A SCRAMBLE FOR TEA.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11645, 24 August 1905, Page 4

A SCRAMBLE FOR TEA.

The duty on tea in Mother Country was reduced from 8d to 6d a pound recently, the reduction taking place on July 1. In anticipation of the reduction, dealers and retailers all over the Kingdom had worked their stocks to the lowest possible' limit, so that in many places on June 30 there was practically no tea to be bought. July 1 was a Saturday, and the position was regarded with not a little anxiety. Orders for tea to be delivered on July 1 had poured into London from all sides, and the difficulty of the merchants was <to get the tea- out of bond and forward it in time to avert a famine on market day. "The • Customs authorities, however, met the situation sensibly, and the trouble was averted. Before midnight on the Friday there gathered outside the principal bonded warehouses . in the metropolis a vast array of vehicles. At "a

single warehouse as many as sixty pairhorse vans, sent by one big" railway company, presented themselves, and these sixty formed but a minority of the group. As the bells chimed twelve, the doors .were thrown open, and tea-chests were brought forth in thousands, amid excitement, which lost nothing by the emphatic language of the carmen as they sought to steer their way through a quite unprecedented congestion of traffic. The work of loading had to be done smartly, for special "tea trains" were waiting at the principal railway stations, ready to whirl the caddies away to all parts of the Kingdom. Half the battle was accomplished when the Customs Office gave the trade the privilege' of / blending their teas in bond. Then, again, the authorities had' consented to an arrangement by which, vast quantities of tea had been sent forward to Birmingham, Manchester, and scores of other places to be bonded' therei In this way it is estimated that several million pounds of tea were" already stored up and down the country ready for local clearance. But it was an exciting morning in London, and probably the business done in tea constituted a record for a single day. ' ' ,