Hop Growers Pivot to Families as Labor Crisis Looms
With smallpox concerns keeping Indigenous pickers away, farmers in White River and Puyallup valleys appeal to white families to harvest the crop.
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The hop-picking season in the White river and Puyallup valleys will begin within the next ten days and growers find themselves confronted with a serious problem: where to get pickers. They have been accustomed to depend mainly on Indigenous workers from British Columbia and Alaska, but the smallpox outbreak has so scared these people that few, if any, are expected to come south this year. Meanwhile, the hops are ripening rapidly and must be picked promptly or a large quantity may be lost. The growers are casting about for a way to supply the places of the Indigenous laborers. James Hart, of Slaughter, was in the city yesterday to see what can be done in this direction. He thinks of inducing whole families to go out into the fields to do the work, as it is of a kind which can be done equally well by men, women, or children. Mr. Hart asked the school board if the opening of the school year could be postponed for two weeks, but was told it was impossible. However, the board suggested that children who work in the hop fields may enter school two or three weeks after the term starts without incurring any bad marks. Many growers have built lodgings for their accommodation where whole families can camp together. Hop-picking is light, easy work, and being done in the open air, is like a summer outing. Good wages are paid, and the growers expect to pay out $100,000 among pickers this season.
“Hop-picking is light, easy work and, being done in the open air at the finest season of the year, is like a summer outing to many people who have few opportunities to escape from their city homes.”
This story highlights the volatile nature of agricultural labor markets in the Pacific Northwest, where seasonal harvests have long required sudden, massive surges of mobile workforces. Today's challenges in finding agricultural labor mirror these 1892 concerns, illustrating a persistent tension in the region's economy regarding migrant labor, education, and seasonal crop cycles.
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