Since the war, corn prices have not been the result of “supply and demand” in the sense that they were before the war. During 1919, price often came first in the corn market, and supply and demand followed afterward. For example, in January and February, 1919, corn prices broke 20 cents a bushel, in spite of the fact that receipts at central markets were decidedly below their customary level. Influential people had postulated the theory that the war was over, and that supply and demand, if given an opportunity, would operate to bring about a lower price level. They set a lower price level, but supply and demand refused to operate on the new level. The lower corn prices which prevailed during the spring of 1919, however, probably had a very material effect on the acreage planted. At any rate, there was about four per cent less corn planted in 1919 than in 1918. According to the customary view, when the supply is smaller than usual, the price should be greater than usual, and vice versa. In the hog market this does not necessarily hold true. In November of 1907, hog prices were dropped with a terrific jerk, as a result of certain unusual conditions. The drop was so great that farmers refused to market their hogs, and receipts of hogs in November of 1907 were about one-third smaller than in the ordinary November. The price of hogs was lower than customary by about one-fourth, and the supply of hogs marketed was less by about one-third. A similar situation prevailed in August of 1919. Prices dropped about $5 per hundredweight, or faster than ever before in history. Receipts also dropped, and much fewer hogs were received than in the ordinary August. In both 1907 and 1919, the packers figured that the business world was so upset that to be on the safe side they would best buy their hogs cheaper than they had been buying them. Farmers were slow to realize just how great the disturbances had been in the business world, and failed to understand that in a situation of this sort the packers could put thru their program for lower prices, in spite of reduced hog receipts for a month or two. It is in the very nature of things that the packers can outlast the farmers at such a game. The packers know more accurately than the farmers the supply-and-demand conditions, and they know that after a hog reaches two hundred pounds, it is only a question of weeks till the farmer will let him go, no matter what the price. It will take an extraordinarily able farmers’ organization to beat the packers at this game, an organization which holds as its trump card “ultimate supply and demand.”