Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

THE PREPARATION OF TEA AND COFFEE. 315 to fall in a steady stream into the chest, which is placed upon a vibrating table that automatically shakes each layer flat, and enables the chest to be filled to its utmost capacity without being touched by the hand at any point of the operation of blending. It is, however, the development of the packet trade which has increased the demand for labour in the tea industry in an enormous degree. An ingenious machine seizes a square of paper, pastes the edge, twists it into shape, and turns out the “bag” ready for filling. In its highest form the apparatus for weighing is actuated by electricity, and at the instant when the slow stream of tea reaches the exact weight a contact is formed which overturns the contents of the scale into the bag held ready to receive it, a process which enables the weight to be gauged to a fraction of a grain. The girl attendant passes the bag to a colleague, who inserts it into a square hole in the table, upon which a heavy weight is dropped by a lever. The ends of the packet are deftly turned down, a button is pressed, and the packet emerges from the hole ready for the labeller. The weighing and finish- ing of a quarter-pound packet is performed in this way at the rate of 720 per hour. It will thus be seen that there are no secrets in the manipulation of tea. Perfumed teas have never been popular in this country, and the artificial admixture of stimulative substances, such as kola nut, is of no com- mercial interest. Herb teas, which are infusions of various plants such as the dandelion, are confined to rural kitchens, and no popular tea extract has been devised, although compressed cakes have their value for tropical travel. The last annual statistics record an import of £5,000 worth of tea for the manufacture of theine, the bitter principle which gives its stimulating effect to the tea infusion ; and this substance, which is a white crystal, has its uses for certain medical prescriptions. But it will be many a long day before mankind will be willing to abandon the direct use of the leaf in favour of a powder bought in the chemist’s shop. One form of the industry, which devoted itself to the preparation of spurious teas, is happily being driven out of the country by the operation of the Sale of Food and Drugs Act of 1875. Laws against the adulteration of tea were passed as early as the beginning of the Hanoverian dynasty, yet in the year 1843 there were no fewer than eight factories in London where exhausted leaves, obtained at Messrs, traver’s wharf. from hotels and coffee houses, were redried, faced with blacklead, and sold as genuine tea. The Chinese have attempted, from time to time, to palm off large shipments of exhausted leaves, which have been shipped to England and have gone into consumption. It is therefore a gratifying fact that during a recent yearx out of nearly six hundred samples of tea analysed by the Local Govern- ment Board, only two showed traces of adulteration, and the public mind may be reassured as to the purity of the tea which is now offered for sale. Theine, the active principle of tea, is an alkaloid which when extracted from coffee is known as caffeine. Although coffee leaves are infused for the purpose in Sumatra, the result is not very agreeable to the palate, and the stimulus derived from coffee is