MILK PRICES 195 



much, if any, is to be used in butter manufacture, how 

 much for cheese, how much for fluid consumption, how 

 much for condensing, etc. Many plants, of course, make 

 butter only; others make cheese only. Many, however, 

 are so equipped that they can earily change from one line 

 of production to another according as one or the other is 

 more profitable. In the aggregate the number of plants 

 which can thus change from one line to another is suffi- 

 ciently large to keep a fairly close balance between the 

 various use-demands, and these use-demands focus on 

 the various receiving points. 



The individuals who are engaged as producers and 

 dealers have very real problems to face in trying to arrive 

 at prices. For wheat and corn there are well regulated 

 market places or exchanges at which the various forces 

 back of supply and demand can register at intervals of 

 minutes or even seconds. Changes are here registered 

 in cents and eighths of a cent and these changes flashed 

 to various parts of the world by telegraph and tele- 

 phone. 



Similar mechanisms facilitate the determination of 

 market prices of many other basic commodities, such as 

 cotton, silk, coffee, sugar, and, to a lesser extent, butter 

 and cheese. For milk, however, no such mechanism has 

 been developed. Consequently, when adjustments of 

 price are made at more or less regular intervals, the fluc- 

 tuations are more violent and the proper point of equi- 

 librium is more difficult to ascertain. Furthermore, price 

 adjustments are usually made for periods of a month or 

 more in advance a fact which further complicates the 

 problem. One of our leading market journals some time 

 ago proposed the idea of an open call for milk in our large 

 cities "where surplus or shortage in supply would quickly 



