18 THE HOP. 



an extra demand for hops of American growth, for 

 which abnormal and unhealthy prices have been paid, 

 — unhealthy because they gave a temporary fictitious 

 value to a staple crop, values which growers cannot 

 with any show of reason or certainty expect to realize 

 once in ten or twenty years. Yet the very fact that 

 such a price as $i per pound has been paid for hops 

 grown in this country, has stimulated farmers to largely 

 increase their area and even to plant hops in locations 

 that are not naturally adapted to their successful 

 growth. The result, of course, has always been an 

 oversupply with a heavy, dull, dragging market during 

 several years, when dealers secured the crops at their 

 own prices, which were not enough to pay the farmer 

 for the actual cost of production. These periods of 

 overproduction were followed by the destruction of 

 plantations, with a consequent loss of time and money, 

 till the market readjusted itself and became more set- 

 tled. Then, again, the temptation arises to increase 

 the production. 



The wide fluctuations in the price of hops in the 

 past are therefore easily accounted for. The most sen- 

 sational was the advance to $i and over per pound of 

 the American crop in the fall of 1882, and a decline to 

 5c per pound three years later. Prices have since cov- 

 ered a wide range every season, though not to so 

 marked an extent as in the instance cited. The crop of 

 1893 was comparatively short as a whole, following 

 only medium crops for two or three years previous. 

 This led to an increased acreage; with favorable 

 weather the next two crops were the largest on record, 

 and prices of the 1895 crop fell fully as low as ten years 

 earlier. Growers seemed to have forgotten the lesson 

 of the early '80's and made the same mistake a decade 

 later. In this, however, the hop planter is no different 

 from other people, for humanity has continued to make 

 the same mistake generation after generation. 



