Contrary Hogs

As a near-record crop of 37 million pigs began moving to market this spring, the seasonal glut sent the average price of pork dropping to $16 a hundredweight. Secretary of Agriculture Charles F. Brannan warned Congress that unless it gave the Commodity Credit Corp. an extra $2 billion for the overall price-propping program, he could not support the pork market. When Congress did nothing, Brannan's economists gloomily predicted that unsupported pork might fall as low as $10 a hundredweight.

Instead, the market turned as contrary as a razorback hog. Without any Government supports whatever, and in spite of the huge supply, pork prices started to climb, and kept right on climbing. By last week Chicago hogs were at $20.25, a fat $4.05 above the old support level.

Confronted by such theory-defying behavior on the part of a free market, Brannan's experts dug out plenty of explanations: with its $220 billion national income, the U.S. was eating a lot higher off the hog. (This year's pork consumption is approaching 82 Ibs. per person, compared to 70 Ibs. last year, a lean 48 Ibs. in 1935.) Moreover, even at present prices, pork was still a bargain compared to beef and lamb, and many housewives were buying more of it instead. But the lesson that seemed to have been lost on Charlie Brannan was that a growing U.S. economy perhaps did not require quite as much forced feeding as the Fair Deal economists thought.

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