The Great Hop Rush of the 1880s
Boosterism and labor anxiety collide as Washington Territory's hop production booms in Pierce and King Counties.
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 acreage of the hop fields in Pierce County is 1120 acres, an increase of about 40 percent. In King County, the increase is even larger. The Seattle Hop Growers Association has planted 400 acres, and L. Meeker & Co. has 300 acres on White River. The hop farmers have planted more than one-third of the acreage this present year. With an average yield of 1000 pounds an acre, the total harvest could reach 1,120,000 pounds. At 30 cents per pound, the gross product would reach the sum of $336,000. Although the hop crop is a reasonably sure one, there are important contingencies. The large increase of acreage will dictate terms to pickers and render it difficult to harvest the entire crop in the proper season. Last year, some of the Indigenous laborers who were accustomed to assist in the Puyallup harvest were frightened away by a smallpox scare. As the supply of local laborers is not large enough to meet the increased demand, other help will have to be obtained or a considerable proportion of the crop will remain in the field unpicked.
“The large increase of acreage will not only enable the pickers... to dictate terms, but will render it difficult to harvest the entire crop in the proper season.”
This article captures the transition of the Puget Sound landscape into an industrial agricultural powerhouse. The panic over labor supply and the reliance on Indigenous and migrant workers echoes the perennial struggle for seasonal harvest labor that still characterizes Washington's agricultural regions today.
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