The Growth of Tea-Drinking.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 150, 26 June 1931, Page 6

The Growth of TeaDrinking.

It Occurs to Me

'J'HE CONSUMPTION of sixteen cups of milk daily by a patient in the Sanatorium recalls a controversy which took place at the end of the Eighteenth Century, when village labourers in England were suffering in their diet from the effects of the en closure of the commons.

Forced to give up their cows, which had formerly pastured on the common land, they suffered a scarcity of milk, and this must be considered a contributory cause of the growth of tea-drink-ing amongst the poor. Philanthropists, however, joined in roundly condemning it. Cobbett declared “if the slops were in fashion amongst ploughmen and carters, we must be all starved; for the food could nevfer be raised. The mechanics are half ruined by them.” Again the use of tea was described as “ a vain attempt to supply to the spirits of the mind what is wanting to the strength of the body; but in its lasting effects impairing the nerves, and therein equally injuring both the body and the mind.”

Tea-drinkmg was rather the consequence than the cause of the distress of the poor of those days. Yet it has done more than anything else to make even the humblest home of to-day a place of friendlv hospitality. B.E.S.