CHAPTER IX.



    WHAT THE PLANTING INDUSTRY HAS DONE FOR THE

                    MOTHER-COUNTRY.



The Swing of the Pendulum : a Cycle of Prosperity from Tea—Previous

    Years of Depression considered—Planting profits absorbed IN the

    PAST by Home Capitalists—Absence of Reserves of local Wealth—

    The accumulated Profits of past years estimated.



   SINCE 1888, when the success of the tea-planting enter¬

    prise became fully established, Ceylon  has' entered on

a  period of comparative  prosperity.   How  long it  may

last is  another  question.   In  tropical  experience  the

alternate swing of the pendulum from bad times to  good

times  and  vice  -versa is  fully  recognised.   For ten or

eleven years previous to  1889  financial depression  and

scarcity of capital prevailed, and  this result can readily

be  understood when  a succession  of bad coffee seasons,

involving a deficiency in the  planters' harvests of that

product  equal to many  millions  of pounds sterling, is

taken  into  consideration.   There  have been  periods of

depression before in the history of the Ceylon planting

enterprise, and these,  curiously enough,  have been noted

to come round in cycles of eleven  years.  Thus, in 1845,

wild speculation in opening plantations,  followed  by a

great fall in the price of coffee and a collapse of  credit,

arrested progress for a time ; in 1856-7, a sharp financial

shock affected the course of prosperity which  had set in ;

and again, in  1866-7, the fortunes of coffee  fell to so low

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