COXCLUSIOXS 109 



tion coefficients and lines of regression in determining prices from 

 business conditions and the supply. In college (and the colleges 

 have been most neglectful in this matter) specific problems should 

 be worked out in great detail. Students in such classes should 

 have access to adding machines, calculating machines, rechentaf- 

 fels, and other modern devices for making calculations easy and 

 accurate. But the most important thing of all just now is ade- 

 quate research by colleges, by experiment stations, and by govern- 

 mental departments. The government and market agencies must 

 continue to improve their statistical records, and research students 

 must study these records with all the refinements of statistical 

 method. 



An excellent start along this line has been made by the Harvard 

 University Committee on Economic Research. This committee 

 seems to be concerned altogether with the industrial world. It is 

 essential that the agricultural world be given similar service. 



The object of it all is to discover the best possible kind of ma- 

 chinery thru which the law of supply and demand may work to the 

 end that violent fluctuations in supply and demand may be re- 

 duced to the lowest possible point consistent with changing weather 

 and unforeseeable accidents. The present price system is not per- 

 fect; it can be improved. But before improvements can be made, 

 the present system must be studied with the greatest thoroness. 

 The great weakness of the present price system is that the men who 

 operate it are concerned chiefly with making the greatest possible 

 profit, and not at all with making the law of supply and demand 

 operate smoothly on a price level roughl}' equivalent to cost of 

 production. 



The highest purpose of our price system should be to tell pro- 

 ducers truthfully what to do in the future, instead of capitalizing 

 a temporary supply and demand situation to the advantage of cer- 

 tain bright speculators. The $4,50 price for hogs in January of 

 1908 was a lie so far as it guided the future action of hog pro- 

 ducers. So also was the $11 price in March of 1910. Both prices 

 told the approximate truth about a temporary supply-and-demand 

 situation. But both were fundamentally lies. Our whole loissez 

 faire system is full of lies of this sort. Surely we have enough in 

 tlie way of legitimate ph^^sical handicaps such as weather and pests 

 so that we should be willing to run our price system more truth- 

 fully. 



So far as farmers are concerned, the object of studies of this 

 kind is, first, to play the price game as well as capital and labor ; 

 and, second, to co-operate with capital and labor to enforce prices 



