Chapter XIV

Hops And Hoppers

>>>>111 fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
>>>>Where wealth accumulates and men decay:
>>>>Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade,
>>>>A breath can make them, as a breath is made;
>>>>But a bold peasantry, their country s pride.
>>>>When once destroyed, can never be supplied.
>>>>-- Goldsmith

So far has the divorcement of the worker from
the soil proceeded, that the farming districts, the
civilized world over, are dependent upon the cities
for the gathering of the harvests. Then it is, when
the land is spilling its ripe wealth to waste, that the
street folk, who have been driven away from the
soil, are called back to it again. But in England
they return, not as prodigals, but as outcasts still, as
vagrants and pariahs, to be doubted and flouted by
their country brethren, to sleep in jails and casual
wards, or under the hedges, and to live the Lord
knows how.

It is estimated that Kent alone requires eighty
thousand of the street people to pick her hops. And
out they come, obedient to the call, which is the call

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