CORPORATE FACTORS IN PROGRESS 389 



begets a sympathetic movement in grain and stocks. In effect 

 they are revalued day by day, and grain and stock operators 

 readjust their calculations to every change. 



To the British phlegm that may seem a very gratuitous 

 and unprofitable kind of worry, but the Americans love it. 

 Discounting the harvest several months in advance is one of 

 their most favorite methods of quick money making. Between 

 them the government statisticians and the "grain pit" have 

 reduced it to a science. The crops are valued on a system 

 of percentages which looks very exact, but is capable of great 

 discrepancies. On the wheat crop of 1901 the department 

 of agriculture and the census department differed about a 

 hundred million bushels on wheat alone. The standard 

 represented in the official tables by 100 is obtained by averag- 

 ing the actual harvests of the previous five years. In 1902 

 100 meant 16.9 bushels per acre of winter wheat, 17.7 bushels 

 of spring wheat, 34.7 bushels of oats, 15.7 bushels of rye, and 

 31 bushels of corn. If on a given date " condition" was re- 

 ported at 90, that implied a probable crop one tenth smaller 

 than the average of the preceding five years. If " condition" 

 were 80, that would be one fifth smaller than the average of 

 the preceding five years, and so on. 



The department of agriculture very prudently does not 

 go beyond percentages, but these, as soon as published, are 

 laid hold of by another set of statisticans who work out from 

 them the estimated yields. Taking the average of each crop, 

 they multiply it by the number of bushels per acre which the 

 percentage of "condition" indicates. On this branch of the 

 crop estimates the chief authority is Mr. J. C. Brown, the 

 statistician of the New York produce exchange. He gives the 

 finishing touch to them, and the "grain pit" has so much 

 faith in him that immediately his figures appear operators pro- 

 ceed to trade on them. If they foreshadow a light crop — 

 that is, in the slang of Wall street, a "bull point"— the bulls 

 redouble their buying. If the forecast be for a heavy crop, 

 the opposite effect happens, and the bears take their turn. 

 Technically speaking, they "sell the market down." Thus 

 the "grain pit" ebbs and flows until the last grain report of 

 the season has appeared. 



