Hop Growers' Revolt Fizzles Out
An ambitious attempt by local hop farmers to form a collective against industry speculators collapses when attendees refuse to take leadership.
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A few days ago, James Hart of Christopher issued a call for a hop growers' meeting at Slaughter on Saturday, October 1. A number of prominent producers assembled to discuss forming an association to gather data on yield and quality, and to hold the crop for better prices. Mr. Hart criticized Ezra Meeker, alleging that Meeker had manipulated the market by publicly calling the harvest 'trashy' while acting as a buyer, after encouraging an impression of a massive crop earlier in the season. Hart argued that without organization, growers were forced to sell cheap to brokers to repay harvesting loans, only to see the speculators profit when prices later boomed. Despite Hart’s hour-and-a-quarter argument for a growers' trust to 'give hop dealers a dose of their own medicine,' the farmers failed to nominate a leader or take any formal action. The growers divided into small groups and dispersed without materializing any definite plan, leaving the organizers deeply disappointed.
“Farmers have been denouncing trusts and combines for years, but they go on just the same, and they are good for those who are in the ring.”
This 1892 struggle over agricultural pricing power and corporate middlemen echoes the ongoing friction between small-scale farmers and global supply chains in Washington’s modern agricultural landscape. The failure of the 'hop trust' illustrates the historic difficulty of organizing independent growers against concentrated buying power.
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