118 COST OF LIVING IN THE UNITED STATES 
lies in the fact that peculiar conditions affecting the price 
of any one sample might not be characteristic of the other 
articles it was designed to represent, and would thus affect 
the total more than would be the case with a total which 
was the average of a larger number of quotations. The 
extent to which this has influenced the National Industrial 
Conference Board index number for clothing cannot be 
measured in the absence of comparable figures for a complete 
clothing budget. It may, however, be one of the factors 
which has made for a difference between the two series. 
There may, also, be a difference in the standards of the 
articles included. It has already been noted that the Bureau 
of Labor Statistics budget is based on a war-time standard 
of living, while that of the National Industrial Conference 
Board is based on a pre-war standard. The continuance of 
both price series is dependent, therefore, on the continued 
pricing of goods in popular demand at quite different points 
of time. When the Bureau of Labor Statistics series was 
revised in June, 1920, attempts were made to correct certain 
earlier quotations which apparently had been for goods not 
customarily purchased by wage earners, and goods ““popu- 
lar” in 1920 were possibly not the customary purchases of 
wage earners in 1914, represented in the clothing budgets of 
the National Industrial Conference Board. 
Two other changes made in the Bureau of Labor Statistics 
clothing price series in 1920 are a cause of slight difference. 
In June, 1920, weights were used for the first time. A test 
of the effect of this, made in the figures for two cities, showed 
that the weighting tended to exaggerate slightly the increase 
in clothing prices as compared with what would have been 
the result with unweighted prices.! It was in June, 1920, 
also, that the number of articles priced for the clothing item 
was materially reduced. Whether or not this had anv effect 
on the subsequent figures is not known. 
Apparently there is no question of justifying either the 
clothing budget of the National Industrial Conference Board 
or that of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They are different 
and indicate better than any theoretical reasoning that not 
only the standard pictured but also the selection of the 
1 Qtatement from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, September, 1920,