The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-08-20
AHOP-PICKING PICNIC
Growers Want White Families
to Go Into the Fields.
NO INDIANS COMING SOUTH.
School Board Agrees That Children
May Go With Their Parents to
Help in Picking tho Crop.

The hop-picking season in the White river
anu Pnyallup valleys will begin within the
next ten days and Ii has found the growers con-
fronted with a serious probiem--where TO get
picsers. They have been accustomed to depend
mainly on Indians from British Columbia and
Alaska, but the smallpox outbreak has so scared
these people that few, il any, are expected to
come south this year. Meanwhile the hops are
ripsning rapidly and are in such condition
that they must be picked promptly or q large
quantity may be lost
In this emergency the growers casting
about for way to supply the places OF the In
diana Some of them have contemplated bring
Ing In Chinamen, but the majority are much
opposed 70 this class of labor. The only alter
native is to secure white labor, and James Hart,
OF slaughter, was in the city yesterday to see
what can be done in this direction. He thinks
OF inducing whole families to go out into the
nelds 10 do the work, as it is OF kind which
can be done equally we'll by men. women or
children. Here a difficulty confronted him.
The school year opens on September 6, when
the hop-picking season will he at its height, so
that the children would be returning to their
studies just when they would be needed IN the
zelda
q Mr.. Hart called on the different members OF
the school board and on Superintendent
Barnard and asked them if the opening of the
school year could not be postponed for two
weeks, in order to give the children an oppor-
tunity OF accepting this employment with their
parents He was told that this was impossible,
but new expedient was suggested. 1t is that
children who work in the hop fields may enter
school on their return, two or three weeks alter
the school year opens, without mourning any
bad marks OF any kind. All the members OF
the board and Superintendent Barnard agreed
to this proposition, and Mr.. Hart returned home
encouraged by the hope that he will DO able to
secure enough pickera
The movement to employ white labor in hop
picking has been growing for several years, with
the aid of both the growers and the railroads.
White people are found more reliable, and very
much unlike the Indians, are clean. The rail-
roads favor them because they furnish moro
revenue. Forty or fifty Indians, with their
baggage, will ride to the fields in q box car,
while white pickers pay fare on passenger
train. Many growers, in order to encourage
white people to 60 into the fields have built
lodgings for their accommodation, where whole
families can camp together, and have made
many provisions for their comfort.
Hop picking is light, easy work and, being
done in the open air at the finest season of the
year, is like a summer outing to many people
who have few opportunities to escape from
their city homes Good wages are paid SO that
in the two or three weeks of the season q family
can earn enough to go a long way towards tid-
ing it over the winter. Whole families can work
together In one field just as they go out berry.
picking together. 1t is best, however, for sew
eral families to form a party of ten or twenty
and hire themselves together at one
ranch, where they can live and work
together. An idea of the amount
of money which has been distributed among
the Indian pickers in former years Can be
formed from the fact that the growers expect to
pay out $l00, 900 among pckers this season.
Specially low rates will be made on the rail.
roads to Orillia, Christopher, Kent, Slaughter
and thAr hNr, nrrft, nv.tn hate
opportunity will be given white families to get
out into the fields.