112 COST ‘OF LIVING IN THE UNITED STATES 
ten years before. Moreover, in recent years, as real estate 
agents originally reporting rents have dropped out and new 
houses have been included to fill in the gaps caused by in- 
ability to trace the landlord of the old or because the owner 
himself is now the occupant, the new property has not been 
considered in the index of the Bureau of Labor Statistics 
until rents in two periods have been secured. These new 
houses probably started with relatively high rents and the 
increases since mav not have been so great as on the older 
CHART 4B: InDEx NUMBERS oF RENTS oF WAGE EARNERS 
Houses, IN AvErRAGE AMERICAN ComMmuNITIES, 1913 TO 
DECEMBER, 1925, INCLUSIVE 
Based on figures in Table 1 and Table 5 
National Industrial Conference Board mmr 
July 1914 = 100 
United States Bureau of Labor Statistics sveseseecssesse 
Year 1913 = 100 
INDEX 
NUMBERS 
Dol) r— 
gp pore 
20. 
prot ® 
zg 
I 
2 
BTL 
5 
ool. 
813 
cog of . 
Sy 0 Ae 
property, though the rents themselves, when first noted, 
may have been much higher. Another circumstance tending 
to minimize the rent increases as reported by the Bureau of 
Labor Statistics is that the method of sampling often neces- 
sarily leaves out of account property which changes owners 
frequently, because of the limitations on the possibility of 
tracing the agent. These changes in landlords and the 
speculative operations involved have sent many rents sky- 
rocketing in recent years, but in the nature of things little of