FACTORS AFFECTING THE PRICE OF HOGS 23 
and in 1908 hog prices were low compared with corn; and in 1909 
and 1910 there was a marked falling off in hog receipts. After the 
war the same relation was again apparent; the high hog prices (rela- 
tive to corn) in 1921 and 1922 were followed by increased hog re- 
ceipts in 1923 and 1924, and the low prices of 1924 by reduced re- 
ceipts in late 1925. 
Unfortunately, however, this tendency of farmers to readjust their 
production to the price always seems to carry them too far in the other 
direction, because of the piling up of the changes before they are re- 
flected in market receipts and in prices. Thus in the spring of 1906, 
when hog prices (compared with corn prices) became favorable for 
the first time in several years, farmers increased the number of sows 
bred for fall farrowing. During that fall and winter the increased 
breedings had as yet had no effect on the market receipts or on the 
prices, and so with continued favorable prices breeding droves were 
still further increased in the fall of 1908 and the early spring of 1907. 
Then in late 1907 and in 1908 these accumulated increases began to 
show up in larger and larger market receipts, prices were forced down, 
and conditions were once more unfavorable to hog production. 
This explains the more or less regular "cycles" which have charac- 
terized hog prices ever since records have been kept. Starting with a 
period of corn and hog prices favorable to hog production, farmers 
breed more sows, and continue to increase their breeding stock so 
long as the current price relation is favorable, ignoring the fact that 
by the time the pigs will be ready for market the relation may have 
changed. Then when this accumulated increase in breeding finally 
appears as market receipts, the market for hogs is soon oversupplied, 
and hog prices become unfavorable. Hog producers begin to con- 
tract their breeding. But for some time thereafter the surplus of pigs 
resulting from the previous heavy breeding continues to reach the 
markets and hold prices low, and farmers continue to reduce breeding 
herds, in spite of the fact that the reduction in breeding stock already 
made will reduce the pig crop enough to bring hogs back to a profitable 
basis. 
So the " cycle" tends to be self -perpetuating, each period of rela- 
tively favorable hog prices causing too great an expansion in produc- 
tion before prices become unprofitable, and each period of relatively 
unfavorable prices, which in the past has inevitably followed, causing 
too great a reduction in breeding before favorable prices are restored. 
The basic reason for the continuation of the hog-production cycle 
has been failure of producers to look ahead. Because corn is high and 
hogs are cheap right now is no reason to conclude that the same situa- 
tion will hold next year. There is no way to judge the future but by 
the past. But apparently most hog producers have been so short- 
sighted in their view of the past that most of them have thought, 
or at any rate have acted, on the assumption that one year would 
be followed by another just like it, rather than bj another just like 
those which previously had followed years when conditions were 
similar. 
RELATION BETWEEN PRICE RATIOS AND THE WEIGHT OF HOGS 
Besides the effect of the relation of corn prices to hog prices on the 
number of hogs produced, this price relation also affects the weight to 
which hogs are fattened. Every hog producer knows that it takes 
