THE HOP TRADE 53 



tile, but in them engine-driven fans were employed to 

 force the hot air through the hops. In this way he 

 hoped to reduce the drying process to a system and 

 turn off a uniform product ; but the added expense 

 was considerable, and he doubted if he ever got the 

 finished appearance which was obtained by the old- 

 fashioned method at its best. 



It will thus be seen that hop-growing is a very 

 specialized business, more like manufacturing than 

 farming, though the agricultural aspect is perhaps 

 represented in an intensified form in the extraordinary 

 fluctuations in yield and in price. A big crop not 

 only reduces the price far below paying- point, but 

 depresses the market for years ; because, despite the 

 foreign importations, it is the fluctuation in the home 

 production which mainly determines the price here. 

 At that time the industry had been passing through 

 a particularly bad phase, due to a year of exceptional 

 production coinciding with a time of great depression 

 in the brewing trade. For three years in succession 

 the price fell away below the cost of production, 

 crippling every one and bringing many old hop-growing 

 families to the ground. In 1909 the crop was short, 

 not only in England but all the world over, and the 

 prices recovered, though nothing like to the degree 

 which might have followed ten years earlier when the 

 brewing trade was in a better way. As a consequence 

 the acreage under hops had been reduced to its lowest 

 point, and even the prospect of improved prices was 

 not tempting men to replant. When an old grower is 

 ruined and a farmer from another district takes his 

 place, the newcomer grubs up the hops, which he 

 neither understands nor trusts. 



When the yields fluctuate by cent, per cent, and 

 prices may be forty shillings a hundredweight one 



