THE ENGLISH HOP-PICKERS.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVI, Issue 957, 9 July 1908, Page 21

THE ENGLISH HOP-PICKERS.

In May last a remarkable demonstration of hop-pickers took place in London. Some 40,000 of these workers, whose livelihood has been destroyed by England’s fiscal tolerance of foreign competition, assembled in the metropolis to protest against a policy which dooms them to starvation. They demand the impost of a duty of 40s per cwt. on all imported foreign hops, but there is little or no likelihood of the British Government, as at present constituted, consenting to abandon its attitude of impotent pedantry, and so strech out its hands to save an ancient and picturesque industry from extinction. Commenting on the demonstration, the London “ Daily Telegraph ” says:— •“ The mechanical methods of the free-importing mind, substituting assumption for investigation as it does, cannot help us to explain the ruinous fall of prices or the condition of the hop industry. The truth is that foreign dumping has been the chief cause of the prevailing distress. In this, as in other ways, the United States and Germany are able to avail themselves of the invaluable privilege of the double market. This privilege is one of the most valuable assets in modern business. Every foreigner in the world possesses it. No Briton has it—unless, indeed, he builds factories or buys land abroad and attacks the market of his own country from behind his adopted entrenchments. Other nations are guided by ideals quite different from ours. In France the vast majority of the population is still rooted to the soil. In Germany there are still about 25,000,000 persons upon the

open land, and the paramount object of Teutonic policy is to keep them there. It is no mean nor unwise purpose. Behind the bizarre facade of American industrialism lies the strong, steady, quiet farming population, which forms the true basis of the health and the wealth, the political strength and the fighting power of the United States. In all these cases the nations concerned believe in keeping intact at any cost the agricultural cost of society. The foreign farmer and his labourers cannot be injured by the strategical operations of foreign capital. Behind the firm rampart of a national tariff, that destructive competition cannot overpass, they till and thrive in peace. They have security. It is what no worker in this country possesses. But foreign hops can be dumped here to an unlimited extent, driving down home prices, and destroying one of the most ancient and picturesque of all British industries. There are said to be still nearly half a million people dependent upon it. Mr Asquith may rely upon it that old age pensions at 70 for the survivors of the social struggle will never reconcile a perishing class of workers to starvation now!”