proper organization. The stable prices resulting will be of incalculable benefit not only to farmers and consumers but to the majority of middlemen as well.''*

Many people have held to the opinion that the great difficulty lay in the fact that there has been lack of uniformity in the production of farm products, rather than to any especial faults of the present marketing system. "The farmer ought to stop producing so much. He ought to find out what the market can handle and then regulate his business like any other business man would," they argue. But farming is not a business that will permit of uniformity in production. As a rule, the peak of production comes in the summer and fall, when the demand for foodstuffs is not so great as during the winter. Many of the farmer's products are produced in a single month or two of the year; his production is at the lowest ebb during the winter months. This makes it necessary for him to grope more or less in the dark as to the amount he should produce because he has to plan his operations at least one year in advance of market requirements, and in some instances, two years.

Since the peak of the farmer's production must come in a few months of the year, considerably

p. 1.

*The Road To Better Marketing, Cir. 136, Univ. Wis. (1921),

Fig. 7.

HOW PRICE FLUCTUATIONS CAUSING ERRATIC PRODUCTION AFFECT BOTH THE FARMER AND THE CONSUMER.

more than it is possible for the market to consume
or use, and in other months there is little or no
production, it is obvious that the production will
exceed the demand in some seasons and be less
than the demand in others. Production cannot be
stabilized in the sense that it is in other industries,
like manufacturing, for instance.

Fig. 8.

HOW FLUCTUATING PRICES INFLUENCE THE PRODUCTION OF
HORSES AND HOGS.

Purchasing power of hogs and horses in the United States. Periods of
relatively high and low prices for hogs come at frequent intervals. Horses
have longer and more violent periods of over and under production.
-U. S. Dept. Agri., Bul. 999.

It has been this periodical glutting of the mar-
kets in certain seasons, due largely to the nature
of the farmer's business and the fact that his
financial obligations have been made to mature at
harvest time, which have caused the violent fluc-
tuations in prices. Lacking a systematic organi-
zation in his business as a whole, the farmer has

50

100

been unable to prevent this seasonal glutting of the markets, and "conditions" have been such as to encourage the middlemen who absorb the market offerings to depress prices as far as they can safely go in order to buy their raw material as cheaply as possible. Then when the glutting has ceased and the oversupply withdrawn from the open market, then prices have continued to mount as high as the public would stand for it. This means, as high as there was ability to pay on the part of the consumers.

The first step in bringing order out of chaos is to adopt the principle of orderly marketing. The glutting of the markets must be stopped before we can give proper attention to the production side of farming. The limitation of production can never bring about the desired results so long as the menace of disorderly marketing threatens the farmers. We cannot hope to remedy the situation by swinging around and attempting disorderly production. Seasonal glutting of the market, even in a normal production year, depresses prices. That must be corrected before we can turn to other considerations.

"The surplus which causes the flooding of the markets," says Macklin, "is not caused by any one farmer alone but by all the farmers producing a given product.... This, therefore, is not a local

Few products are matured in such a short season as peas for canning purposes. Were it not for organization most of the crop would have no value at all. Price stabilization has been realized to a great extent by relatively efficient distribution of the finished product.

-Wisconsin Bulletin 136.