The invoice you send with the break must give for each box the number, the gross weight, the tare, the net Tea, and the kind of Tea, with a declaration at foot that the Teas of each kind have been respectively well bulked and mixed together before packing.
Remember the larger the quantity of Tea, of any one kind, to be sold at one auction, the higher the price it will probably fetch. Sell, if possible, twenty or thirty chests of one kind of Tea at the same time, for small quantities as a rule sell below large, both in Calcutta and London.
Equality of tares is the most important point to attend to in packing Teas. It may be difficult, but with machine-sawn boxes, nearly the same weight, any difference must be made up with extra hooping, lead, solder, or nails. Anyhow it must be done, so that no tares shall differ more than half-a-pound (see foot-note page [149]).
[CHAPTER XXVII.]
MANAGEMENT. ACCOUNTS. FORMS.
System and order, a good memory, a good temper, firmness, attention to details, agricultural knowledge, industry, all these, combined with a thorough knowledge of Tea cultivation and Tea manufacture, are the requisites for the successful management of a Tea plantation.
To find men with all these qualities is, I allow, not very easy, still they do exist, and such a one must be had if success in Tea is looked for.
Before the work is given out each day, the manager should decide exactly what is most required, and apply it to that. He should write down, when distributing the men, the works, and the number employed on each. This paper he should carry in his pocket, and he can then verify the men at work at each or any place when he visits it during the day.
The writer, the moonshee, and the jemadar (if there is one), should write similar papers when the coolies are mustered in the morning, and the manager should detail to each of these men which work they are particularly responsible for. This should also be shown in the “Morning Paper.”
Each of the above men then measures out the work to the coolies; visits it once or oftener in the day, and measures all that remains undone at night. A daily report of the work is kept, written by the writer in the evening.