Bellows Falls times. [volume] (Bellows Falls, Vt.) 1856-1965, 1856-10-22
BELLOWS FALLS, YER

No produce ever sent into market has
disappointed the expectations Of farmers
more than hops, nor no species OF trainc
ever entered into, proved more dlsas-
trous than hop-speculations.
Now, let us view other consequences
1t is well known that hops are not
necessary of life, but used mostly as
luxury. AT the time OF the hop mama,
hop-raising was the prominent subject
of conversation. The merino or hem
fever never had harder struggle to
form a crisis than the hop-fever. Most
of the farmers directed all their ener-
gies to the production of hops, which re-
quired all the manure that possibly
could be robbed from the other crops,
and of course but scanty crops of grain,
English hay and meat could be obtained
from cheated soil. Hops, ike other
bulky crops, exhaust the soil, they make
no return to it in the shape Of manure,
and every tun transported from the
town was reducing the va.kc of the xoii.
Thus this delusive money-making bu-
siness went on till most of the land would
neither produce hops or any other de-
cent crop. Scanty crops of English hay
compelled the cattle to live on meadow
hay, and who ever saw good butter or
beef produced from meadow hay? Ma
nure made from it was but a feeble res
torative to land growing poorer every
year under the exhausting system Of
hop-raising, and to this day the ex-
hausting effects of growing crops W ich
left no restoratives to sustain the soil
are visible.
For few years at the close of the
last and the beginning of the present
century, very few country towns of its
size could boast OF as much money
brought in for produce as Wilmington,
but this was done at proportionate re-
duction Of the value in the farms. The
excitement produced by this sudden
flowing in of wealth seemed to overpow-
er reason, paralize all inducement to
regular industry, and make the wages
of regular labor look like very little
thing" and men whom we should have
as little suspected, as the deacons of the
Scottish covenanters, entered into hop
speculations at the neglect of good
trades, farms and every other pursuit of
honest industry and plunged, in thought
less haste, into the dazzling phanioms
which promise wealth, till the last dol
lar was mortgaged and the character
weather-beaten and looked upon With
suspicion where veracity was required
as test. In consequence of money be-
coming more plenty, new ideas began
TO crowd out old ones, new desires to
form, and new views and transports
awakened in the craniums of those
which we had supposed were proof
against all sorts of changes and innova-
lions. The most of the fortunes made |
70 suddenly by hop speculations were as |
ransient as domains gourd. and hard
y recollect an individual who did not |
ose part or all of the property which |
he had, by patient industry earned be-
fore the hop excitement took place and |
It is question in the minds of many
thinking people whether Wilmington, as
a town, is a dollar the richer for there |
ever having been such thing in the
world as hop.
| was personally and practically en-
gagged at hop-raising from 1892 to 1897,
and though young, the impression OF
and hop gambling was in
delibly stamped on my memory in such
a manner that it will probably be one Of
the last things | shall forget.
SILAs Brown.
NORTH WILMINGTON, May, 1856.
Neso England Farmer.