Men, women and children are in China employed for picking tea,
and three crops are gathered in favorable seasons, with
occasionally a fourth picking. Under the stimulus of East Indian
heat and moisture, the "flushes," or new growth of shoots, buds
and leaves, are renewed as often as once in a week or ten days;
so that during a season of nine months, from a dozen, to a
maximum of thirty pickings are made. The same conditions apply to
the tea plantations of Java. After ten or twelve years the bushes
decline in vigor from the strain of constant loss of young
growth, and are replaced by new plants. Thirty pounds of green
leaves are an average day's work for women and children.

The yield of green leaves or of cured dry tea from a single bush
is necessarily variable with its age, size and condition. In
China, the proportion of manufactured tea to the green leaves is
one to three, or one to three and one-third, while in the East
Indies and Java the allowance is one to four.

Statistics gathered from India tea planters give us the following
figures, for different districts and years:

YIELD OF DRY TEA PER ACRE, PER ANNUM.
Pounds.............. 370 333 330 246 562

YIELD OF DRY TEA PER BUSH, PER ANNUM.
Ounces.............. 1.18 1.46 1.44 1.08 2.50

Mr. Owen A. Gill, of Messrs, Martin Gillett & Co., Baltimore, in
1891, estimated the yield of Indian tea plantations at 400 pounds