To refine the method to meet market conditions, we need to know the ratio between corn and hogs at different seasons of the year. There are seasonal periods of over-supply and scarcity of both corn and hogs. In November, for instance, the 1907–1916 price of corn was 67.2 cents and the price of hogs $7.23, or a ratio of 10.6 bushels to one hundred pounds of hog flesh, while in March of the ten-year period the average price of corn was 61.7 cents and the price of hogs $7.66, or a ratio of 12.4 bushels of corn for one hundred pounds of hog flesh. In like manner, there is a fairly normal ratio for each month of the year and for each week of the year. All this is on the assumption that hogs are simply condensed corn. It does not take into account the fact that hogs have been made out of corn at varying values during a period of about a year preceding time of marketing. Obviously, then, we must have a composite corn value. In matters of this sort, statisticians know that it is absolutely impossible to weight matters so as to represent actual conditions, but at the same time they know that absolute accuracy is not at all essential, that in fact a difference in weighting will ordinarily make very little difference in results. While the author personally recommended to the commission appointed by the Food Administration to investigate cost of producing hogs, a slightly different weighting, yet nevertheless we will use here the weighting recommended by that committee. The committee assumed that the corn going into the making of a hog was distributed over twelve months; that during the first month 2 per cent of this corn went into the hog or its dam; the second month, 2 per cent; third month, 2 per cent; fourth month, 3 per cent; fifth month, 4 per cent; sixth month, 6 per cent; seventh month, 5 per cent; eighth month, 9 per cent; ninth month, 15 per cent; tenth month, 20 per cent; eleventh month, 17 per cent, and twelfth month, 15 per cent. Securing composite corn values by this kind of weighting, we find that as an average of the ten-year period, 1907–1916, the January ratio was 11 bushels; February, 11.6 bushels; March, 12.4 bushels; April, 12.7 bushels; May, 12.3 bushels; June, 12.1 bushels; July, 12 bushels; August, 11.8 bushels; September, 11.8 bushels; October, 11.3 bushels; November, 10.6 bushels, and December, 10.4 bushels. [Illustration: Illustrating the departure of actual Chicago hog prices from the ten-year standard ratio, corrected seasonally. ] For sake of example, determine cost of producing hogs for the Chicago market for the month of April, 1918. Corn values month by month, beginning April, 1917, were as follows: 144.9 cents, 163.9 cents, 170.7 cents, 200 cents, 197.2 cents, 208.6 cents, 199.2 cents, 201 cents, 173.2 cents, 180.6 cents, 174.5 cents, and 172.3 cents. Weighting these on the basis indicated, we get a composite value of corn of 182.5 cents.