WHERE PIGS IS PROFITS 10$ 



production by mill feed. I well remember the in- 

 dignation of one publicist who quoted an Iowa 

 hog farmer as telling a shop keeper that before he 

 would pay ten cents a pound for ham he would 

 b'gosh go home and make ham off one of his own 

 pigs an unorthodox declaration of hideous rash- 

 ness. 



These same records of mine show that a pig 

 which would not fetch three dollars on the hoof 

 and the farm was worth to us when all dressed up 

 for the table, at home and at the above retail 

 prices, twenty-seven dollars and eighty cents. Our 

 profit over all production costs was between four 

 and five hundred per cent. The spread was so large 

 as to make the typical industrialist's dream of the 

 millennium look silly. Yet in the winter of 1935-36 

 an identical pig, with but insignificant production- 

 cost increase, assayed nearly eighty dollars. Even 

 now that happy days are here again and gone the 

 gross value of such a pig, for home consumption, 

 is nearer eighty than twenty-seven dollars. 



Before I could start raising pigs I had to know 

 what local regulations there might be against it. 

 Many communities, especially in the neighbor- 

 hood of large cities, have such. They are usually, 

 as they are here, aimed against commercial pig- 

 geries, exempting the farmer who raises a small 

 herd for home use. One of the pleasantest, most 

 heart-warming by-products of part-time farming, 



