The Decline of Prices of Cereals

Abstract

The National Agricultural Conference, held in Washington the last week in January, was so engrossed with the program of remedies that it was not able to give exhaustive attention to diagnosis. A great deal of ground had been covered in the congressional hearings before the Joint Commission of Agricultural Inquiry. Certain ills of the farmer date from the last century; others developed during the war; some were the consequence of the boom; and several were the back-wash of the down-wave of the business cycle. It was difficult to segregate these disabilities. In any event, such segregation would have entailed exhaustive quantitative researches, for which the Conference had not time. It seemed necessary for the Conference to adopt a program of remedies that resembled a prescription. As in the case of most shotgun prescriptions designed to relieve a complex of symptoms, some of the remedies seem incompatible. Prices of cereals were rising at the time of the meeting of the Conference. Since then prices have again declined, though not to the low level of 1921. The basic fact of the economics of the world during 1920 and 1921, from the standpoint of price, was that in each country the gold prices of raw materials declined precipitously. Price decline began in the fall of 1919 in some countries with some commodities; and the movement lasted in some coun-