88 FARM MANAGEMENT 



tion on account of prices, it would appear to be good 

 policy to raise a considerable number of pigs in the 

 second or third year of low prices, and to be cautious 

 about the number raised in the second and third years 

 of high prices. When the majority are disgusted with 

 the business is a good time to buy; when the majority 

 are declaring that prices will never again be low is a good 

 time to sell. An axiom of those who speculate in stocks 

 and bonds expresses the same idea, to sell on a rising 

 market and buy on a falling market. 



Prices of horses show the same cycle, but it takes a 

 long time to grow enough colts to overstock the market, 

 apparently eight to ten years. (See Figure 22.) Those 

 who were first to start raising colts after the ruinous 

 prices of 1896 have made a good profit. When the price 

 of horses drops very low, it would appear to be the part 

 of wisdom to sell all the old horses and buy young ones 

 that will still be living when prices rise. The old ones 

 will not bring much, but even if they bring nothing, the 

 prices of young horses are so low as to make this a wise 

 practice. If one is in a region adapted to horse produc- 

 tion, the young horses should be mares and should be 

 bred. The fact that the neighbors are raising no colts 

 indicates that when the colts raised are five or six years 

 old, there will be a shortage of horses. 



The fact that horses are high is no indication that they 

 will be high when a young colt becomes a horse; neither 

 does the fact that horses are low indicate that they ivill be 

 low when the colt is grown. It is not the price of horses, 

 but the number of colts that are being raised, that sug- 

 gests the probable profits from colt production. 



Products that cannot be kept from year to year have 

 extreme variations in price. This results in considerable 



