The following circular has been addressed to merchants interested in the tea trade London, February, 1877.
Sre,—The unsatisfactory result, in recent cozy tothe importer of China Tens, isa fact of universal experience; permit me, in our common interest, to ask your attention to a suggestion for obviating what I believe to be one of the causes leading to this result; Trefer to the system of sending our buyers from Shanghai 10 Hankow to meet the article on its way to the former place. sed drawbacks of this aystem are manifest, In the first place, most of us are not established in Hankow, and we have to send Chaaszees from their own tea rooms, where they are "at home," have their own light, and in every other respect are in the most favourable circumstances for exercising an unbiassed judgment, whether as to the desirability of operating or in the selection of their purchases—to a settlement of which it is hardly an exaggeration to say that, for a time, almost the whole population acts and talks as if to secure an interest in Tea were the one end of life. allude, our representatives are herded, In the cases to which I now specially
half-a-dozen together, in the houses of two or three agents, and' are thereby exposed to the influences of competition and emulation in the strongest possible form—influences which cannot fail to operate in the most fatal direction, that of causing the 38
Why then should we stop the leaf half-
place where we have located ourselves? way between the pice of growth and the As importers of Tea, and as holders in Shanghai, it is our interest to do all that is possible ta restore to that port the position of the Northern Tea Depét, and to this end. it is proposed that we should enter into a mutual undertakes to send either Tea-tasters or orders to for the coming season. Should there be a few dissentients there is no danger that they would get the whip-hand of their neighbours; the Chinese are too astute not
the greatest buying power exists; they to avail themselves of the market in wall tim extreme limits on Tea in Hankow, and failing to obtain them they would order it to i, for, by nature sanguine and speculative, the natives would have the greatest faith in the greatest number.
I think there can be no doubt that a sufficiently large majority of the Tea buying is under control of London firms—either as heads of the Shanghai houses or as entrusting them with orders—to ensure that unanimous, or nearly unanimous action on their part would effect the desired change.
Several large buyers have expressed their desire to ce-operate in putti end to the existing system provided there be some sort of unanimity on the point amongst the trade generally, and to test this, I ask your consideration of the question, and that you will be so good as to sign and return to me, one of the enclosed forms, according to the view you adopt.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.