INTRODUCTION
7
well as an administrative body in that, among other activi-
ties, it undertakes to measure changes in the cost of living
each month. Its report! published in February, 1920 con-
tained a series of index numbers showing the relation of
prices by months since 1910" to average prices in the year
1913, which was adopted as the normal or base period. Six
annual reports have been published,” and special memoranda
are issued each month, so that a complete index series by
months is available.
In 1918 and 1919, in order to satisfy the requirements of
the National War Labor Board for further information on
the cost of living, the United States Bureau of Labor Sta-
tistics made another investigation of the cost of living in the
United States. This included many of the localities in which
the cost of living of shipyard workers had previously been
investigated, but was in some ways far more representative
than the earlier studies. Retail prices were collected in 31 of
these localities for June and December, 1919, and for June,
19203 in 32 localities for December, 1920, May, September
and December, 1921, March, June, September and December
of 1922, 1923, 1924, and for June and December, 1925. From
these, index numbers of the cost of living have been computed
for each locality separately, and they have also formed the
basis for the computation of an index of the cost of living for
the country as a whole, with average prices in 1913 as a base.
These numbers are published regularly in the Monthly Labor
Review.
In addition to these two indexes for the country as a whole
and one for the important industrial state of Massachusetts,
a number of local indexes of the cost of living have been
computed. Of these, the only official one is that compiled
by the Industrial Commission of Colorado for the city of
Denver. In Rochester. N. Y.., New Bedford, Mass., and
1 An eatlier report on the cost of living in Massachusetts was issued in 1910.
Massachusetts, Commission on the Cost of Living, Report, Boston, May, 1910.
The later figures make possible estimates of changes in the cost of living in Massachu-
setts since 1901. See, for example, National Industrial Conference Board, Research
Report No. 41, “Family Budgets of American Wage Earners,” New York, 1921,
pp. 65-66; also, Table 5 (p. 89) in the present volume.
.. 2 Report of the Commission on the Necessaries of Life, op. ¢it., 1920; ibid., 1921;
ibid., 1922; ibid., 1923; ibid., 1924; ibid., 1925.
8 Washington. D. C.. was added in December, 1920.