In a Washington Hop Field

THE thought of autumn and of harvest brings to the mind an image of burdened wealth, — vines heavy with rich fruitage tugging at strained stems, the limbs of overladen trees braced to the season’s increase, grain fields glowing and restless with perfected sunshine. It is the bringing forth of the year ; radiant yet serious with hopes fulfilled.

The harvest of the hop is in sharp contrast to this ripe spirit of autumn : there is a flippancy in the name and nature of the vine, as, gay and debonair to the end, it tosses its light sprays, strung with myriads of tiny green cones, over the poles that yield support. Before harvest time the undulations of the hop fields stretch for many a cool green mile of waving vine along the valleys, in whose troughs run the swift snow-fed rivers of western Washington. Just at the last, the hops take on a faint tinge of yellow that distinguishes them, by this shade’s difference, from the green of the figlike leaves.

On a September morning, during the first week of “ picking,” we took the dusty road that winds out from the little village of Kent, which exists for the remainder of the year on the few busy weeks of hop-gathering time. As we followed the grassy side tracks out of the flour-fine dust of the way, great woolly clouds were heaped in dazzling masses against the dark blue of the sky; the sides of the valley of the White River lifted gently to the fir-bordered crests of sombre green, and all the cup of the valley foamed high with vines of frothing hops. The river — not white, but the color of soapstone, opaque and swift, with a surface smoothness as though the atoms moved as one in pouring outward to the sea — parted its silent way through the world of green. Although the vines are set in accurate rows, they climb upon a slender cord from one pole to the next, and form a rolling canopy. Only now and then, when you fall into line with the welldrilled ranks, does the confusion resolve itself into long, shadowy vistas, just as a chaos of city street lights, seen from some high tower, becomes a system of parallel illumination.

“ Order is here,” says the philosopher who plods the Kentish road, “ if we but know how to bring ourselves into relation with its steadfast ranks.” This was not, however, a philosopher’s walk, but the highway to the hop pickers’ encampment, where four or five hundred harvesters were earning a holiday of sunshine. We soon realized this. Through the powder of the road four cayuse ponies dashed by, abreast, ridden by bfoad-hatted young fellows, singing and shouting to urge on the ugly little brutes. We still breathed their dust, when from the same direction came the deep rumble of a heavy farm wagon drawn by stout work horses. A farmer drove, with several children beside him on the seat; between his knees a pale, sweet - faced baby steadied itself against the father’s strong legs, and threw out ineffectual cluckings upon the broad haunches of the plodding horses. The back of the wagon was piled high with mattresses, lumpy bags of potatoes, and clattering kitchen tins. A woman sat on a bundle of bedding, and struggled to hold in place the jolting plunder of the little farmhouse, rifled now at hop-picking time, and all its wealth set forth in the unkind glare of day. Down the road from Kent to the hop fields streamed men, teams, and cayuses. The baker’s cart, an unvarnished cedar box on wheels, drawn by one horse, spun briskly along, the smooth sides of fresh wood making it seem a cheerful little pink hearse. Ahead, for goal, reached up the four big square chimneys of the hop kilns against the radiant sky. A flexion of the road led us among the vines themselves, and from beyond came the sound of voices. A long, narrow shanty, or “ shack,” in the language of the country, with rooms cut through from front, to back, like slices through a long loaf, was the first part of the settlement to show itself. Each compartment had a door in front, and a window opposite, at the back, insuring a fine current of air through the little boarded pen that served as a shelter to a family of hop pickers. In the dust of the roadway, on which all the doors opened, played a crowd of very dirty little children, giving to the place the familiar air of Shantytown. Beyond this building we came upon a large group of white tents, their faces fronting on circles of fire-blackened grass, where dingy cranes made of forked saplings supported the family pot. Several of the tents bore on their sides facetious inscriptions in charcoal. One was festooned with hops, and marked “ Home, Sweet Home.” Upon a fence near by leaned rows of the craziest haphazard shelters, built without nails, and of any material that offered, chiefly of fence rails, shingles, and mismatched boards. Inside, one could see heaps of hay and heavy bed comforts. The whole string of hovels had been thrown into place during odd moments of the past week, and the first heavy breeze threatened to demolish them in an instant.

Except for the children and a few halfgrown girls left “ at home ” in charge, the camp was nearly deserted ; so we pushed on to the field where the pickers were at work, and reached there in time for the nooning. Detached groups of men, women, and a few children sat upon boxes and baskets about an inverted hop box, eating as a stoker fires his engine; wooding up, stopping only in favor of watering when a long, brown bottle gurgled tea or some other dark liquid down throats lifted as a bird’s in drinking. By way of contrast, the scene recalled an idyllic midday in the fields by Jules Breton. The women were of the nervous American type, thin-featured and bright-eyed ; their animated gestures and high voices out of key with the spirit of autumn abroad in the fields. Among them were faces that had been pretty in that brief moment of bloom vouchsafed our working women ; but these, even more than the others, seemed alien to the heart of tranquil nature. A cheerful business activity pervaded the various groups. The talk, of which there was much, turned entirely on the morning’s work. A man near us pushed back the box that had served his party as table, got up, stretched himself, and then wiped on a hop leaf an immense clasp knife he had been using. As he thrust the knife into his pocket, he called to a woman in the next group, “Well, Mrs. Leefever, how many boxes you got ? ”

“ Four.”

“ Oh, come off ! ”

This was the signal for some rough joking, which, out in the open air, shouted in hearty voices, seemed not entirely pointless. The women cleared the scraps of the meal into bag and basket, and five minutes later every one was at work.

Back of the scattered army of pickers, long rows of hop vines were stripped of every festoon of leaf and hop ; only the main stems were left, wrapped loosely about the poles ; sometimes they had sunk upon themselves, collapsed spirals, oozing slow sap. The trampled ground was matted with withered and withering branches that had been thrown down after being cleared of hops. The workers moved like a broad, deliberate scythe across the field, each group pushing forward the destruction of one row, the quicker pickers slightly ahead, but on the whole the advance line even.

When we showed our passport, the field boss apportioned us a row among the pickers, and drew up one of the large, light cedar boxes for us to fill. Most of the workers picked in groups of from four to six members ; but, as we stood studying their methods of work, we noticed a man and woman behind the others, who seemed trying to accomplish by eagerness what their companions were doing by force of numbers. The woman’s face was pale and earnest; she kept her eyes fixed upon the barrel they were filling, and her hands were hurried, but inefficient, as she took the branches that the man beside her cut from the vine. She tore away the leaves from the spray with a snatching movement, leaving the hops, which she stripped off later by a downward action not unlike that of milking. After I had watched her for some time, she looked up with a deprecatory smile, and said, “ My husband and I are slow pickers. We don’t make much at this.”

“ How many boxes do you get a day ?" I asked.

“One box each, by working from five in the morning till seven at night. Some nights we ’re here till dark.”

“ Two dollars for twenty-eight, hours of work,” I commented.

She did not answer, but moved aside for the man to carry the barrel and empty it into the large hop box standing near. This addition filled their box ; and they stood together leveling the hops lightly, picking out a leaf as the stirring brought one to the surface.

“ Tick-et! ” called the man, straightening himself up.

The woman went back to her work, and presently the field boss came hurrying through the vines.

“ Don’t mean to say you want me before one o’clock ? ” he exclaimed. Then running his hand through the light, pungent mass, he examined the hops. “ They are good and clean,” he said, as he drew a form-book from his pocket, and filled in and tore off a cardboard slip. The woman readied out a hand, shapeless from each finger being encased in a fingerstall of heavy cotton cloth deeply dyed with black hop stains, and eagerly took the ticket “ Good for One Dollar.”

A shrill blast from the whistle of the field boss brought two carriers, men detailed for the work, who seized the full box by its long, stretcher-like handles, and trotted off toward the roadway, where it would be taken up with others and hauled on long-bodied wagons to the kilns.

Now the cry of “Tick-et” came from another part of the field, and yet another, and the field boss scurried about, scolding, admonishing, encouraging; here refusing a ticket because of short measure ; there suggesting to new pickers the needlessness of heaping. And still the bottom of our box showed through a light layer of pale green hops.

“ I should think some of the pickers would fill the bottom with something else,”I said to the woman, who was moving to the pole ahead of ours on the next row.

“Yes; they tell about a feller who worked on the edge of a field by himself, and near to a punkin patch,” volunteered the man, “ and he picked ten boxes that day, cashed his tickets, and took the train that night.” He laughed slightly, “ They did n’t care for punkins with their hops.”

The woman did not smile. “ Well, I call that a mean trick,” she said, stripping a long branch of hops into her barrel. “ I ’d be ashamed to do that.”

“Oh, I dun’ know,” said the man impartially, reaching up with his knife and slashing off a fresh spray. "The boss had oughter suspected the feller ; no mortal man can pick ten boxes a day.”

This, then, was a point in hop pickers’ ethics.

The afternoon sun was strong on our faces in the wide field. The voices of the other pickers seemed far off, for they had pushed steadily forward their lines of work. We could hear the sound of the distant whistle and the call of “ Tick-et ” coming heavy through the sleepy aroma of the sun-steeped hops. Our neighbors were four, then six poles ahead ; and as we worked on in dull abstraction, the thread of our green row appeared to lengthen across the bare field, and the sun burned upon us, unobstructed by the arbor of vines among which tinbody of pickers worked. We shifted wearily from foot to foot, as the long hours of standing made themselves felt, speaking in monosyllables, and only of the work. We saw the glorious day and the stretches of the vine as other tired workers saw them; the first keen sense of piquancy flattened into dull fatigue ; we not only picked hops, we were hop pickers.

“ You ’ll never get that box full if you leave it uncovered like that! ” called a man on his way from the river with a pail full of water. “ The sun wilts them hops down faster ’n you two pick ’em.”

We drew our box behind the slight shelter of our isolated row.

Soon the boss made us a flying visit. “ Slow work,” he said good naturedly. “ The man that picks a box of hops earns his dollar, that’s sure. If you all did n’t pick into the box, but filled a lot of little boxes and poured ’em in, you’d fill up quicker.”

After that we were lucky enough to find a barrel to pick into, and were making slow progress, when a woman on her way from the field stopped, her hands on her hips. “ You don’t use your hands right,” she commented. “ It’s all a knack in pickin’ hops, and you can’t afford to waste no time.” Then stepping nearer and examining our half-filled measure, “ Them hops are packed down from layin’ in the sun; they ’d oughter be loosened up.”

Here was a suggestion. We looked at each other hopefully. An empty hop box lay near ; so we lifted ours — it was very heavy — and carefully jolted the hops from it into the other, and then back again into our own. Attracted by this curious manœuvre, a man had joined the woman. “ My experience,” he drawled, as we saw the hops sink back to even a lower level than before, “ is, the only way to fill a box of hops is to pick ’em.”

“ Yes,”said the young woman perfidiously ; “ the more you handle ’em, the flatter they lay.”

At five o’clock our box was still unfilled, but, too weary for another hour of work, we went back to camp.

In front of the line of doors that opened upon the road stretched an elongated woodpile. Its original purpose was to serve as fuel for the pickers, but secondarily it had found favor as a restingplace, where one commanded an interior view of the shanty’s compartments while recovering from the fatigues of the day. My comrade cut wood for our fire, and I found on the pile a smooth - bodied maple log with a branch that served well for a back-rest. In the room next to ours, a young girl, with a new tin plate held firmly between her knees at a convenient angle for reflection, was frizzing her hair on curling-tongs, while she sang in a loud, flat voice, with strong emphasis on the r’s, —

You Emmy! if you don’t come out of that, I ’ll shake you good.

A barefooted child tried to split wood with an axe she could just lift, and a group of very dirty, very happy-looking youngsters coaxed a blaze from the bonfire they were kindling in the roadway. A pleasant coolness was creeping into the air, the sky warmed for sunset, and the women began to come in from the fields, some carrying babies on their hips, and others leading stumbling, drowsy children by the hand. Around their broad sun-hats many had wound sprays of the hop vine, and as they came they stopped for a moment’s noisy gossip at the doors of the fast-filling shack. The one salutation, “ How many boxes ? ” was answered with promptness or evasion, according to the number to be reported. In the course of nature the question came to us.

“Oh well,” the woman said, “you ’ll catch on after a while. You oughten ter count the first day’s work.” Then she added, “ Come for your health, ain’t you ? It’s awfully healthy here. I thought I wouldn’t keep my little baby through the summer till I came here, and now she’s splendid.”

I looked at the tiny mite of splendor, a frail, winning little creature, who rested easily on the young mother’s arm, and laid her cheek close against the hard chest.

Soon the men came in from work, and the encampment stirred with clamorous life. All along the woodpile saws and axes were brought into play, and the little children trotted with armfuls of wood across the roadway to the shanty. The slender black throats above the roof breathed smoke against the sunset, and the women called to one another through the wide cracks between the rooms. Other women went from door to door to borrow a wash-tub, a frying-pan, or a broom. The girl who, earlier in the afternoon, had indulged in hymnody squeaked about near me in a pair of new slippers, while her mother, who had returned late from work, scrubbed the floor in the intervals of cooking supper. The young woman who had spoken to me unlocked the door next to ours, and threatened to “ clean up the baby,”at the same time making extravagant love to her victim. She interrupted herself, when her husband came in, to tell him how “the little toad “ had picked two hops and stuffed them through a knot - hole in the barrel. The baby laughed and capered, as the father, a picturesque young fellow, lifted her, with boisterous caresses, to his shoulder, and called her “ the damnedest little hop picker in the country.”

Driven in at last by hunger from the gay animation of the outdoor spectacle, we found that, during the supper hour, the essence of fried onions had come through the inch-cracks between our room and the next, and taken entire possession of our domain. There was nothing for it but to set up an opposition odor of fried bacon. The wood stove, the only piece of furniture in the room, was of an energetic and fiery temper, and wanted only the excuse of wood and a match to become red-hot. It cooked us a brave little supper in half an hour, but of this and the making of a deep pallet of fresh hay from the barn there is no need to speak; it would be but an offense to the home-stayer, who knows none of the joys of trainpdom; and for the man of the road, we need only the mystic sign of our common calling. Then we shut the door, stretched ourselves on the great heap of hay, our wood fire snapping in explosions of liberated zeal, while upward through the slight rafters, to the god of comfort, curled the incense of a pipe. Our neighbor’s lamplight sent slender rays of yellow through the bluish twilight of our room; laughter, swearing, and the clatter of dishes came in as freely. Another world lay there: a world of coarseness and swift emotions; a world where life and life’s experience, stated in the English of Shakespeare’s clowns, were canvassed with no reserves. But was it another world ? The jests seemed half familiar. We rested, listening; our dark little room the one quiet division of that swarming shell, where life seemed a battle even at twilight. Along the road outside clattered carts of butcher, milkman, grocer; each by his coming throwing the colony into renewed excitement of chaffering, laughter, and dispute.

“ Say! ” called out the young woman in the next room. “ Less have a dance to-night. Those fellers got most of the platform done for to-morrow night. Come on, old man ; get your fiddle. I ’ll friz my hair.”

Talk of the dance flew through the settlement and out among the tenters. Two pairs of curling-irons went hot from hand to hand, curling dozens of heads.

“ Goin’ to the dance ? ” called a girl to me, as she returned a comb she had borrowed from my next neighbor.

After the younger people had gone the place grew much quieter : the voice of a fretful child being put to bed, an old picker yawning wearily, or some one counting in lowered tones the day’s gains, — these were the only sounds.

When we opened the door to go out, we found the night dark and cool, with clear starlight overhead ; but as we turned the angle of the long shanty, we came into the glare of scores of camp fires among the tents. Men and women sat together about their outdoor hearths, making gorgeous effects of color with their sun-browned faces in the orange light. The dramatic pose and gesture of figures brilliantly lit and darkly shadowed were painted boldly against the canvas of the night. An old man, with lifted haranguing hand, was cut in black profile against the fire : all in his group, with faces in the full light and heat, leaned forward, listening. By a knot of seated men a girl in red stood laughing, poised with an action of flight about her garments, — her teeth shining as no man would dare paint them. Her dress, toward the fire, was brilliant, throwing a glow upward over her throat and face; while out of the direct light the color lost itself completely in the night. Lamps burned in many of the tents, turning them palely luminous, and transmitted exaggerated outlines of face and form that flitted and hovered unsteadily. As we stood silent, there came to us the distant tramp of feet, and then the squeal of a fiddle, and we remembered the dancers.

On a platform of unplaned boards, raised a foot or two from the ground, they were dancing, — a tangle of figures, seen indistinctly by the glimmer of a few lanterns that stood near the rough benches running around the four sides of the floor. These seats were given over to the women ; and the men stood on the ground, pressing, four or five rows deep, about the platform. As we worked our way in among the spectators, a man in shirt sleeves was calling the figures of the square dance with great energy. He seemed to be master of ceremonies, and took the most unselfish delight in finding partners for the unmated. Now and then, when the banjo and fiddle rose into a particularly irresistible tune, a man would break through the crowd, leap upon the platform, and search out a partner from among the women. It mattered little, in the dim light, whether she had simply added a white apron to her working dress, or if she were one of the young girls in cashmere and cotton lace finery.

In the fiddler I recognized the father of the baby hop picker. I had divined that there was something of the artist in the young fellow ; and now, as he sat with his hat pushed back, legs crossed, and cheek laid on the fiddle, playing for himself and to the others, he made a delightful figure of happy abandon. Close at his knee sat the baby, perfectly erect, a thin black shawl drawn tightly over its head and wrapped around the body, bambino-wise, holding the arms down. The tiny pale face and large eyes turned always toward the mother, who danced unceasingly. At my elbow, an elderly woman, in a broad brown sunshade hat and calico dress, watched the dance with shining eyes; her comfortable, well-cushioned shoulders moved with short breaths in time to the music.

“ Do you want to dance ? ” asked the man in shirt sleeves, as he threw the light of his lantern on her.

“ Well,” she said, in smiling embarrassment, “ I don’t care if I do.”

“ What ’s your name ? ”

“ Mrs. Smith.” (It may have been an alias, but she said Mrs. Smith.)

“All right. You stay here, and I’ll find some feller that ’ll dance with you ; ” and he dived among the dancers and across the platform. In a few minutes he returned with a man whom he halted in front of Mrs. Smith.

“ What ’s your name ? ” he asked him.

“ Thompson.”

“ Mrs. Smith, Mr. Thompson ; ” and Mrs. Smith danced away with the lightness of a girl in the arms of Thompson.

The music changed, and the master of ceremonies called aloud, “Take your partners for a quad—rille ! ”

The square dance was really a dance as the hop pickers conceived it. The men, their broad soft hats tipped over one ear, took the hands of their partners, and went through a series of bewildering side steps and flourishes that varied in the different dancers from grace to clownish grotesquerie.

The terpsichorean director had called the figures alone,.in a powerful voice ; hut suddenly all the dancers took up the refrain in a chanting measure : —

This figure continued long enough to fasten the sing-song in the memory for a lifetime.

Dance followed dance; the women lifted their aprons and wiped their faces, to the wonder of chill bystanders, and danced again. The boards of the floor creaked, the fiddle and banjo thrilled and screamed, a few fell away from the press about the platform ; but the tramp of feet beat with a ceaseless pulse. The little black figure at the fiddler’s knee sat silent, with wide eyes. A young fellow, who had not missed a dance since our coming, threw up his head and cried, “ What’s the matter with the roof ? ” Then, as all eyes turned up to the solemn dark of the star-pierced sky, “ Why, the roof’s all right! ”

It was pleasant, in the quiet of our little room in the shanty, to drowse upon the hay, and let the aroma of the day float back to us: the bouquet of a coarse draught, perhaps, and yet from nature’s source.

Louise Herrick Wall.