Generate Steam: For self-operation and sell surplus heat, light and power to make plant self-sustaining.

So in earnest is the Health Department that if a collector finds garbage not properly drained and wrapped in paper, he

can refuse further service until the rule is complied with, and if this is not sufficient the householder can be brought into court and fined. It has been demonstrated that a twenty gallon can will suffice for the average household, and this size is easily handled by the collector. Of course it is essential that all cans must be water tight and some have an appliance on the cover which makes them self locking. This is quite a consideration when there are dogs in the neighborhood. No obligatory rules are laid down as to the location of the can.

By this system the back yard can be made to look as clean as the front, and the saving in cost to the city can be largely diminished. Offensive odors are

avoided and waste is turned into productive energy. The same package system can be employed by housewives in small towns where there is no collection of garbage, for in such places there is usually a coal stove which can be used to burn the drained and rolled garbage. It took some time to educate the housewives of Minneapolis so that they saw the benefits to be derived from this plan.

We talk much of late about the fly as a disease carrier, but so far as known, never before has there been a systematic attempt to prepare garbage so it will not act as a fly breeder. In letters received from hundreds of cities in the United States and Canada, the questions of receptacles-whether covered or handled -size, material, location and frequency of collection were dilated upon, but not one city seemed to think of the part the housewife can play in preparing the refuse from her table so it will be sanitary before reaching the can.

"Come around again when you're willing to sell for sixteen and a half, John. By-by, bless your yellow soul."

The hop dealer swung around as the soft footsteps died away.

"They're wise ones, these Chinks are," he grumbled. "Day before yesterday I could 've had the old devil's three hundred bales for fifteen, but like a fool I didn't take 'em. He knows I got to have his hops to fill my contracts, and he'll squeeze me for eighteen, at least."

A bale of hops contains approximately

A BATTERY OF HOP PICKING MACHINES

two hundred pounds. By matching his knowledge of the hop market against the guessing ability of the white trader, this Chinese hop grower of Salem, the political and hop capital of Oregon, profited to the extent of three cents a pound or eighteen hundred dollars in a few days. A few months after this episode, not at all uncommon in the hop districts, one of the largest hop firms in the Pacific Northwest, driven into a corner by the rampant hop bulls, was squeezed bodily through the wall into the hands of a re

ceiver. This firm had expected to see the usual slump in hop prices and had agreed to deliver 4,000 bales at about fifteen cents a pound, without, however, having the hops to fulfill the contracts. When delivery time came around, a flood destroyed a portion of the firm's storage, and the end came when it was discovered that only 1,700 bales of hops were left in the growers' hands on the Pacific Coast, whereupon the owners put the price out of sight.

In the fall of 1909 the man who would be the hop king of Oregon fell into a similar trap of his own digging. Relying upon his knowledge of market conditions, he bought 1,200 bales around 25 cents, expecting to unload at 30 or 35 cents a pound. Unfortunately the hop price took one of its sudden tumbles, sagged to fifteen cents, and the would-be hop king wound up with debts aggregating $90,000.

Growing hops is like a poker game. The hope of a big killing keeps the producer at it through the numerous years of low prices, and all the while, high prices or low, the kitty, in this instance the cost of picking the crop, takes its fixed rake-off. Whether the market price be five or twenty-five cents a pound, the cost of producing, picking, and curing the crop of the Pacific Coast never varies from nine or ten cents a pound. Should the price go too high, many brewers turn from the expensive natural ingredient of beer to cheap chemical substitutes"dope," the growers say-and at all times the brewmasters, the rotund beer

experts of German extraction, are willing to pay, for some occult reason, three times the prevailing price of Pacific Coast hops for the imported product of the Fatherland.

With all these factors gnawing greedily at their pocketbooks, the Pacific Coast growers producing annually 90,000 bales of hops have been trying for years to reduce the cost, especially the expense of picking. Hops must be picked in a hurry, as soon as the crop reaches maturity. If the crop is allowed to stay on the vines too long, it loses in flavor and value. Late in the summer, when the call for harvest hands is loud and insistent everywhere, the country is scoured for hop pickers. Armies of them are needed. needed. The railroads put on special trains to move the regiments from the big cities into the hop yards, vast encampments spring up, camps filled with men, women and children who receive a cent a pound for the green hops picked by them off the thorny vines. everybody having two hands with which to pick is pressed into service, the efficiency of the average picker is low. Now and then an industrious schoolmarm runs up to four and five dollars a day, but the average daily output does not go far above a hundred pounds, to the dismay of the grower who would rather see his crop harvested in half the time.

Since

For years attempts were made to find a substitute for the army of pickers, to use mechanical appliances in garnering the crop, but all attempts failed because the hop growers insisted upon an

apparatus that could be taken into the fields. Only when E. Clemens Horst, the largest hop grower in the world, owning some ten thousand acres in hops along the Pacific Coast, decided to follow Mahomet's example and go to the mountain, did success reward the efforts. The problem of mechanical hop picking was solved by taking the hop-laden vines to

the machine instead of trying to work the machine between the rows of tall vines.

Under the old system hundreds of pickers invaded the hop yards, swarming among the vines in each other's way until the stalks were bare. Under the new system three men cut off the vines close to the ground, load them upon wagons and take them to the battery of machines