode of charcoal firing.