COST OF PRODUCTION 29 



ticians. At the present time very few men are available for work 

 of this sort. The ordinary man who tries to fix prices by the 

 ratio method is biased by either personal or class interests. A 

 notable example of this was the Chicago Milk Commission, com- 

 posed of leading citizens of the state of Illinois, which sat from 

 December, 1917, to February, 1918, and finally offered as a meth- 

 od of milk price determination the ratio method. The majority 

 of the members of this Milk Commission were city people, and on 

 that account, consciously or unconsciously, they twisted the ratio 

 method so as to bring about a low price for milk. If the majority 

 of the commission had been farmers, they could have twisted the 

 ratio method to bring about a much higher price for milk. But 

 there are now, and in the future will be more, men properly trained 

 in the weighting of agricultural index numbers, who can look into 

 matters of this sort with a scientific nicety and determine prices 

 by the ratio method with the greatest accuracy, by which we mean 

 the minimum of bias toward either producer or consumer. 



It is our intention in this book to indicate ways of securing 

 ratio prices for various agricultural products. The methods out- 

 lined in succeeding chapters are definite and exact ; we grant, how- 

 ever, that they may be made more comprehensive and be further 

 refined so as to cover their respective fields in more effective 

 fashion. 



