A Cup of Tea

Scene 2 · Havana, the harvest Homo Ludens
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Two clocks

The shoemaker gave three hours of a twelve-hour day for this pound of sugar. The woman who cut the cane gave a share of a day of eighteen or twenty hours, and was paid in nothing she could spend. Nobody wrote down how many of her minutes are in this pound.

"As an accompaniment, weak tea, with perhaps a little sugar, milk, or spirits, is universally drunk."
Engels, 1845

The receipt, reprinted

In East London the woman stirs the brown sugar into her tea. Next, the tea itself: 5d for two ounces, and more than half of what she paid for it was tax.

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