AMERICAN HOP CULTURE.
American hop-culture has a great future, in spite of the fact that
it is confined to but few States, as hops will not grow profitably
everywhere.
The climate forbids the profitable growth of hops in all sections of
the United States south of the latitude of New York City, Cincinnati,
and St. Louis. In the Southern climate the hops run too much to vine,
and the fruit fails of its full development. The hop is a Northern
plant, and as far north as Manitoba grows wild and in great profusion.
On the other hand, not every soil will produce the hop in perfection.
The rich prairie lands of Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota are
not favorable to hops, although the climate is propitious. These
soils lack something that is essential to the full development of the
lupulin. The sections where both soil and climate favor the cultivation
of hops are the central and northern counties of New York; here we have
a cool climate and a rich soil, full of all the elements that go to
make fine hops; Washington and Oregon, with a cool climate, and a soil
so deep and rich and virginal that the yield of hops is exceptionally
good, both in quantity and quality; and, lastly, California, where the
hops are raised mostly in the valleys of the Sacramento and Russian
rivers.
Forty years ago Wisconsin raised a crop of about 10,000 bales of hops,
but the hop-louse suddenly cut off the crop, and now not more than
2,000 bales are raised annually in that State. A few hops are raised
each year in the New England States, where the soil is generally too
poor to make the yield profitable, and a few in Michigan.
A hop-yard is planted by means of cuttings or “sets,” taken from the
roots of old vines, and set in the ground about seven feet apart each
way, so that there are about 750 hills of hops to an acre. In New York
State the vines from these “sets” produce nothing in the first year of
growth, being allowed to spread on the ground; about half a crop in the
second year, and a full crop in the third year. In California, Oregon
and Washington the “sets” are furnished with poles the first year, and
produce that year about half a crop, and a full crop the second year.
In New York a fair average crop is about one pound of cured hops to
the hill, or 750 pounds to the acre; while on the Pacific coast two or
three, and, not infrequently, four times that weight is harvested. The
hop-yards are generally equipped with poles about fifteen feet high,
upon which the vines grow spirally upward; sometimes, however, the
hop-vines are trained upon wires, stretched horizontally between stout
posts over the rows of hills, with smaller wires or strings leading up
to the horizontal wires from each hill.
Some hop-yards are furnished with a single pole to a hill, the poles
being from twelve to eighteen feet high, with strings running obliquely
upward from the middle of one pole to the top of its neighbor. The
prettiest hop-yard—that is the one most beautiful at the time of
harvest—is the “tent-yard,” where a straight pole, twenty feet high, is
set in the center of six or seven hills, into which stakes about five
feet high, are placed, and provided with strings leading to the top of
the tall central pole, thus forming a regular tent. These tent-yards
closely resemble a military camp, a fact which gave rise to the
designation, “Camps of King Gambrinus.”
In California, in former years, the hops were largely picked by
Chinamen, but since the labor movement, which culminated in the
exclusion of Chinese immigration, has brought the employment of such
labor into disfavor, the majority of planters hire other help, and
Chinamen are now but rarely seen in the hop-yards.
In Washington, and to some extent also in Oregon, the hops are
mostly picked by Indians from British Columbia. They cross Puget
Sound in their canoes, bringing all their women and children and all
their household goods along, and go into camp on the borders of the
hop-yards, about the 1st of September of every year. They board and
lodge themselves, and always work “by the piece,” that is to say, they
get a fixed compensation for every box of hops picked by them. All the
Indians have to do, is to pick the hops from the vine, and they “pick
for all they are worth,” most literally; for every cent they earn, for
the whole year in most cases, is earned in the three or four weeks of
the hop-harvest. Every squaw and papoose picks, from early morning
until night, into baskets or shawls, which are emptied into the box and
help to swell the family’s income for the year. Before the introduction
of hops into Washington, about twenty-five years ago, these Indians
did not earn a dollar in money in a year, but now, at the close of the
hop-harvest, a single Indian family composed of man, wife, and usually
several children, will carry home with them one hundred dollars in
cash. The difference to that poor family, in comfort and civilization,
can easily be understood.
[Sidenote: HOP-PICKING IN NEW YORK]
We now come to the hop-harvest in the State of New York, and here it
is in its glory. The great counties of Otsego, Schoharie, Montgomery,
Herkimer, Oneida, Madison, Onondaga, and Ontario lie along, and mostly
a little south of the Erie Canal and the New York Central Railroad,
between Albany and Rochester, a belt two hundred miles long and fifty
miles wide. Franklin and Lewis counties, along the Canadian frontier of
New York, have also a considerable hop interest, but for our present
purpose we shall confine ourselves to the region situated in the belt
we have mentioned, bounded by Albany on the East and Rochester on the
West, and dotted, along its whole length of two hundred miles, with
the cities of Albany, Schenectady, Amsterdam, Utica, Rome, Syracuse,
Auburn and Rochester. Towns and villages of from one to two and three
thousand inhabitants, many of them manufacturing towns, and all of them
full of women and children willing to work and eager to rusticate for a
time, are scattered all over the hop-belt; and from this long line of
populous cities, and these thickly settled towns and villages, come the
pickers for the hop-harvest. On or about the first day of September,
they come with a rush, and usually find a demand equal to the supply.
For weeks the hop-grower’s good wife has been preparing for them; beds,
rough, but comfortable and clean, are set up in every building on the
farm—in the house for the women and children, and in the out-buildings
(sometimes put up for the purpose), for the men and boys. Bread is
baked by the barrel; “doughnuts” are fried by the bushel. The farmer
has already engaged his pickers in the neighboring cities or villages,
and, on the appointed day, in they come, some by wagons, sent out
the day before to the city, often twenty miles away, some by special
railroad trains, chartered for the purpose, and some on foot. Whole
families are in the crowd, father, mother and all the children, from
the active boy or girl of fifteen years, who can pick two or three
boxes, and earn a dollar a day, down to the baby whom the mother takes
out into the field and watches while she picks her box, and earns its
clothing for the coming winter.
These families are frequently those of hard-working mechanics in the
cities, who are glad to give their wives and children an outing in the
fresh air for three or four weeks, and find them all the richer and
happier by reason of the escape from the stony and dirty streets of
their urban home. It is a picnic for the children, and their pranks,
when they first arrive, are a sore trial to the steady farmer and his
wife. But after the first day’s work (from six in the morning until
twelve at noon, and from 12:30 P.M. until six at night) is over,
they are well sobered down for bed, and their surplus energies are
thereafter turned into the channel that leads to the hop-box in the
morning and to bed at night. Many a poor factory girl finds in the
hop-fields the only fresh country air she breathes in the whole year;
and while she is laying in the year’s stock of health, her nimble
fingers are bringing to her more money than the work in the stifling
mill.
To the hop-grower, the harvest, by reason of high prices for hops, is
sometimes very profitable. Sometimes, by reason of low prices, it is
very unsatisfactory. But to the poor families in the surrounding towns
and villages it is always a blessing; for, no matter whether the price
of hops be high or low, the compensation for picking is always the
same. Let us see how it foots up. The hop-crop of the United States
amounts to about 200,000 bales, of 180 pounds each. It takes fifteen
boxes for a bale, and for each box the picker is paid about fifty cents
cash, or its equivalent in cash and board. Fifteen boxes at fifty cents
each makes $7.50; hence, for 200,000 bales the pickers receive about
fifteen hundred thousand dollars.
We have taken a round number which does not accurately represent the
actual production for the year 1908, for in that year the American
hop-growers produced about 216,660 bales or 39,000,000 pounds of hops—a
comparatively very small quantity; in fact, 11,000,000 pounds less than
in the preceding year and 21,000,000 pounds less than in the year 1906.
There are two reasons for this decrease, viz.: 1. because between 1901
and 1907 the production of beer increased at an unusual rate and the
growers extended their operations accordingly, running perhaps a trifle
ahead of prospective demand; 2. because as a result of the panic the
production of beer has decreased.
Up to 1899 New York produced the largest quantity of hops; thereafter
Oregon took and maintained first place and from 1902 to the present
time California wrested even second place from New York, so that in
point of production this State now holds the third place among the
four hop-producing States of our country, the fourth being Washington.
Less than one per centum of the total quantity of hops raised in the
United States is produced outside of these four States in each of which
hop-culture is confined to a few counties. This peculiar localization
obtains in all countries, Germany excepted.
The United States, Germany, Austro-Hungary, Russia and New Zealand
are the only countries which produce more hops than they consume.
The quantity exported from Germany is largest, almost equal to the
exportation from the United States and Austro-Hungary combined.
For the years 1895 to 1899 the average annual exportation from the
United States amounted to 15,827,630 pounds; and from 1900 to 1904 to
11,863,626 pounds; the average annual imports during the same periods
amounted to 2,414,966, and 3,704,411 pounds, respectively. In 1906 and
1907 the exportation amounted to 17,701,436 and 16,099,950 pounds,
respectively.
The available but unused area of soil suitable for the cultivation
of hops, the fertility of such soil (in the Pacific States), and the
favorable climate secure to American brewing an abundance of material
for all future time, no matter how rapidly and extensively the industry
may develop hereafter. In all likelihood the insignificant importation
of Bohemian and German hops, noted for their superior quality, will
cease entirely within a few years when the laudable efforts of the
United States Agricultural Department to improve and perfect the
quality of the American product shall have accomplished its purpose.