Abstract: Tea is among Kenya’s most lucrative commodities. Brought into the territory in 1903 by British settlers, tea stumps adapted exceptionally well to Kenya’s climate. The establishment and expansion of Kenya’s tea industry, particularly during the 1950s and early 1960s, was considered mutually beneficial by government officials and representatives of multinationals. It provided the state with revenue while allowing tea industrialists to grow their profit margins. Although establishing operations in the territory was relatively easy, large tea firms encountered tremendous challenges in their effort to recruit and retain laborers throughout the mid-twentieth century. This article examines the tea industry’s attempts to resolve the perennial problems of labor supply that were exacerbated by the political changes and social upheaval unfolding in late colonial Kenya. Through a wide range of archival sources, which elucidate the high anxieties that tea producers often had over labor, this article shows how Kenya’s tea industry 1) never controlled or dictated the terms of labor on its estates, even after decades of operations, 2) relied on a blend of long-distance transcolonial labor and local, casual labor, and 3) survived not because of the rise and fall of global prices, but rather the ebb and flow of African migration.