78,
71,789 acres were grown. The great increase prior to that year was due
to the abolition of the excise duty in 1862, which on an average was
equal to an annual charge of nearly L7 an acre.[671] This encouraged
hop-growing more than the taking off of the import duty in the same
year discouraged it. In 1882 there was a very small crop in England,
which raised the average price to L18 10s. a cwt.; some choice samples
fetching L30 a cwt.; growers who had good crops realizing much more
than the freehold value of the hop yards. This, however, was most
unfortunate for them, as it led to a great increase in the use of hop
substitutes, such as quassia, chiretta, colombo, gentian, &c., which,
with the decreasing consumption of beer and the demand for lighter
beer, has done more than foreign competition to lower the price and
thereby cause so large an area to be grubbed up as unprofitable, that
in 1907 it was reduced to 44,938 acres. Yet the quality of the hops
has in the last generation greatly improved in condition, quality, and
appearance. Growers also have in the same period often incurred great
expense in substituting various methods of wire-work for poles; and
washing, generally with quassia chips and soft soap and water, has
become wellnigh universal, so that the expense of growing the crop has
increased, while the price has been falling.[672] The crop has always
been an expensive one to grow; Marshall in 1798 put it at L20 an acre,
exclusive of picking, drying, and marketing[673]; and Young estimated
the total cost at the same date at L31 10s. an acre[674]; to-day L40
an acre is by no means an outside price. It may be some encouragement
to growers to remember that hops have always been subject to great
fluctuations in price; between 1693 and 1700, for instance, they
varied from 40s. to 240s. a cwt., so that they may yet see them at a
remunerative figure. 'Upon the whole', says an eighteenth-century
writer, 'though many have acquired large estates by hops, their real
advantage is perhaps questionable. By engrossing the attention of the
farmer they withdraw him from slower and more certain sources of
wealth, and encourage him to rely too much upon chance for his rent,
rather than the honest labour of the plough. To the landlord the
cultivation of hops is an evil, defrauding the arable land of its
proper quantity of manure and thereby impoverishing his estate.'

It was by this time the general opinion of men with a thoroug