SOME CONCLUSIVE COMPARISONS 183 



serve the course of the price of middlings under 

 the aegis of the Brain Trust. Starting at $1.50 a 

 hundred in 1933 they rose to a peak of $2.60 a 

 hundred in the late spring of 1937. Not long there- 

 afteralthough it was probably inaudible in the 

 roar and clamor of the capital the recessional 

 sounded off. The last bag of middlings bought in 

 1937 was billed at $1.65. These are all, let me re- 

 peat, retail prices. What relation they bear to 

 wholesale price movements is of no interest to me. 

 What does interest me is that the fluctuations in 

 the consumer's price of pork are out of all pro- 

 portion to those in the price of feed. Assuming it 

 takes four hundred pounds of middlings to pro- 

 duce a hundred pounds of dressed pork, then: 



100 pounds that cost the consumer $11.80 in 1933/4 



cost the farmer }6.oo. 

 100 pounds that cost the consumer $32.20 in 1936/7 



cost the farmer $10.40. 

 100 pounds that cost the consumer $22.10 in 1937/8 



cost the farmer $6.60. 



The farm cost is back where it started, while the 

 consumer is still paying double. At the later high 

 prices of pork the home-use producer is nearly 

 three times better off than he was in the low-price 

 era. 



There is another comparison that illustrates 

 the economic worth of the home-use farm. To 



