Tea plantation workers at a tea factory in Sri Lanka

A group of Sinhalese tea plantation workers: men, women, and children; stand in front of and on the stairway up to the second floor of a tea plantation factory in Sri Lanka [then Ceylon]. Each worker holds a cylindrical basket that is about three feet tall. A white man wearing a fedora-style hat, stands in front of the group holding an open book and looking at the camera. Beside him is a scale with a basket hanging from it. One man has a hand supporting the top right corner of the scale. A boy with his right side to the camera is looking at the man steadying the scale. A bearded man stands next to the scale. The boys and men workers stand in front of the building. The girls and women workers (except one man) stand on the stairs. There are two doorways at the top of the stairs. A skid stairway descends from the center support between the doorways and down the middle of the stairway. A tall doorway into the first floor of the factory is on the left. The right side of the building is one floor and has glass windows. There are glass windows all around the second floor. A tin roof supported by poles is on the right side of the photograph. To the extreme right side of the photograph, a man holding a basket also holds the hand of a toddler.