Satan's Bushel

This dazzling work in economic fiction is a splendid book, not just from the point of view of economics but also as a novel.

What is Satan's Bushel? It is the last bushel that the farmer puts on the market, the one that "breaks the price" — that is, reduces it to the point that wheat farming is no longer profitable. The puzzle that afflicts the wheat farmers is that they sell their goods when the price is low and have no goods to sell when the price is high. Withholding goods from the market is one answer but why would any farmer do that?

It tells the story of one man's discovery of a brilliant speculator and his relationship with an old and legendary farmer/mystic and his daughter. The mystic embodies both the highest wisdom and the greatest economic fallacies of the day. The question that must be confronted is how to make farms profitable in times of falling prices, and the novel shows that speculation, even with all its human foibles, makes a contribution to stabilizing the market.