The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1872-09-28 00:00:00

IHE HOP HARVEST IN BENT.

The Special Correspondent of the Daily News. writing
from Ditton, near Maidstone, gives the following interesting
account of the hop harvest in Kent:—

I should like wed to be a hop-farmer of Kent this
year. The genial, prosperous-looking gentlemen I
meet on the pavement of Maidstone, in front of the
" Mitre," resemble "Bonny Bessie Lee " in having
"faces full of smiles," and can look in the face of their
banker with serene confidence. No doubt till the end
of July had arrived, their expectation was tempered by
apprehensbui, for—

Till James's day be past awl gone.
There may he hops or there may be none.
But now there are hops for certain, and more of them
than for years past; an all that the farmer need be
anxious for is that they shall all "come down" before
the period of over-ripeness shall have set in, and while
as yet the sun has turned the pale greenish yellow into
a dingy rueset. The weather for the harvest 6 so
good that the farmer cannot venture to complain of it;
and that, to those who know how chary of weather-
praise and how prone to weather-grumbling is the
farmer, speaks volumes. It is estimated that the
total expenses of a hop crop per acre is about
£25. The yiel.l this year is quite 10 hundred-
weight per acre, and the price for good hops
is about £5. So the farmer's net profit this year
is about £3O an acre, and the man who farms such a
bagatelle as thirty-four acres pockets his £l,OOO.
If hop-farming paid like this every year, we might
assume!_ that the hop-farmer is the real discoverer of
the philosopher's stone. But while his expenses are a
fixed quantity, his profit is very variable. Next year
St. James's day may pass, and of hops he may have
Practically none. Hop-fanning is like blockade
running during the Americen war, where there was a
fine profit if one ship in three managed to evade cap-
ture. 'The worst of it is that the doctrine of chances
will not average out with sufficient regularity. If three
bad seasons in succession ruin a man, of what avail is
it to the ruined one that the next two seasons are lavish
in their returns ?

At the present time the hop harvest, which now
seldom lasts longer than three weeks, is at its height.
Everywhere the pickers are busy. Suppose we take
our stand on this pleasant slope—the gardens in which
the now celebrated " golden " hop was first systemati-
cally cultivated—and watch the manner in which
the hop harvest is garnered. There are fifty
acres of hops on the farm, to pick which about
two hundred people are employed. These are
divided into parties or " companies " of eight or
ten adults, besides children. The chief man or
foreman of the company is the " binman." He is
cutting the bines and drawing the poles, bringing
them to where his company stand with their bins.
When work commenced at half-past six this morning,
that long row of bins stood a long way back and
concealed by the hope, but the biumen have not
worked for hours for nothing. Like Canadian
foresters, they have cleared the way before them,
the bins moving onward in their rear. Behind are de-
solation and prostrate poles ; before the rich, luxu-
riance of the tall hop-plants, most beautiful while
just about to fall. Before work is over for the
day nearly four acres will have been bared by these
busy destructionist. Each picker has a bin or half a
bin into which the hope fall as the nimble lingers
pick them off the bine. Payment is by the bushel, the
agreement being to pick a certain number of bushels
for a shilling. This is called "tallying," from the
ancient but now for the most part abandoned use of
the tally. Here we are 'tallying air"— i.e., the price
paid for picking is 2d. per bushel. In the early days
of the harvest the tally was for seven, but the crop is
very large, and is ripening very fast, and the improve-
ment in the payment has been conceded to stimulate
industry, and avoid any Heir of a strike. For strikes
there are in the hop-garden, and that, too, at a time
when, if the grower is not the better general, he must
find himself at the mercy of his hands. They know
when the appearance of the crop indicates that it must
be gathered with speed if damage is not to ensue, and
they rho.e that crisis—when, too, there is no more
spare labour in the market—to put the screw on the
farmer and force better terms. There have been serious
troubles on those occasions, and cases have occurred
where it has been necessary to call out the military.
Unit- pidar hip farmers are subject sometimes to even
woi se than strikes. Fires in the east-bosses are by no
mama unknown. They may be accidental, it is true;
but again it is an easy thing to set fire to au oast-house
by ti mtte ring a few Inciter matches in a Marl of hope.
Here come the carters with their bags to empty the
bins. The bushel measures are lightly filled; no
pushing down is allowed, and no piling up. Then the
bags are filled and tossed upon the
.cart, and away
they go to the "oast house" to be dried and packed.
The oast-house is the cluster of conical kilns 80 familiar
to any one who has travelled through a hop country.
There the hops are dried, being on the kiln for
a period varying from eight to twelve hburs, and
are then packed into the pockets, which any on
visiting Southwark about this time may see being
carted in high-piled loads from the railway sta.
Liens to the great hop warehouses. The pocket, when
being filled, hangs CLOWII through a hole in the upper
floor or loft of the oast-house, its rim being securely
fastened. Until lately the packing was invariably
done by manual, or rather pedal, labour. A mal got
into the pocket and trod down the hops evenly and
tightly as they were shovelled in upon him. In the
I. 'ft into which we have followed our •` pokes," the
tilling is done by pres,eA, which have been adopted
in ad receutly-constructcd oast-houses. But across
the road is an old-fashioned oast-house where the
tramping-system is still in force. One of the driers,
a man so stained and powdered with hop-sweat and
hop-dust Oa: his nearest relative would fail to
recognise him, plunges out of sight into the pen-
dulous pocket, into which a boy atraitway proceeds to
shovel hops, as if his object was to smother the man.
Presently the dust-covered head and shoulders begin
to show as the man dances his way out of his tempo-
rary
.obscurity. He dances steadily on, the boy as
steadily shovelling till the pocket is fsill. The opera.

tion of packing a pocket in this way takes about
twenty minutes; by the preen one can be fillet In little
more than half the time. The driers, who are pocket
makers and packers as well, remain in the oast-house
night and day during the hop harvest for the purpose
of replenishing the tires in the kilns. They are steady,
known men, and are well paid, as indeed they would
need to be, for their work is exacting and constant, and
what rest they get is obtained upon bags of hops laid
down in corner of the oast-hoose.
- . . .

In the busy hop-garden which we have left, the
pickers are those who go by the name of " home-
pickers." The " home-pickers " are furnished from
the residential population of the neighbourhood. Half
Maidstone turns out to the hop-nar ,est, working
chiefly in the gardens closely adjacent to the town, and
returning home after the day's work is done. My
recent friends a ere " home picker.," and turned up
tl,eir noses at the "immigrant pickers " Or
"foreigners," as they are commonly called. But the
hop-harvest c .uld by no means be got in without the
" fordguers," who come down into the hop-growing
countries in vast numbers from the slums of Loudon,
as well as from Woolwich, Gravesend, Chatham, and
other places. In his report to the Commission on
the Employment of Women and Children in Agricul-
ture, Mr. Stanhope estimates the number of immigrant
hop-pickers coming into Kent in 1868 at from 25,000
to 30,000, of whom not far short of '20001) came from
London and its suburbs. In 1870 the South Eastern
Railway by its "special hopper trains" alone breught
down nearly 16,000, and the number this year has
been at least quite as large. In addition, it may be
reckoned tfLt from 3,0(5) to 4,000 come down by
road, some tramping it, others in those indefi-
nitely capacious costermongers' shallows, of which we
see so many in Bethnal-green and about the New Cut.
The people who come down from London and the
neighbourhood to the hop-picking may be called "a
very mixed lot," ranging from the comparative to the
ultra-superlative of roughness. A very large propor-
tion are of the class known as "London Irish," whom
you meet with so plentifully in the slums of 'West-
minster, Lambeth, and the Borough, in the courts
near the river on both the Surrey and Middlesex sides,
and in the rookeries about Shoreditch, Bethnal.
green, and Clerkenwe concerning whom the
standing puzzle is what they do for a livelihood.
Then you have the genuine London coetermonger,
with his smooth, pimply face, closely cropped
hair, oath.bespattered lingo of slang, and general
aspect of shambling cunning. He is generally accom-
panied by Mrs. Costermonger—if the lady will allow
me to call her so—accepting, in a trust that may be too
confiding, the presumption of a matrimonial connec-
tion. Far oftener, it may be apprehended, the pair
"live tally," but that is a matter which appears to
exercise no appreciable influence over their families,
which are for the most part large, although not so
numerous as those appertaining to "London Irish"
parent stems. This year, owing to the strikes in
London in various branches of mechanical labour, there
is a greater variety in the types of "foreign" hop
pickers, without any sensible amelioration in their
manners.

[The writer gives other interesting particulars, but our
limited space precludes us from giving more than the above.]

JONATHAN'S JUDGMENT.
From Punch.)
WAL, now we've gained our cause, and the Award.
I guess we can't act nohow but accord.
It is A triumph; that's a tact but still,
They have considerably taxed our bill.
Three millions and a quarter. Come, I say.
We axed three hundred millions t' other day.
And, if we had got half of that air sum,
Of Arbitration sometuin' would have come.
Jolla BOLL ! What's that amount to that old Hoes?
Ourselves won't feel the gale, nor he the loss.
Our claims cut down as ci se as madmen's hair,
I guess we shan't make much by that affair.
Bound if we have to be by our own rules,
We shall have made ourselves tarnation fools
When we air called on to, in arter years,
Keep tilibustere back, and privateers.
But then we may repudiate the cuss;
N;;t do what we'd have done, but the revues.
Aleanwhi,e together in a Lorin' Cup,
('vuelnlnls 821,1 BIZITANNIAR liquors up.