The letter of our correspondent “A. E. T.” calls attention for the hundredth time to the failure of the planting interest to make the most of the local demand for Indian Teas. It is only necessary to compare the prices realised at the public auctions with those at which even the most liberal of our retail firms offer to supply their customers with such Teas to see that but a very small fraction of the difference between the prime cost of the Tea and what the consumer has to pay for it goes into the pocket of the planter. It is probably no exaggeration to say that while the consumer pays, on the average, from twelve annas to a rupee per pound more than the actual cost of the Tea laid down in Calcutta, the planter may think himself fortunate if he can appropriate from half an anna to an anna of this sum. By whatever course of argument the fact may be justified, it is certainly not justifiable by the equity of the case as it appears to ordinary minds. For it is the planter who has borne the heat and burden of the day, and the proportion which the capital invested by him bears to the ultimate return is immensely greater in his case than in that of the retail dealer. On whom does the blame for the continuance of this state of things, if blame there be in the matter, rest? Hardly on the public. They would only be too glad to allow the Tea planter, say, four times his present profit instead of allowing twelve times that profit to a middleman or a series of middlemen. The public, however, can give their custom only to those who bid for it, and who consult their convenience in the arrangements they make to secure it. It is evidently the planter, and the planter alone, who can move in the matter. But whether out of regard for the interests of the retail dealer, or from a belief that the game is not worth the candle, he does not move. If there were a retail Tea trade worthy of the name, in the proper sense of the term, in Calcutta, it would probably not be to the interest of planters to enter into competition with it. But though we have many retail establishments who deal in Tea, its sale is, in the great majority of cases, only one item of a very multifarious business, the profit on which, as a whole, is probably not excessive under all the circumstances of the case. As to the game not being worth the candle, that is possibly the case if only the present demand is considered. But we are persuaded that it is otherwise if regard is had to the expansion of which that demand is capable.