We now come to the hop-harvest in the State of New York, and here it is in its glory. The great counties of Otsego, Schoharie, Montgomery, Herkimer, Oneida, Madison, Onondaga, and Ontario lie along, and mostly a little south of the Erie Canal and the New York Central Railroad, between Albany and Rochester, a belt two hundred miles long and fifty miles wide. Franklin and Lewis counties, along the Canadian frontier of New York, have also a considerable hop interest, but for our present purpose we shall confine ourselves to the region situated in the belt we have mentioned, bounded by Albany on the East and Rochester on the West, and dotted, along its whole length of two hundred miles, with the cities of Albany, Schenectady, Amsterdam, Utica, Rome, Syracuse, Auburn and Rochester. Towns and villages of from one to two and three thousand inhabitants, many of them manufacturing towns, and all of them full of women and children willing to work and eager to rusticate for a time, are scattered all over the hop-belt; and from this long line of populous cities, and these thickly settled towns and villages, come the pickers for the hop-harvest. On or about the first day of September, they come with a rush, and usually find a demand equal to the supply. For weeks the hop-grower’s good wife has been preparing for them; beds, rough, but comfortable and clean, are set up in every building on the farm—in the house for the women and children, and in the out-buildings (sometimes put up for the purpose), for the men and boys. Bread is baked by the barrel; “doughnuts” are fried by the bushel. The farmer has already engaged his pickers in the neighboring cities or villages, and, on the appointed day, in they come, some by wagons, sent out the day before to the city, often twenty miles away, some by special railroad trains, chartered for the purpose, and some on foot. Whole families are in the crowd, father, mother and all the children, from the active boy or girl of fifteen years, who can pick two or three boxes, and earn a dollar a day, down to the baby whom the mother takes out into the field and watches while she picks her box, and earns its clothing for the coming winter.