TWENTY-FIRST ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART V 459 



supplies and thus to avoid great fluctuations in receipts and consequently 

 in prices. This involves a fairly accurate determination of the available 

 supplies for given periods and then the regulation of the market move- 

 ment to a daily and weekly volume to best distribute these supplies uni- 

 formly and in accordance with market demands. 



With the total supply fairly well known, there is little occasion for the 

 price fluctuations that now prevail and that have little relation to the 

 consumptive demand for the products. The bulk of the hogs go into cured 

 products and it is the prices of these products rather than that of fresh 

 pork that determines the value of hogs, or of the greater part of them. 

 But the prices of these cured products are not subject to the variations 

 in demand and the price fluctuations of fresh meats, for they go into con- 

 sumption in a fairly uniform manner and do not need to be forced onto 

 the market according to the volume of the weekly arrivals of hogs. 

 According to the supporters of future trading, hog prices being controlled 

 by product prices and which products are traded in for future delivery 

 should be the least variable of all livestock prices, but this is not the evi- 

 dence of the livestock markets either in the past or at present. There 

 is no reason why hog prices should not be uniform over considerable peri- 

 ods of time, a week at the minimum, and the variations in price due to 

 the total weekly rather than to the changing daily receipts. There is no 

 justification for hog prices going up and down as much as a dollar a 

 hundred within a week with no casual variations in the prices of their 

 products. 



There is considerable evidence to indicate that these fluctuations are 

 not due to legitimate market demand variations, but are due largely to 

 conditions existing in the hog markets, and especially at the Chicago 

 market, which is the principal price-determining market. This situation 

 is involved in the existence there of a large number of hog speculators 

 whose function is not at all, or but very little, the performance of some 

 market needed activity such as the better preparation of the receipts to 

 meet some special demands or to better present them to actual users, 

 but who occupy a position very much of market forestallers. It is known 

 that the actual users, packers, local butchers, and shippers, have need 

 of a daily supply of hogs to fill their orders and to keep their killing 

 plants going, and that they are more or less under pressure to secure 

 this supply. With a short run these speculators go into the market early 

 and buy up a large number of hogs with no other intention than of selling 

 them again on the same market to the actual users at an advance — that 

 is, they forestall the market and by so doing may advance in temporarily. 

 But, unless this advance has some justification in the increasing demand 

 and higher prices for products, it is entirely artificial and is bound to 

 disappear as soon as the receipts increase. Then when the advantage is 

 with the buyers for use, they push it to the point of recompensing them- 

 selves for the added price they were forced to pay, so we have the result 

 of the market being both advanced artificially and reduced unwarrantably 

 with price fluctuations unjustifiable by the only real controlling element, 

 which is the prices of resultant products. 



These fluctuations bring somewhat higher prices to the limited number 

 of shippers who happen by chance to be on the favorable market, but they 



