Headline Hogs

For the best medium-weight hogs in Chicago last week packers were paying $11 per cwt. Including processing tax a fat, tender 250-lb. porker cost nearly $30. In 1932 the same animal would have brought less than $9. Such fine pig news should have excited farmers of the Midwest but they were singularly apathetic about hog headlines. Fact was, they had very few pigs to sell.

Autumn is the biggest hog-marketing season, with spring next. Summer slaughtering is normally light, and this year the Bureau of Agricultural Economics estimates that it will be the lightest in 30 years, perhaps no heavier than in 1902 when only 4,750,000 pigs went to market in the July-September period. Drought and the AAA's restriction program have reduced the number of hogs on corn-belt farms 37% in the past year.

Even the total slaughter for the current crop year will be the smallest in a quarter century, and the Bureau expects a further decline in the next marketing year starting Oct. I. The 1935 spring slaughter was 30,402,000 head, down 20,000,000 from two years ago. Last week the Bureau predicted higher average prices for the coming year but lower than the present peak.

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