As the Food Administrator had no power to fix prices by law, nor to guarantee a price for the producer backed by money in the U. S. Treasury as in the case of the wheat guarantee, the only means available to him to assure a stable minimum price for hogs was to come to an agreement with the principal buyers both of hogs and the prepared pork products that they would pay a price which would make this minimum possible. This was accomplished by Hoover, with the approval of the President, in the following way: The Allies agreed with the United States that their purchases of food supplies would be made through the Food Administration (as already explained earlier in this book). They then agreed with the Food Administrator that their orders for pork and pork products might be placed with the packers at prices which would enable the packers to buy the hogs offered them at not less than the minimum price agreed to between the Food Administrator and the producers. The orders for our Army and Navy, and for other large buyers, such as the Belgian Relief and Red Cross, were also placed through the Food Administration upon the same price basis. The packers then agreed with the Food Administration that if these orders were placed with them at the stated prices they would pay to the producer the minimum price announced by the Food Administration. The combined orders of these principal buyers called for from thirty to forty per cent of the pork and pork products produced in the United States, and the price paid by them would obviously determine the price for the whole amount. With this power, derived solely by agreement, and not, as many of the producers seemed to understand, or rather, misunderstand, by governmental authority exercised, as in the case of wheat, to establish a government-backed guarantee, the Food Administrator announced on November 3, 1917, that: