Will Pay Big Prices For Tea

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 16, Issue 28, 4 December 1950, Page 5

Will Pay Big Prices For Tea

With certain qualifications, Mr Nash considers that tea at 10/- a lb. would not be too much. Tea is funny stuff, because although we could all get along without it, we cannot do without it. Maybe this is the reason why people have been prepared to pay all sorts of prices for it.

When the first consignment of Indian tea reached London in 1839 it sold fairly readily at £lO a pound. A cup of tea in those days was worth about 10/-. Even so, it is a certainty that New Zealanders would have been in on it. Tea could be obtained long before that, at a price. In 1700, it is on record, tea in Britain could be bought for 18/- : a pound. By 1770 the price had fallen to half that sum. In the early' days some Ministers of Finance appear to have agreed with Mr Nash’s views on the price of tea, because‘they bumped it up in Britain with a tax of some 5/- a pound. But by 1888 tea was costing 1/8 a pound, with a sixpenny tax included. In those days people in Britain were drinking 5 gib of tea each a year. In New Zealand today we each drink 6£lb yearly.