The ratio method of price determination was first publicly recognized in the United States by the Food Administration, in November of 1917. A commission of seven swine men had been appointed by the Food Administration to determine the cost of producing hogs, and in submitting their report the commission adopted practically without change the ratio method of price determination as advocated in Wallaces’ Farmer during the summer and fall of 1917. The commission, composed of expert swine men from all over the United States, after a careful technical survey of the situation and consideration of the figures submitted by the author, came to the conclusion that the ratio method actually expressed cost of production more simply and accurately than any other method. In its simplest form, the hog producer of fifty years ago grasped the ratio idea. Without any statistical investigation, the swine growers of those days came to the conclusion that they could make money when they sold their hogs for a value per hundredweight of more than the value of ten bushels of corn. For a generation or two, hog men looked on a ratio of ten bushels of corn to one hundred pounds of hog flesh as about right, altho they felt that such a ratio might not cover risk. From an exact statistical standpoint, take the ten-year period extending from 1907 to 1916, inclusive. During that time No. 2 Chicago corn averaged 66.3 cents a bushel, whereas hogs averaged $7.53 per hundredweight. The ratio for that particular ten-year period was 11.4 bushels of Chicago No. 2 corn to equal in value one hundred pounds of Chicago hog flesh. How uniform is this ratio between corn and hogs from decade to decade may be judged from the following table, which gives the ratios as they have prevailed year by year for the past sixty years, and the average by decades. The second column shows the number of bushels of corn required each year to equal in value one hundred pounds of live hog: 1858–1867. 1858 8.7 1859 7.1 1860 12.4 1861 14.0 1862 10.0 1863 7.0 1868–1877. 1868 9.5 1869 14.0 1870 11.9 1871 10.2 1872 11.1 1873 12.3 1864 7.3 1865 16.3 1866 16.2 1867 7.2 ———— Ten-year average 10.6