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Lorenzo Ayres

Benjamin Graham, 1937

Storage and Stability

Written in the Depression, about surpluses nobody wanted, by the man who later wrote the book on buying what nobody wants.

McGraw-Hill, 1937. The earlier and more practical of the two forgotten Grahams.

Lorenzo Ayres / 1 min

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This is the same argument seven years earlier and it is the more useful of the two, because in 1937 he is not designing a world currency, he is trying to solve a specific problem: farmers producing more than anybody would buy, prices collapsing, and the surplus rotting while people went without it. His answer is to build reserves in the good years and release them in the bad ones.

The thing that stuck with me is the timing of it. He is writing this in the middle of the Depression about commodities nobody wanted at any price, and twelve years later he publishes the book that tells you to buy exactly the things nobody wants. It is the same instinct pointed at two different problems, and I do not think he ever framed it that way himself.

reserve supplies of big crop years for use in time of crop failure
Storage and Stability, 1937, page n8, defining the Granary idea

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