How Teas are Doctored

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Aug 17, 1882

How Teas are Doctored.

A New York reporter has been making investigations and spinning a tale which will not have the effect of adding to the appetizing qualities of cheap teas for some time to come. The other day he visited the ruins of some burned bonded warehouses, where over 1,000,000 pounds of tea had been stored. Workmen were shoveling out the refuse, much of the tea being smoked and saturated with salt water pumped from the East River. It was taken out "in the shape of a coarse black mud, plentifully mixed with cinders and other rubbish. This is piled up in great heaps on the South Street sidewalks, and the roadway for a considerable distance is strewn with a layer of it half a foot thick, which the feet of workmen and pedestrians are tramping constantly into filth. Every day or two these heaps are sold to the highest bidder, on condition of immediate removal." The reporter interviewed purchasers of the filth as to what they did with the stuff, and learned that it was partly cleaned and sold again as tea. One buyer said he had some of the rubbish dried, sifted, and recolored, and sold it at a profit of 800 per cent. "to one of the great tea concerns of the country." A fellow does not object to toe-nails, locks of negro wool, bits of bark, rusty nails and pieces of coal in his plug tobacco, but the muck of the streets in tea is too much for good nature.