Hop Production

This article published in the Adams County Times

By Elwood R McIntyre

Offered wages of 50 cents a box, or about $2 a day to good pickers, plus their board, 25,000 to 30,000 girls and women enlisted in the hop yards of the Baraboo-Reedsburg-Kilbourn City (Wisconsin Dells) zone late in the summer of 1868. That year was the final big hop production season.

It was so far beyond demand that it smashed this speculative cash crop craze which had attracted many veterans of the recent Civil War, among others, and induced them to establish yards and drying equipment on borrowed money.

"You employers have a great moral responsibility for teh next few weeks, with thousands of girls in our midst. Most of them will come from outside this locality and beyond the reach of parental influence," reminded Editor Alanson Holley of the Wisconsin Mirror.

One day early in September, 2,000 feminine hop harvesters poured out of a train of 26 coaches from Milwaukee. They were met at the Kilbourn depot by the waiting growers, whose wagons and buggies were parked on adjacent acres. Cheering, singing and laughing, the pickers formed into squads, each led by a "corporal". They came armed with umbrellas, satchels, baskets, hand boxes, bundles and babies.

The next day's train brought in another lot of 2,500 Two hours before train time, 250 wagons were counted, some of them 4-horse outfits, to carry the visiting pickers out to the hop yards. The train was filled when it reached Oconomowoc, and hundreds had to wait over for the next day's conveyance.

According to authorities of that day, Kilbourn was the largest primary hops market in the country in the 1867-69 period. Producers shipping out of Kilbourn raised one-fourth of the nation's hop crop and a third of that raised in Wisconsin.

Chief market centers were Schoharie, New York, central Michigan, and Sauk, Richland, Columbia and Racine counties in Wisconsin.

Every page of the Mirror reflected the vigor of the specialized crop grown for brewers and maltsters. Even the display ads catered to the craze. Dickinson's furniture store sold some hops equipment and ran a slogan, "Hasten On to Procure Supplies." The J C Hanson Co advertised "a large stock of genuine Dundee one-and-a-half-pound sacking and plenty of Scotch kiln cloth; and we also manufacture the celebrated hop press."

No wonder about all this emphasis. In the fall of 1867, some 22,000 bales of hops were raised and shipped out of Kilbourn, for which over two million dollars was received. The little 1,500 population Dells City was also the mecca for many persons desiring to get informed on the most successful ways to raise hops.

But by the summer of 1868, some of the newer hop yards established in New York state were plowed up in the face of the biggest assortment of hops in the world's history. Somewhat lower prices were quoted in the fall of 1868 -- Common Wisconsins, 20-25 cents per pound; choice-fancy Wisconsins, 35-40 cents; fair New Yorkers, 10-15 cents; choice-fancy New Yorkers 30-35 cents; imported Belgians and Bavarians, 20-30 cents.

Men with creative bent were trying to invent a hop-picking machine to replace all those annual picking crews. A public trial was held in the spring of 1868 at the Clark famr, one mile south of Newport (now a vanished town site).

Among the machines competing were those built by Dean of Baraboo, Lamberton of Delton, and Brailey of Big Spring. The newspaper report said the Dean machine was a fizzle. It mangled the vines, and the time taken to pick the hops and run them through a hand screeen was greater than for a competent picker.

The editor thought the best machine of the lot was exhibited by Amyntus Briggs of New Buffalo, Sauk County.

Growers had had warnings of impending disaster, if production kept up at the current rate. By 1868, low and medium grades were not wanted. Lager beer brewers would not have them. The ale and porter brewers were waiting to see the size and quality of the late crop before entering the market.

"Growers must be prepared for the inevitable crash which will follow if the Wisconsin hops crop reaches an expected 70,000 bales for 1868," wrote Everett Wells, New York market reporter, whose weekly comments appeared in several newspapers in the Midwest zones.

But his figures were sometimes doubted and discounted by growers and merchants, who thought the eastern interests wanted to scare the western producers and discourage their efforts.

Yet it was generally accepted as a fact--in the absence of modern crop estimates--that in 1868 the total United States consumption would be under 100,000 bales, while some sizeable exports had already been sent to the European market, where the supply was more than ample.

"Our advice to growers is to operate within their means and to have a diversity of other crops, as well, so that if hops should fail, other resources will be at hand," declared Editor Holly in the fall fo 1868.

Today hops are just a pungent memory, and not a grandma is left to recite the hops-picking story. From Bennett's array of old photographs, no doubt some scenes are left to remind us how the hops pickers looked in bustles and puffy sleeved gowns. Now the hops-growing business has gone to the Pacific Northwest, and the nearness of hops yards to mammoth breweries is no longer necessary.