foundation in the need of something to render boiled water palatable
for drinking purposes. The drinking of boiled water is universally
adopted in these countries as an individually available and
thoroughly efficient safeguard against that class of deadly disease
germs which thus far it has been impossible to exclude from the
drinking water of any densely peopled country.

Judged by the success of the most thorough sanitary measures thus
far instituted, and taking into consideration the inherent
difficulties which must increase enormously with increasing
populations, it appears inevitable that modern methods must
ultimately fail in sanitary efficiency and that absolute safety can
be secured only in some manner having the equivalent effect of
boiling drinking water, long ago adopted by the Mongolian races.

In the year 1907 Japan had 124,482 acres of land in tea plantations,
producing 60,877,975 pounds of cured tea. In China the volume
annually produced is much larger than that of Japan, 40,000,000
pounds going annually to Tibet alone from the Szechwan province and
the direct export to foreign countries was, in 1905, 176,027,255
pounds, and in 1906 it was 180,271,000, so that their annual export
must exceed 200,000,000 pounds with a total annual output more than
double this amount of cured tea.

But above any other factor, and perhaps greater than all of them
combined in contributing to the high maintenance efficiency attained
in these countries must be placed the standard of living to which
the industrial classes have been compelled to adjust themselves,
combined with their remarkable industry and with the most intense
economy they practice along every line of effort and of living.