Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/107

 WITH OREGON HOP PICKERS 93

work should continue and be extended to all the large* fields where young women go and are constantly menaced by moral dangers offset by no restraining influence. The "Association ladies" became quite popular with the girls in the field and it was interesting to notice how quickly some of them recognized the possibilities of "stylishness" in such chaperonage!

The second day of picking began at half-past four in the dim light and the dew. I was weary beyond expression for I had been helping in various ways until late the night before. Many of my friends were tired, too, so the picking went slowly in the morning. But gossip was rife, for we were getting pretty well acquainted, and we knew already that the red-cheeked, clumsy fingered, German girl, who wept as she picked the day before, had run away from her husband and baby and was not reveling in her first taste of economic independence. This and much more was talked about while the full clusters were stripped into the baskets. If gossip had been a marketable commodity there would have been no cause for complaint over small earnings that morning.

At noon I told my companions that I had made up my mind to go back to Portland that day and they immediately supposed it was because I was not making money enough. They urged me to stay, saying the picking would be better later. When they found coaxing of no avail, they showed their friendliness by anxiously asking if I had enough money to take me home. And so I went away, weary of body, to keep an appointment very different in character two hundred miles from there, my identity unsuspected.

The following table contains facts learned from twenty- sevfn of my companions and may be of interest. This group is quite characteristic, strange mixture though it is.

I carried away from the hop field a very real interest in all that pertains to the welfare of Oregon hop pickers. Unques- tionably, certain improvements could be made in the organiza-

• There are in addition many "family yards" employing "neighbors" which do not present the problems of the large field with its varied assortment of pickers.