George Square, Glasgow, Scotland

Besides, they winked at each other suspiciously, and I think, had I gone up, they would have kept me there till I tipped them. At any rate that is one of the pleasantries that the hop-drier is privileged to indulge with any visitor he can catch in that way. I asked one of the men who followed me to the door where I could see the hop-picking, and he said, “About a mile to the south.” I questioned him whether I had better go around by the road or try a more direct way cross lots. The man replied in the bluff, rude manner that one too often finds among the rural English, “You’ve got legs, ain’t ye? Go there any way ye want to.”

I found the pickers at work in a field that sloped down into a little valley. The poles-were being taken down as fast as needed, and the pickers were pulling off the hops into great baskets. Men, women and children were all at work. The old women and the grandfathers were there, and so were the babies, tucked up in blankets and wraps and lying quite contented on the ground among the shadows of the festooned poles. It was a pleasant scene there amidst the greenery,—nimble fingers flying, always the voices calling and the hum of gossip, the rustic costumes, the children playing or helping with industrious clumsiness, and in it all the rustle of the vines and the wholesome odor of the hops. It makes a healthy out-of-doors holiday, and the people flock from far and near into the hop regions to enjoy it. When the journey is short they come in great farm wagons with all their bags and baggage prepared to cook their own food and sleep in barns and sheds. They shout and joke as they go along in spite of the plodding slowness of the journey and the apparent discomfort of the vehicle. The fact that no one is too young to go is attested by the presence of one or two baby carriages dragging along at the rear of the wagon.

A vast army of hop-pickers come by train from London at this time. They are the scum of the city, a dilapidated crowd of old and young, who arrive heavily loaded with their household goods, and make a very motley scene at the railroad stations, bowed with their sacks and baskets.

The wages of a laborer in the poorer parts of England are ten or twelve shillings a week; while in the more favored districts he is paid double that amount. Work begins in summer at six o’clock. At eight the laborer stops half an hour for breakfast, at ten he eats a luncheon, and at noon takes an hour to rest and eat dinner. His work is done at five, when he trudges home to supper. Just before he goes to bed he disposes of one more luncheon, and the day is ended.

A man could hardly live and support a family on ten or twelve shillings a week, were it not that in summer he always has a chance to do “task work.”