34i THE AGRICULTURAL BLOC 



by farmers on March 1 of several years, which, 

 was as follows : 



Million Bushels 



1910 160 



1»12 122 



1914 162 



1917 101 



1918 Ill 



It will be seen that the amount held in the 

 war years, 1917 and 1918, was much lower than 

 the average of previous years. In fact, fanners 

 scraped the bins before the harvest of 1918, 

 bringing the surplus down to only eight million 

 bushels left in farmers' hands — a dangerously 

 low surplus. 



The efforts at stabilizing pork production 

 were somewhat less irritating to farmers and 

 the complaint arising from this situation was 

 due more to the indefiniteness of the proposi- 

 tion than to the actual relation that was fixed 

 betw^een the price of hogs and the price of com. 

 The Government made fewer mistakes in the 

 handling of the live stock situation than in some 

 other lines. It did, however, discourage the 

 production of highly finished beef at a time when 

 the market was not demanding a large amount 

 of light-weight beef. The result was a serious 

 break in the prices of cattle and a very large 

 and unnecessary loss to cattle growers who sold 



