The committee of some fifteen men, supposedly representing the American hog producers, which met with the United States Food Administration in this matter, were not well educated along statistical or economic lines, and they went down to defeat in September, 1918, scarcely realizing just what the Food Administration had done to them. Only two members of this committee had served on the original commission, and it was impossible for them to give the other members a full comprehension of what the ratio meant. When the facts became known, widespread indignation among the farmers of the corn belt compelled the Food Administration to abandon the hypocritical pretense of living up to the thirteen-bushel ratio and come out flatly for a $17.50 minimum, which was really a ratio of 10.8 bushels. The Food Administration was able to thus repudiate in part its definite obligation to hog producers, because there were no thoroly organized farmers with leaders trained to think in terms of statistics and economics. The author does not care to create a prejudice against the Food Administration. It probably did its work as efficiently as any branch of the government during the war. The sole purpose is to point out to agricultural students the extreme disadvantage under which farmers labor in bargaining with other classes of society. It is hoped that as farmers learn to follow the example of keen business men and employ trained experts to look after their interests, and as farm leaders become better trained in statistics, economics and business principles, this disadvantage will disappear. SUPPLY AND DEMAND VERSUS COST OF PRODUCTION What makes hour-by-hour and day-by-day prices under _laissez faire_ conditions is not cost of production, but that brute force which we call “supply and demand.” In its blind groping, this force necessarily approximates cost of production as an average of any long period of time. But it never specifically recognizes cost of production as a factor which should be considered. It approximates cost of production because it has to, not because it wants to.