THE IMPACT OF WAR 95 



in farmer circles, for each hundred pounds of hog the producer should 

 receive thirteen or fourteen times the average cost per bushel of the corn 

 fed to the hogs. Hence, with seventy-five-cent corn, the price of hogs 

 should have been not less than $9.75 per hundredweight rather than $8.00. 

 One curious result of this imbalance was that more and more hogs were 

 thrown on the market, thus keeping the hog price down. 17 



By the year 1916 the hog price had begun to rise, but the amount of 

 pork and pork products available for shipment overseas was not nearly 

 enough to supply the demand. With the entrance of the United States into 

 the war and the creation of the Food Administration, every effort was 

 made to remedy this situation. The Food Administration, however, made 

 no attempt to fix livestock prices in a manner as forthright as it used in 

 pegging the price of wheat. What it did instead was to enlist the coopera- 

 tion of the middlemen. In this way it sought to assure a price of $15.50 

 per hundredweight for hogs, and to manipulate the corn-hog ratio in 

 such fashion that the farmer would be ensured thirteen times the average 

 cost per bushel of the corn fed into the hogs for each hundred pounds of 

 hog ready for market. In the fall of 1917 the Chicago Board of Trade put 

 a maximum price of $1.28 on all future deliveries of corn and refused to 

 permit a higher price to be quoted. 18 



While the Food Administration found it impracticable to maintain 

 the thirteen-to-one ratio, it did succeed in keeping hog prices at a reason- 

 ably high figure. In the fall of 1917 hogs averaged about $15 per hundred- 

 weight; by September, 1918, they reached $17.50; and by the summer of 

 1919 they stood at over $19. Although this was less than the farmers 

 claimed they needed, it was enough to stimulate production. Exports of 

 lard in 1917 had actually dropped below the figure for the year before, but 

 in 1918 they rose by more than 47 per cent, and in 1919 by nearly 39 per 

 cent more. Exports of such pork products as bacon, ham, and shoulders 

 showed similar enormous gains. Here again the way was paved for a 



17. Ibid., p. 284; Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1920, p. 146; Wallaces' 

 Farmer, XXXIX (September 18, 1914), p. 1256; XL (March 19, 1915), p. 480; XLI 

 (February 25, 1916), p. 310; XLIII (April 12, 1918), p. 640; (October n, 1918), 

 p. 1466. 



1 8. Genung, in Farmers in a Changing World, p. 286; Wallaces' Farmer, XLIII 

 (March 15, 1918), pp. 484-85. 



