1856. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



463 



as a dead lamb's tongue. Green mosses and fun- 

 gi soon appear on the smface of the sand, and all 

 other vegetaiion is forbidden to approach. The 

 meadow has lost its activity, and never wiil recover 

 it until sufficient time elapses for water brush to 

 spring up, or until the meadow is plowed or bogged 

 and the sand mixed with the mud below. 



For the New England Farmer. 



HOP RAISING, A FICKLE BUSINESS. 



Messrs. Editors : — There are causes, and effects 

 which follow causes, that may be felt years after 

 causes cease to exist. There are causes which lead 

 to prosperity and those which tend to adversity. 

 Hop-raising and hop-speculations, like lotteries, 

 have made some wealthy and a larger number sorry. 

 There is no production growing out of the earth li- 

 able to such fluctuations in prices as hops. Who- 

 ever raises hops, to sell, runs a gambler's risk, he 

 has no assurance whether he shall realize fifty cents 

 a pound, or lose his labor. Perhaps there was no 

 town in this Commonwealth more celebrated than 

 Wilmington for producing hops at an early period. 

 In the latter part of the last century, almost every 

 farmer in town had a hop-yard, and as hops grew 

 in demand the raisers prospered, and from an al- 

 most utter destitution of money, that fascinating 

 tempter began to circulate in such sums as to produce 

 a giddiness in some of the heads of those who had 

 been unacustomed, only occasionally to have their 

 organs of vision gratified by such a rare visitant. 

 The flow of money into Wilmington fx-om the sale 

 of hops, was soon promulgated in the neighboring 

 towns, and the hop excitment arrived at such a 

 pitch that men might be seen from all directions 

 bound to Wilmington to purchase hop-roots which 

 afforded an other source of profit to the producer. 

 As a consequence of ready sale at high prices, the 

 hop fever became epidemic in all the neighboring 

 towTis, and finally extended to all the New En_ 

 land States and New York, till that business, like 

 every other profitable business, was over-dnne, and 

 the production was vastly greater than the demand, 

 and hops fell from twenty-five cents or more, down 

 to four cents a pound, or no sale, which made many 

 a speculator regret his temerity. After losing their 

 labor, and more besides, for one or more reasons 

 the farmers in their wrath would plow up their 

 hop-yards and put their ground to a better us 

 When prices were high, yards would be muUipHed ; 

 when low, they would be torn up. This course of 

 action and reaction was followed by continued fluc- 

 tuations from the highest prices to the lowest, or 

 no sale at all. No produce ever sent into market 

 has disappointed the expectations of farmers more 

 than hops, nor no species of traffic ever entered 

 into, proved more disastrous than hop-speculations. 



Now, let us view other consequences. It is well 

 known that hops are not a necessary of life, but 

 used mostly as a luxury. At the time of the hop 

 mania, hop-raising was the prominent subject of 

 conversation. The merino or hen-fever never had 

 a harder struggle to form a crisis than the hop-fe- 

 ver. Most of the farmers directed all their ener- 

 gies to the production of hops, which required all 

 the manure that possibly could be robbed from 

 the other crops, and of course but scanty crops of 

 grain, English hay and meat could be obtained 



from a cheated soil. Hops, like other bulky crops, 

 exhaust the soil, they make no return to it in the 

 shape of manure, and every tun transported from 

 the town was reducing the value of the soil. Thus 

 this delusive money-making business went on till 

 most of the land would neither produce hops or 

 any other decent crop. Scanty crops of English 

 hay compelled the cattle to live on meadow hay, 

 and who ever saw good butter or beef produced 

 from meadow hay? Manure made from it was 

 but a feeble restorative to land growing poorer every 

 year under the exhausting system of hop-raising, 

 and to this day the exhausting effects of growing 

 crops which left no restoratives to sustain the soil 

 are visible. 



For a few years at the close of the last and the 

 beginning of the present century, very few country 

 towns of its size could boast of as much money 

 brought in for produce as Wilmington, but this 

 was done at a proportionate reduction of the value 

 in the farms. The excitement produced by this 

 sudden flowing in of wealth seemed to overpowe. 

 reason, paraUze all inducement to regular industry, 

 and make the wages of regular labor look like a 

 "very little thing," and men whom we should have 

 as little suspected, as the deacons of the Scottish 

 covenanters, entered into hop speculations at the 

 neglect of good trades, farms and every other pur- 

 suit of honest industry and plunged, in thoughtless 

 hast, into the dazzling phantoms which promise 

 wealth, till the last dollar was mortgaged and the 

 character weather-beaten and looked upon Avith 

 suspicion where veracity was required as a test. In 

 consequence of money becoming more plenty, new 

 ideas began to crowd out old ones, new desires to 

 form, and new views and transports awakened in 

 the craniums of those which we had supposed were 

 proof against all sorts of changes and innovations. 

 The most of the fortunes made so suddenly by hop 

 speculations were as transient as Jonah's gourd, 

 and I hardly recollect an individual who did not 

 lose a part or all of the property which he had, by 

 patient industry earned before the hop excitement 

 took place; and it is a question in the minds of 

 many thinking people whether Wilmington, as a 

 town, is a dollar the richer for there ever having 

 been such a thing in the world as a hop. 



I was personally and practically engaged at hop- 

 raising from 1792 to 1797, and though young, the 

 impression of hop-raising and hop-gambling was 

 indelibly stamped on my memory in such a man- 

 ner that it will probably be one of the last things I 

 shall forget. SiLAS Brown. 



JVorth Jfilmmgton, May, 1856. 



The Curculio.— An old friend, Mr. John Dux- 

 lap, at Chester, N. H., writes us that the stings 

 of the curculio on fruit may be prevented by plac- 

 ing coals on an old frying pan, and when under the 

 tree sprinkle sulphur on them so that the fumes 

 will pass up and touch the fruit. He says this can 

 be proved by an "ordained minister." 



RuRi\.L Economy of the British Isles. — The 

 attention of the reader is called to the last of this 

 series of articles, in another column. It is entitled 

 "New England," and is a sort of summing up of 

 tlie general argument of the series, or a comparison 



