The Tea Trade
most humane woman once why charity did not take the form of a crèche, or day nursery. The answer was that it would be impossible to support such an institution in so small a community of foreigners. Each godown would need a large créche of its own; the poor women could not afford to spare a half-penny of their earnings, and the problem must solve itself.
If man cannot live by bread alone, many foreign residents live by tea alone, and live luxuriously. Great fortunes are made quickly in the tea trade no longer, as in earlier days. Romance departed with the clipper ships, and the cable and freight steamers reduced the tea trade to prosaic lines. Only the best and most experienced men now succeed in this trade, but the tea-merchant toils in his counting-room and godown only from April to October. Then he closes and locks it all behind him, and usually goes over to the United States to look after his interests and orders there. Tea has its fluctuations, like corn or cotton, although it is a crop that never fails, with the added disadvantages of the great distance from the final markets and the expensive cable communications to make it uncertain and full of speculation. As it takes fifty days for the fast tea steamers to reach New York by way of the Suez Canal, the tea-picking season is over when the exporter learns of the arrival and sale of his invoices. On account of the heavier freight charges that way, only a fraction of the crop crosses the Pacific to be shipped by rail across the continent from San Francisco, the New York steamers by way of the Suez Canal requiring but a little longer time, saving half the cost to the shipper, and adding the convenience of a single handling of the cargo.
The first of the season’s crop is fired and hurried off as quickly as possible; tea steamers racing through Suez to New York, and the overland railroads rushing cargoes across the United States in special trains, as if they were
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