The Hop Growers' Scrip Solution
Local banks and merchants collaborate to issue IOUs as cash to help farmers survive the harvest season.
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 most notable feature in connection with the hop market is the arrangement which has been made to supply growers with funds with which to harvest and handle the crop. The local banks have determined to issue certified checks in small amounts, payable in thirty or sixty days, on the same security which has raised cash in former years. The scheme has the endorsement of the Merchants and Manufacturers' Exchange, the members of which have agreed to take these checks at par in return for goods. This will make them worth par at all country stores where the hop growers can use them, or city stores, either, for that matter. The only way in which growers have thus far been able to raise money has been to contract their hops and receive an advance. Now they will be able to reap the advantage of advancing prices after harvest.
“The only way in which growers have thus far been able to raise money has been to contract their hops and receive an advance.”
This 1893 economic workaround highlights a recurring theme in Pacific Northwest history: the ingenuity required to maintain liquidity in a frontier economy. Just as these hop scrips bridged the gap for farmers, Seattle’s history is defined by creative, often unconventional financial responses to the boom-and-bust cycles that have long dictated the city’s development.
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