There is a strategy to the timing of a determined price drive. All farmers know that such a drive may be expected in the fall of the year. A drive in the fall is partly normal as a result of the increased supply at that time, but oftentimes strategic. In the fall of 1865, following the Civil war, there was a determined price drive, roughly corresponding to the price drive initiated in August of 1919. In both cases, strategic factors were apparently paramount. Certainly, no mathematical formulation of the law of supply and demand could account for the price changes which took place in 1865 and 1919. [Illustration: Solid line, U. S. exports; dotted line, British exchange in U. S. Dotted line is inverted to show how heavy exports and weak exchange go together. Chart is based on 1903–1913 conditions. ] Farmers have discovered since 1914 that such disturbances as foot-and-mouth disease, interrupted railroad service, and falling foreign exchange may influence prices without changing either potential supply or potential demand. They have suspected the “interests” of manipulating foreign exchange in the fall of the year to make lower price for farm products. They have known that ocean freights have generally advanced in the fall of the year, to the detriment of farm product prices in the United States, and they have suspected that part of this advance in ocean freight rates was due to England trying to get a large return on her shipping and at the same time buy her food more cheaply. The two charts presented herewith indicate the normal seasonal trends, during the decade preceding the war, of exports from the United States as related to British exchange, and to ocean freights from New York to Liverpool. It will be noted that United States prices must necessarily be weakened in the fall of the year by weak British exchange and high ocean freights. The speculative price as set from day to day is sometimes a result of technical situations altogether apart from supply and demand. Ordinarily, the speculative price as represented by “futures” and the cash price move in sympathy, but occasionally a scared “short” finds the market oversold and bids up prices unduly in an effort to cover, or a tired “long” finds the market overbought and sends prices down unduly in an effort to sell. And occasionally there is manipulation—interests working together to make the price temporarily higher or lower than a normal working of supply and demand would justify. Sometimes the cash markets, following the lead of the speculative markets, may get out of line with ultimate supply-and-demand conditions for several months at a time. CRITICISM OF OUR PRICE-MAKING SYSTEM