ON July 1, 1917, there became available, by act of Congress, an appropriation of $250,000 to the Federal Trade Commission and another of $50,000 to the Department of Agriculture to be devoted to a study of the advancing costs of foodstuffs and especially to an inquiry as to whether there was reason to believe that the production, preparation, storage distribution and sale of foodstuffs were subject to control or manipulation. The general subject was subdivided, and wheat, flour and breadstuffs, meat, canned fish, canned vegetables and other kinds of food were treated separately and the department and the commission arranged a division of the tasks. As to meat, the Department of Agriculture undertook the study of the cost of production of meat animals, their transportation and sale, feeding in stockyards and certain economic questions. The Federal Trade Commission undertook to follow the animals from the stockyards through the processes of slaughter to the preparation of the various products; and the Department of Agriculture undertook the study of the disposition or marketing of the products and by-products. The Federal Trade Commission went back about thirty years and began its inquiry as of a time when the meat-packing industry was just beginning to evolve its present form. The commission found and reported its belief that beginning with the "dressed-meat" or "Allerton" pool in 1885, there has existed, through one device or another, up to the present time, combination and agreements between the principal packing concerns of the country, and that at present this agreeing group consists of Swift & Company, Armour & Company, Morris & Company, Wilson & Co. (Inc.) and The Cudahy Packing Co. The commission reported that the control of markets and market conditions now rests largely upon an agreed division of purchases of live stock in definite and fixed percentages. The five packers deny this and assert that, in fact, they are in real competi170