CALIFGRNIAN HOP-PICKING.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XXXII, Issue 141, 23 June 1898, Page 3

CALIFGRNIAN HOP-PICKING.

; THE INDUSTRY AT AN ADVANTAGE. Theappended description of hopxpicking ' in California on a colossal scale ia from the "The' Wave," a San Francisoo illus-. trated : paper, which we have received from Messreßisley.Bros. & Co. It will be . . seen that the difference in the cost of picking between' California and Nelson is considerable : — ' ' ; They hare been gathering in the hop crop on the Pleasanton Company's hop '■ - ranch this week, and it's a sizht worth seeing. Hop-picking occurs but once a . year, bat when it does it is a veritable ' ' fete ohampetre for all the country side. >;". .There are even plenty of families, poor '. ■ ": ' • families, of course,- who come to tbe hop- "; picking and camp.ont with the rest of the ' jpiokersand make the affair a summer ."■ outing, as it were. They come in carts, ■or on foot, .with' blanket-roll and pro vis* ' ions, and pnt np their little shelter tents; mother and father and grandfather— as ' \ -often as not— children by the i gross, aged ■" maternal relatives, doge, Roentgen-ray horses, all converging upon one point .. : Jike the gathering of an ancient tribal •.; migration. ■ , •'< '-'■ : ', ixq one'oan piok hops, 'and the work— ■■■:. Jjamaog' the carrying of the huge 100- - - ■ ' ipound sacks— is easy enough. Nothing ;,*£'• is gayer thaa this hop-picking business, '■ \ TToago dowji into the fields while work is -- ' Van progress, and the sojmds of it are like J'-' : "v|Hu)pß '^f',» great Sunday-school picnic, ■/ " 5l«j» are some 2000 piakars now at wort .; .";;. v aaifte pleasanton ranch, and they keep up ■ '„ g, perpetual, ' increasing ' chatter of talk ; v aad langoter and an unremitting- round of T . •h.oxsepwi Men, 'women, and children, •: young feuowa and girls that suggest Mr ■ :,: •'-. HardyV - " Tesß, 1 ' : anoient Indian and crones with' faces like Bavarian ; : : ;? v iratcrackerß, aU pibkinsr away like mad, ;■-*;---. calling', and shouting jokes at one anV^^i 'other, or scrambling' and jostling each £?4fotb,eraw)iuidtheßoales. For as fast as =T^'v*;;'»riuuipi;glrlor woman or boy, fills his or (, i; -#."!iet-saok it is carried to the near by "M" .scales and weighed in. They receive there ■ j •:-' i ;-. twoikiiiihi of ohaoks, a yellow one for the 'ijijjnbrnirig's work and a. bine one for that

of the afternoon. - The yellow oheck is payable only at the end of the Beasonat the office, but the blue oheck is as good as money and olroolates as such from one picker to another or among the tradespeople of the town. ' At the end of the season the company redeems these cheoks for thoir face value, As a consequence of this the afternoon's work is always heavier than the morning's— naturellement. All sorts and conditions of people flock to these hop-pickings. [Indians, Mexicans, Chinamen, tramps off the road, " bums " from the brakebeams, farm hands ont of employment, faotory girls on their vacation in the nearby country, little chaps from Oakland and the city's suburbs, ambitious of earning a dollar or two and at the same time having all the fun of camping out. The camp itself is a strange looking arrangement. It is laid out very, very roughly in a couple of streets, and there is every description of shelter there that can poßßibly be imagined, from the neatly pegged white tent that suggests the military, to woven branches, tied together at the top like a Zulu kraal, Some of the camps are even built of sacking and half a dozen poles. . But the weather is warm -too warm by far -it never rains, and the steam heat and electric bulbs and porcelain-lined tubs are not so much missed after all. The fun of the thing, the real fun, comes at night when the day's pioking is over and supper , is done with. All the camp gathers together then, and the pickers sing and they play banjoes, and they make lore (of a surpris* ingly free and untrammelled variety), and they gossip— they have enough to gossip about Heaven knows— and turn in at all hours of the night, sometimes sober, and sometimes otherwise, but always good-natured and jolly and carefree for a season at least. It would surprise yon to know the amount* of hops that one picker <san handle in a day ; 80, 90, and even 12S pounds is often a twelve-hours' stint, while the families average 500. The pioking is paid for by the hundred pounds, 80 cents per hundred being the wages at the Pleaeanton raneh, which 'means anywhere from 2 dole to 3dola a day per head, and lSdols to 20dols a day per family, good enough wages for any one surely. ' The 2000 pickers on the Fleasanton ranch ate divided into ueotions, A, B, C, i>, and the like, 200 in each section, the Indians and Chinamen by themselves, and the better class of white people (you wouldn't believe what a very good class it is, sometimes) in their own section. To each section is allotted a stand of scales where, as was said, the bags are weighed. From the scales the hops are carried to the drying room, a huge hothouse, with a temperature like a Hammam bath, where they lie for some 12 hours, sweating out all their natural moisture, and incidentally reeking off fumes that remind one of particular creamy froth on particularly sharp " streams." From the drying room they go to the cooling room (where the pickers hold dances, by the way, early in tbe season)) and are cooled off for about a week' After which they are baled and shipped. . The shipments from the Fleasanton Company's ranch are for the most part direct to London, where the entire crop, some 3000 Jbales, is usually bought en bloc and used in the making' of light bier. The company has about 260 acres in hops down ail staked ont with thousands upon thousands of poles connected overhead and with the ground by a network or string. The item of string alone amounts to a small fortune in a few years. One is led to believe that the company buys its string by the mile, and for the matter of that ' I was told upon the occasion of my visit that enough of this string has already been used to reach to New York and back again.