chine. And, after all, it is far finer to kill a strong
man with a clean-slicing blow of singing steel than
to make a beast of him, and of his seed through the
generations, by the artful and spidery manipulation
of industry and politics.

But to return to the hops. Here the divorcement
from the soil is as apparent as in every other agri
cultural line in England. While the manufacture
of beer steadily increases, the growth of hops
steadily decreases. In 1835 the acreage under
hops was 71,327. To-day it stands at 48,024, a
decreaie of 3103 from the acreage of last year.

Small as the acreage is this year, a poor summer
and terrible storms reduced the yield. This mis
fortune is divided between the people who own
hops and the people who pick hops. The owners
perforce must put up with less of the nicer things
of life, the pickers with less grub, of which, in the
best of times, they never get enough. For weary
weeks headlines like the following have appeared in
the London papers:

TRAMPS PLENTIFUL, BUT
THE HOPS ARE FEW AND NOT YET READY.

Then there have been numberless paragraphs
like this:

From the neighborhood of the hop fields comes news of
a distressing nature. The bright outburst of the last two

[[169]]

p168 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p169w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p170

v?