A petition has been presented to the United States Congress asking for the prohibition of the importation of adulterated Teas from China and Japan, which are at present extensively sold. This, it is thought, will lead to increased attention being paid to Indian Teas, which are well known to be pure and unadulterated.
The circular lately addressed to the local Tea planting interest by the Committee of the Calcutta Syndicate, reporting the results of Mr. Sibthorp’s efforts to create a market for Indian Teas in America, opens up a vista of unprecedented prosperity in the future.
That the population of America, the bulk of which consist of the same races among whom Indian Tea has grown in favour so rapidly in the United Kingdom, should persist in rejecting it after a fair trial was _à priori_ highly improbable. It was, therefore, reasonably to be presumed that whatever difficulty might beset the opening up of this new market would consist chiefly in the obstacles to securing such a trial.
Mr. Sibthorp’s report not only bears out this view of the case, but justifies a confident expectation that the obstacles in question, so far as they have any real existence, will speedily disappear. In Chicago, so far from having had to encounter any of those strong trade prejudices which were met with at first in Australia, Mr. Sibthorp found the leading importers, Messrs. J. Doane and Co., ready to render every assistance and confident of being able to dispose of five thousand half chests the first season, without forcing the market. Similar success seems to have attended his efforts in New York, and a telegram has been received from him ordering a thousand half chests for shipment to that port.
The importance of this new market is immensely enhanced by the circumstance that the American consumption of Tea is destined to increase, owing to mere growth of population, at a rate not to be looked for in any other country; at such a rate, in fact, that if India could only secure the annual addition to the demand from this cause, she would probably have to double her production in less than a generation to enable her to meet it.
So far from seeing any reason why she should not secure this amount of custom in the New World, we see none why the proportion of India to other Teas consumed in America should not ultimately be as large as in England, where there was once a strong prejudice against Indian Tea.