The Annual Hop Picker Scare
For twenty years, growers have panicked over the threat of a labor shortage, but one editor suggests that the 'scare' is more about business than biology.
The usual annual report is being circulated for the hundredth time that the usual gang of Indians from the North are not coming. This time it is because many of them died last year from measles, and hence those remaining are afraid to come. Then it is because of the report that the crop is short; then again because the price of picking will be low—never failing in these reports to create uneasiness among growers. It would be well for growers to remember that these periodical 'scares' occur each year, and that, like as with all panics, each participant by 'losing his head' helps to intensify it. We have never but once, in all these twenty years of hop experience, been short of pickers. This 'scare' will have another and permanent compensating feature in that it drives growers to look more to white pickers for help, and now the notes of preparation for shelter are heard on a number of farms where it was never heard before. The result will be, as it ought to be, that we shall depend more on white pickers and less on Indians each year, thus keeping much money among ourselves that has lately been carried off to British Columbia and beyond.
“It would be well for growers to remember that these periodical 'scares' occur each year, and that, like as with all panics, each participant by 'losing his head' helps to intensify it.”
This 1888 editorial captures the recurring tension between labor availability, migrant work, and the economic anxieties of the Pacific Northwest. While the specific exclusionary rhetoric targeting Indigenous pickers reflects the era's xenophobia, the underlying 'scare' mechanics—fearing labor shortages to drive down costs or consolidate regional industry—mirrors contemporary debates about seasonal workforce dependency in Washington's agricultural sector.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.