At our garden in Western Dooars, 1,260 maunds of Tea were made in 1880, and all sifted by this machine, the hand labour besides being only 44 women during the whole season, or about one-fifth of a woman per day.
The machine requires only two men to work it continually, and one boy to feed it from the upper floor.
I can think of no possible objection to this machine, or even of any possible improvement. I believe, in the case of a 300-acre garden with a decent amount of produce, the machine, in its saving of hand labour, pays for itself in one year, whilst the Teas are much improved in appearance by its use, and fetch higher prices.
Edward Money.
I add two more letters in favour of the machine from the same paper:—
Ansell’s Patent Tea Sorting and Winnowing Machine.
Sir,—In respond to your call for information regarding Tea machinery, I am happy to supply you with my experience of Ansell’s Patent Tea Sorting and Winnowing Machine. I have been sifting the whole of my Teas, through it this season, and am therefore in a position to state what I think of it. I consider it a most useful machine, and a great saver of labour. With four men, I do with it in one day an amount of work which without it I would have to employ from twenty to twenty-five men to accomplish.—Yours, &c.,
“Sifter.”
Ansell’s Sifting Machine.
A correspondent writes from London to the Ceylon Observer as follows:—Ansell’s Patent Tea Sorter seems to be an article which will later be much used in Ceylon. In a memo. before me there is an extract from Messrs. George Williamson and Co., who say:—“The manager of our Majilighur Garden writes:—‘I have now had sufficient experience of Ansell’s Sifter to be able to report very favourably upon it. It does its work thoroughly and cleanly, and, owing to the comparatively small space it occupies, little or no loss occurs even of the finest dust. Sixteen maunds in nine hours is what I find to be about its capabilities, and four boys do all the work connected with it. It has effected a great saving in the Tea house this year, and has quite done away with hand-sieving, except equalizing the broken Pekoe and broken Tea—a very trivial operation.’”