194 THE VALLEY OF THE TEME 



Hop-growing is, however, a specialist's business, and 

 here, as in Kent, opinions are divided as to whether 

 it is good for a farmer to have hops upon his farm. 

 If he is a small man he is certainly tempted to rob the 

 rest of his land to feed his hops, and is apt to be 

 drawn into an acreage beyond his strength by the 

 great profits that can be won in a favourable season. 

 With each succeeding spell of bad seasons the tendency 

 is for the little man to draw out and leave the business 

 more and more to men of substance who have some 

 reserve of capital and are hop-growers rather than 

 farmers. But these specialists have also their diffi- 

 culties ; it costs more per acre to farm a hundred acres 

 of hops than to farm ten, so many are the operations 

 for which the large man has to provide specially, but 

 which can be fitted in with other odd jobs upon the 

 little farm where the hops are only an incident. Again, 

 with the brewers short of capital and living from hand 

 to mouth for their supplies, it has been of late years 

 much less easy to dispose of a block of a thousand 

 pockets of hops than of a little lot. It has been 

 the " tied house " policy of the English brewers, with 

 its inevitable consequence the making of beer from 

 any sort of materials that would promise cheapness 

 which has been the real cause of depression in the hop 

 trade. However, by 1911 the acreage under hops had 

 been reduced to a level far below the normal require- 

 ments of the trade. Stocks were depleted and there 

 was no foreign surplus, so that prices promised to rise 

 that season to a point rarely seen of late years, unless 

 too many of the brewers should decide to go without 

 hops entirely. 



From the time when both were " fetched out of 

 Flanders " fruit and hops have gone together in 

 English farming ; and Worcestershire is no exception 



