40 
BULLETIN 1440, IT. S. 
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE' 
study upon this particular point, taking account of more of the 
factors other than price which may effect exports, would give a 
curve which would be more like the traditional demand curve; 
but the curve as it stands serves as at least a rough device for cor- 
recting the exports to take account of the changes in volume in 
response to price changes. 
In so far as this curve does measure the true export demand, it 
would indicate that during the pre-war period foreign demand for pork 
was ordinarily rather elastic up to the point of exports of 100,000,000 
pounds per month, but that above that point the elasticity became 
much less, and relatively larger reductions in price were necessary 
to cause further increases in exports. 
INDEX OF TOTAL DEMAND 
An index of total demand was arrived at by exactly the same 
general procedure as was the index of foreign demand. In this 
case, however, it was hardly fair to measure demand as the relation 
PRICE OF 
HOGS IN 
TERMS OF 
1913 DOLLARS 
PER CWT. 
9.00 
.00 
7.00 
6.00 
5.00 
HOG PRICES AND EXPORT DEMAND 
50 60 70 80 90 100 110 
MILLIONS OF POUNDS 
EXPORTS FOR A GIVEN PRICE - PORK OR ITS EQUIVALENT 
120 
Fig. 27. — The export demand for pork and other hog products. This curve shows the average 
effect of changes in hog prices upon the quantity of pork or lard exported 
between the actual takings and the quantity normally taken at that 
price, since in point of fact the price was adjusted to such a point 
that all offerings would be taken. Hence, total demand was measured 
by the relation between what the price would ordinarily have been 
for the given supply and the actual prices. This left all the factors 
affecting demand out of consideration, the index of demand itself 
to be considered as a composite measure of the forces of demand. 
The following factors were used in the first correlation, taking 
monthly data from 1904 to 1915, inclusive: 
X15 Receipts of hogs at 11 markets, 12 month moving averages. 
Xi6 Time. 
X17 The price of heavy hogs -f- Bureau of Labor index all commodities -s- 
average seasonal variation. 
The average seasonal variation in hog prices wa,s computed by 
taking a straight-line trend for the period 1896 through 1915, ex- 
pressing the price each month as a percentage of this trend and then 
averaging these percentages for each month. By taking such a 
