The Washington times., 1914-11-08
THE PRICE OF MEATS.

fication for an advance in the prices.
That the advance has started, and
that it is going to continue this
week, is reported from big consum-
ing centers, and the rapid extension
of the quarantine against the foot
and-mouth disease is given as the
reason. The quarantine has been
carried already to ten States. New
ertheless the agents of the national
packers insist that they have taken
no steps that warrant a general ad-
vance of retail prices and they in
sist that plenty of dressed meat is
coming from the big packing cities,
and will continue to come. If there
is a general increase of prices, they
declare, the retailers will be to
blame, and the public will be the vic
tim of gouge.
This is the repetition of an old
and too familiar story. 1t is a re-
markable fact that the advance in
meat prices is very commonly the
subject of sharp variation of opinion.
Time and again, prices have been
hoisted, while all the people among
whom the responsibility seemed to
rest were insisting that they didn't
do it. The public manages to pay
the bills-or go meatless-and won
ders who has been doing the dam
age. Rather strange that invariably
there is. such difficulty locating the
blame for a condition that would
seem easy to follow to its source.
1t is not always the upward move
ment of prices that seems illogical
and inexplainable. The course of
prices for meat on the hoof has been
startling this year, especially since
the war opened, to many producers
of stock. Their expectation of sharp
advances and big and sudden profits,
as a result of the war, have not been
realized. On the other hand they
have been distinctly disappointed, and
not a few feeders of stock for the
market have found themselves load
ed up with animals on which they
are in danger of losing money. Men
who declined to buy feeders few
months ago, believing the market
did not insure profits, are in many
cases congratulating themselves now.
The ultimate effect of such an epi-
demic as the foot-and-mouth out
break is to increase prices because
it must necessarily reduce supplies
of stock. Some will be sacrificed to
the disease, some to the rigorous
methods necessary for suppression,
and some to the psychological con-
ditions incident to such an outbreak:
the fact that stock raisers lose their
nerve about increasing their herds in
the face of such menace. But on
the other hand the immediate effect
is very apt to be rushing of sup
plies to market, which in the natural
course would bring about an immedi-
ate reduction of prices, to be fol-
lowed by an ultimate advance.
Analysis of the market results Of
hog cholera epidemics in particular
communities bears out this view.
Let cholera become widely epidemic,
and farmers will hurry their hogs to
market, many of them in unfinished
condition. The poor condition, quite
as much as the rush of supplies, will
tend to bear prices. Thus comes the
immediate depression.
But a few months later, when it is
realized that the new generation of
pigs has been to a considerable ex-
tent sacrificed, and when it is appar-
ent also that a great number of hogs
have been turned into meat at frac-
tional weights-then comes the re-
action, and prices bound upward.
But the rapidity with which these
conditions compensate themselves is
remarkable. The supply of hogs be-
ing much reduced, the price goes up.
At the same time corn goes down,
because corn's chief market is in
the hog-feeding lots. The farmer
sees hogs high and corn low, which
is his opportunity. He rushes out to
buy corn, and strains all efforts to
produce new supply of pigs; and
thus with marvellous celerity the bal
ance is restored.
1t will be much the same in this
instance of the foot-and-mouth cpl
demic. Compared to the whole ma
tional supply of cattle, the number
Immediately involved in this cpl
demic will not be important. But
the psychological effects will be i'm
portant in proportion to the public
ity given to the trouble.