The Great Hop Hype
Local dealers spar with growers over inflated rumors of global demand for Washington's prized crop.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The hop market continues unchanged, with no apparent prospects of improvement. A local dealer said yesterday that he had just bought 150 bales of strictly choice Oregons at 20 cents, delivered on cars. He had an order for 105 bales more, but could not find any in Washington for sale at that price. He expected his agent in Oregon would be able to fill the order, however. Speaking of the foreign market, the dealer said the highest price paid in London this season was 22 cents, and he did not understand how farmers could not reason out for themselves that the fabulous prices some of them have been reporting as London quotations were absolutely impossible in the face of the condition of the home market. It only costs about 3.5 cents to ship to London, and if their rumors of 40 cents a pound having been paid there were true, dealers would very soon be offering 30 or 35 cents here. 'Why,' said he, 'it is the veriest nonsense. Whenever the margin of profit becomes unusually large in any business you soon find men ready to put their money into it. Hops are no exception to this, but some growers who pretend to be working in the interest of the farmer send out these false reports, and many of the farmers believe them. They think a dealer who tells just what he knows about the market is a bear and trying to mislead them.'
“They think a dealer who tells just what he knows about the market is a bear and trying to mislead them.”
In 1892, Washington growers were already caught in the boom-bust cycle of global commodities, clinging to inflated price rumors to sustain their livelihood. Today, that tension between local producers and global market forces—and the vulnerability of farmers to misinformation—remains a core feature of the regional agricultural economy.
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