investigate the whole
matter. This committee made a report late in October, 1917, which, after
setting out the situation in detail and calling attention to the
imperative need of a stimulation of production, declared that although
hog production for the ten years ending 1916 had been maintained on a
ratio of 11.66 bushels of corn to 100 pounds of hog, there had been but
little profit to the grower on this basis and that it would be desirable
for the sake of stimulation to pay at least the equivalent of 13.33
bushels of corn per hundred pounds of average hog and, if possible, as
much as 14.33 pounds. On this latter ratio the committee believed that
production could be increased fifteen per cent above the normal. The
Committee added an expression of its belief that "the best emergency
method of immediately stabilizing the market and preventing the
premature marketing of light unfinished pigs and breeding stock would be
to establish a minimum emergency price for good to select hogs of
sixteen dollars a hundred pounds on the Chicago market."

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