GEOGRAPHICAL CONCENTRATION. II 



in Asia, Africa and South America Its cultivation in the 

 United States, however, is almost entirely confined to the 

 state of Kentucky, notwithstanding that the annual produc- 

 tion falls considerably short of the requirements of the 

 country. In 1849 5 1 - 01 P er cent f the total hemp crop of 

 the country was grown in that state. In 1889 Kentucky's con- 

 tribution to the total was no less than 93.77 per cent, its pro- 

 portion having steadily increased, regardless of the fluctua- 

 tions in the total amount produced. - Moreover, not only is 

 the industry centralized in a single state, but it is concen- 

 trated in a very small group of counties, four of them pro- 

 ducing 59.48 per cent and six others 31.94 per cent of the 

 total crop of the country. There is, therefore, but 8.58 per 

 cent of the entire crop grown in the remaining twenty-four 

 hemp-producing counties of the eight hemp-producing 

 states. 



The range of profitable cultivation in the case of the hop 

 plant, though less extensive than that of most of the other 

 products to which reference has been made, is still sufficiently 

 wide to make the situation of its areas of principal production 

 in this country a matter of interest in this connection. Be- 

 ginning, as in the case of the other products, with the first 

 census of agriculture ever taken in the United States, that 

 of 1840, it is found that of the total production of hops in 

 1839, amounting to 1,238,502 pounds, 36.11 per cent was pro- 

 duced in New York and 40.23 per cent in Massachusetts and 

 New Hampshire. Forty years later, when the hop produc- 

 tion of the country had increased to 26,546,378 pounds, that 

 of New York had increased in so much greater a ratio as to 

 amount to 81.48 per cent of the total. The states that had 

 stood second and third in rank of production in 1839 were 

 scarcely known as hop-producing states, Wisconsin in the 

 northwest and California and Washington on the Pacific 



