These families are frequently those of hard-working mechanics in the cities, who are glad to give their wives and children an outing in the fresh air for three or four weeks, and find them all the richer and happier by reason of the escape from the stony and dirty streets of their urban home. It is a picnic for the children, and their pranks, when they first arrive, are a sore trial to the steady farmer and his wife. But after the first day’s work (from six in the morning until twelve at noon, and from 12:30 P.M. until six at night) is over, they are well sobered down for bed, and their surplus energies are thereafter turned into the channel that leads to the hop-box in the morning and to bed at night. Many a poor factory girl finds in the hop-fields the only fresh country air she breathes in the whole year; and while she is laying in the year’s stock of health, her nimble fingers are bringing to her more money than the work in the stifling mill. To the hop-grower, the harvest, by reason of high prices for hops, is sometimes very profitable. Sometimes, by reason of low prices, it is very unsatisfactory. But to the poor families in the surrounding towns and villages it is always a blessing; for, no matter whether the price of hops be high or low, the compensation for picking is always the same. Let us see how it foots up. The hop-crop of the United States amounts to about 200,000 bales, of 180 pounds each. It takes fifteen boxes for a bale, and for each box the picker is paid about fifty cents cash, or its equivalent in cash and board. Fifteen boxes at fifty cents each makes $7.50; hence, for 200,000 bales the pickers receive about fifteen hundred thousand dollars. We have taken a round number which does not accurately represent the actual production for the year 1908, for in that year the American hop-growers produced about 216,660 bales or 39,000,000 pounds of hops—a comparatively very small quantity; in fact, 11,000,000 pounds less than in the preceding year and 21,000,000 pounds less than in the year 1906. There are two reasons for this decrease, viz.: 1. because between 1901 and 1907 the production of beer increased at an unusual rate and the growers extended their operations accordingly, running perhaps a trifle ahead of prospective demand; 2. because as a result of the panic the production of beer has decreased. Up to 1899 New York produced the largest quantity of hops; thereafter Oregon took and maintained first place and from 1902 to the present time California wrested even second place from New York, so that in point of production this State now holds the third place among the four hop-producing States of our country, the fourth being Washington. Less than one per centum of the total quantity of hops raised in the United States is produced outside of these four States in each of which hop-culture is confined to a few counties. This peculiar localization obtains in all countries, Germany excepted.