AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRIES 199 



fungi ; richness in lupulin as the flowers are unwashed 

 by summer rains. Foreign brewers soon found that 

 using these hops in their usual quantities made their 

 beer too bitter, and they came to be mixed with local 

 products, thus securing a market for them in many 

 European countries at a price which more than com- 

 pensated for cost of long transportation. 



Hop-growing in California,, as in all producing 

 regions, has undergone great vicissitudes. As hops 

 are inedible to either men or live-stock and only 

 potable to the former, the world's consumption is 

 limited ; over-supply occasions worthlessness with 

 consequent reduction of acreage; under-supply yields 

 great profit to those who are ready to meet it and 

 induces unwarranted expansion of acreage, because 

 the ordinary man always plants when price is high 

 and the trend surely downward instead of planting 

 when price is low, acreage reduction sure, and prices 

 bound upward for that reason. The growers who 

 have made money in hops are those who steadily 

 stayed in the business and not those who have jumped 

 in and out of it. During the last half century, hops 

 have sold three or four times at one-half to ten times 

 the cost of production; that is from 5 cents to $1 

 a pound. Although there has been from year to year 

 much planting and plowing out of hop roots, the 

 decade record shows regular advancement, as shown 

 in table on page 200. 



The increased price of the 1919 crop, for which 

 an average farm value of 77 cents a pound was 

 recorded, coupled with the increased production 



