The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-10-23

green of the vine leaves beautifully gemmed by the great punches of gold en flower, On hillside little dis tance to the left were the uniform White tents of the hop pickers, like the en- campment of an army-for you must know that the hop pickers are not resi- dents of the neighborhood; they come from distances by families, large pro portion of them from London And, be 1t known, the majority of the hop pick CTS are Wretchedly poor. The pay for hop picking is so very little that only by the united efforts of family Of three or four workers is the result of the days labor worth the effort. Last year. for example, the pay for picking was shilling for seven bushels, so that worker had to complete seven bushels before the shilling was earned. This year conditions are a little better, but at the best hop picking is only profita- hle when the family has six or eight pairs of expert hands to strip the vines swiftly. Some of the women have re- dueed this picking to an art, the deft facility with which they take four or i've flowers at a time completely de- ceiving the novice, who imagines skill to be nothing in this business.
 The poles in a hop field are so perfect ly set at right angles that you may look down uniform avenue of overhanging vines in whatever direction you turn your eyes. But this exactitude is less for beauty of appearance than for con- venience of arrangement of picking parties, for a field is let out in small sections, so many hills, two poles make hill, to a family, according as the family has agreed for half a bin" or more Therefore, as you walk down the path that intersects hop field, you see here and there at fixed distances apart the different independent groups of piclSers, their canvas bins, with wide, flaring mouths, all of regular size, stretched on poles and set on cross pieces the length of their section, and while the man cuts the vines a third of the way up the poles and pulls up the poles to carry to the bin side, the wo- men and children necessarily work from 6 a. m. to D. rn., save only for the half hour at noon for dinner. And what sight it is! At the very edge of the field where spent most time rears rugged and tall the ivy-draped tower of St. Leonards', said to be the very first, and therefore the oldest, of the Norman towers, the picturesque ruins of which so interest the intelligent visitor to ru- ral England. This tower was built by Gundulf, Bishop of Rochester, some where about 1O7S-9O for his own secur- ity in those uncertain times, when he was experimenting the growth of that Abbey of the Women" of Mailing, be- tween which and the tower there was a subterranean passage, one entrance and portion of which still exist. This abbey by the way, has been restored and is once more a home of nuns, but of that another time At the foot of this old tower yesterday rolled and tumbled a score of griny. half-naked, tatterdemalion children, of ages run- ming from the infant that should have been in the arms to pair of four-year- old twins, in patched, dirty red dresses and with huge brass earrings hiding the lobes of their unclean little ears Thus did half barbarous young nodes ty kick up it's slovenly little legs in con- tempt of that still grim though disman- tltu lOWti, bulll tlSill Cciltu etSo lO repel the assaults of those savages who were forerunners of the present-day Englishnan.
 And among the vines wonder were the motley groups of persons to whom these little human blots appertained Not by any means as picturesque and fascinating as Italian grape pickers; nothing of the rich, dark beauty of the southern types; but different sort of interest attaches to these hopelessly ig- norant, half-vagrant creatures, who have come to the pic6ing-by donkey cart, by train, on foot-bearing with them their miserable utensils for cook ing and faring, in their rags and their tatters, the filth of which they are not ashamed, sleeping by night in tents if they are so fortunate, behind hedges and under rude wigwams of boughs, if they must; working from day dawn to evening close for a mere pittance-yet not wolfish or surly, not rude-indeed, good -natured when you address them, and in rough way jocular or in shy way communicative. Here and there, to be sure. something more pretentious. the epitome of lower middle class shift and tidiness; but in the main a hop picking scene such as you may witness at Mall- ing tells you what pitiful poverty and wretchedness are hidden from the world by the purple splendor of the richest nation upon which the curious sun looks askance.
 Fill in imaginatively the picture of which I have but true outlines; scan the hillside encampment where infan- cy and age swarm about the evening fires walk through the fields of vine- girt poles, that seem a compact mass as you look down upon them; talk with these women and children stripping the yellow flowers swiftly from the stems; glance at the various troops of thought lessly begotten infants rolling on the green grass or burrowing in the soft earth, and then, as you blow the froth from your next glass of beer, reflect how the best hops yielded by bountiful na- ture are gathered for your benefit And the worm gnawing it's way toward the vitals of England is a drunkenness almost equally developed in both sexes among the lower strata.-Chicago l Times H. erald.