454 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



"feel" as to the state of the market are much more valuable qualifications 

 than expert knowledge as to cattle. This trading skill, as well as knowl- 

 edge of cattle, is far from uniform among the selling forces so that it is 

 no unusual thing to see sales that look out of line even on a steady 

 market and on a bad market where the buyer's advantage is pushed to the 

 full, and competition among salesmen to get rid of their consignments is 

 almost panicky, many such sales are in evidence. The great disability, 

 though, is not in the lack of ability among salesmen varied as this may 

 be, but in the system itself that sends an unregulated supply of a com- 

 modity to market where it has to be sold within a very limited time. 



I pass now from the somewhat detailed description of the activities of 

 the bureau to a more general consideration of the marketing problems 

 that confront Iowa producers. Iowa is the first state in the production of 

 cattle for slaughter and of hogs, and hence the most interested of all the 

 agricultural states in the improvements in the marketing of these two 

 kinds of stock. The problem that has to be considered and solved is to 

 market this stock so that it will bring the higjiest net returns to the pro- 

 ducers, and among various possible methods the one that does this will 

 be the one that will finally prevail. But along with this problem arises 

 another question, whether in the distribution of this highest net return, 

 producers are to fare on a basis something approaching equality for 

 similar products produced under similar conditions, or whether it is 

 to be distributed unequally, due in small part, perhaps, to better market 

 judgment or firmer financial position in awaiting a market but in great 

 part to chance; whether producers as a whole are willing to forego the 

 possibility that each has of being among the smaller number that got 

 the higher return under the present method of sending these commodi- 

 ties to market in order that the total and thus the average, return may be 

 larger, which involves the matter of trying to devise some methods of 

 stabilizing prices by means of controlling the movement to market. For it 

 may be set down for certain that until some such method of controlling 

 the flow of the available supply into the market hopper is established, 

 the highest possible net return for the whole production cannot be ob- 

 tained. 



But before touching upon the question of controlling the movement to 

 market, some consideration should be given to the nature of the com- 

 modities to be marketed. The marketing problem has been confused 

 because of the tendency to consider it the same for all classes of stock, 

 this confusion arising from the fact that at the present time all classes 

 are marketed largely through the use of the same machinery. Cattle and 

 hogs, confining ourselves to those two kinds of stock, are handled by 

 the same local marketing agencies, either shipped by the producers, sold 

 to a local buyer, or handled by a co-operative shipping association; go in 

 the same kind of cars to the same markets, are sold by the same com- 

 mission firms, all organized in a single exchange, and are bought by 

 much the same buyers; but the forces and conditions that influence or 

 control their production, that determine their marketing, that decide the 

 price that can be paid for them, are very different so that no more con- 



