Now, in the latter case the “Pekoe tips” are there all the same, only they don’t _show_. The Tea is really just as good, in fact a shade _better_, with black than with white or orange tips,[40] but it does not sell so well, and as we cannot argue the brokers or dealers into a rational view of the case, we must humour their fancy (they are virtually our masters) and give them the Pekoe tips--_if we can_.
How are we to do it? The plan of picking these small leaves separately, in order to manufacture them separately, does not answer; it is too expensive; it diminishes the yield of a garden, and labour for it fails. All this is shown at pages 107 and 130. Is there any other way?
It may be done during some periods of the season when there is not leaf enough on the garden to employ all the leaf-pickers, by setting a number of them to separate the said two leaves from the others _after_ the whole leaf is brought to the factory. This is expensive, but it pays when there is labour to do it, for then the Teas can be made very showy and rich with white Pekoe tips.
An ingenious planter, a Mr. McMeekin, in Cachar, invented a rolling table with the object of separating the said leaves. It is constructed of battens, and while rolling the leaf on it, many of the small leaves fall through. The said table is now well known in Cachar, and is in use in several gardens. I have tried it and find that it in a great measure answers its object, but the objection to it is that the leaf _must_ be rolled lightly, and lightly-rolled leaf, as observed, does not make strong Tea.
The Pekoe tips may be, in a great measure, preserved by rolling _all_ the leaf lightly on a common table. But then again the Tea is weak, and the plan will not give so many Pekoe tips as McMeekin’s table.
In short, in the present state of our knowledge, except by the hand process (a tedious and expensive one for separating the leaf), strong Teas and Pekoe tips are incompatible.
The difficulty is just where it was, and will so remain until dealers give up asking for Pekoe tips (not a likely thing), or till a machine is invented to separate quickly and cheaply the two said small leaves from the others _after_ they have been all picked together. That such a machine is possible I am certain, and the inventor would confer a boon on the Tea interest far beyond the inventor of any other machine, for all the other processes _can_ be done by hand without much expense, this cannot.