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.
HOP-PICKING
IN
NEW YORK