Business: Commodities

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Traveling down the long black road on the Annalist's commodity price index, the statistical wayfarer comes to a fork in April 1933. The left fork leads sharply up the rise which followed abandonment of gold. The right fork, which looks like a half-forgotten detour on the price map, is an index in terms of old gold dollars. This index shows that as a group hogs, corn, cotton, sugar, many another commodity, actually continued to decline until almost the end of last year, hardly moved off bottom until this spring. But by last week the Annalist index "in U. S. dollars" was pushing into the highest ground in more than three years. Despite a sudden rush of profit-taking which once again tumbled wheat below $1 per bushel and unsettled all cereals, corn soared to 58¢ (last year: 45¢). Three successive winters favorable to chinch bugs had raised Corn Belt infestation to menacing proportions. Officials had counted as high as 5,000 pests to the square foot. Furthermore, the swarming insects were deserting drought-withered grains and grasses for the nearest succulent growth—principally corn. Continuous rains in the southeast and no rains at all in the southwest held cotton around 12¢ per Ib. The Mississippi Plant Board reported an average count of 119 boll weevils to the acre, against 75 the week before, 323 year ago. Prospects of a reduction in breeding stock and mounting feed prices boosted topnotch hog prices to the best level since October ($5 per cwt.), cattle prices to the highest since September 1932 ($10.25 per cwt.). But few if any of the gaunt animals that shuffled into the stockyards last week qualified for these prime prices.