VIZAGAPATAM.
The weaving industry is on the decline throughout the district, except perhaps in Rázám, and the weaver castes are taking to other means of livelihood. Round Chípurupalle, for example, the Pattu Sáles have become experts in tobacco-curing and have made such profits that they are able to monopolise much of the trade and money-lending of the locality.
We may pass on to consider the other industries of the district which concern themselves with the utilization of its agricultural products.
Indigo-making used to be a great industry, especially in Pálkonda taluk, where during their lease Messrs. Arbuthnot & Co. greatly encouraged the growth of the plant. The whole taluk is still dotted with deserted indigo-vats and factories, but the trade has dwindled to almost nothing before the competition of the German synthetic dye.
Messrs. Arbuthnot & Co. also at one time greatly promoted the growth of sugar-cane in Pálkonda, turning it into sugar at their factory at Chittivalasa which is now a jute mill.
The chief centre of the jaggery trade at present is Anakápalle, on the rich wet lands round which much cane is grown. Iron mills are always used there for pressing the cane, and in the jaggery season expensive metal-cutting lathes may be seen in sheds amid the wet land working at the repair of these mills. Messrs.Parry & Co. encourage the cultivation of cane by advances of money, and in the harvest season send down an agent who sets up a little laboratory and buys the jaggery according to its quality as determined by the polariscope. To improve this quality, the firm hires out to the ryots metal vessels for the storage of the juice to replace the earthen pots generally used (which set up fermentation) and instructs the ryots how to add lime to the juice while it is being boiled to prevent the wasteful 'inversion' of the sugar which goes on in the casual methods usually employed. The ryots, who are largely intelligent Gavaras, realise that attention to these instructions and processes means a better price for their jaggery, and follow them with care. Messrs. Parry & Co. send the jaggery to Sámalkót in the Gódávari district, where sugar, and afterwards arrack from the molasses, are manufactured from it by the Deccan Sugar and Abkári Company, of which they are the local managers.
The oils used in the plains are practically all made in the usual wooden mills. The Telikulas and Tellis are the oiimonger castes. Until recently there was a European oil mill at Bimlipatam, but it did not pay and work there has now been stopped.
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