CHAPTER III 
INDEX NUMBERS OF THE COST OF LIVING, BY 
THE UNITED STATES BUREAU OF LABOR 
STATISTICS 
LTHOUGH the United States Bureau of Labor Sta- 
tistics, in conjunction with the Shipbuilding Wage 
Adjustment Board of the Emergency Fleet Corpora- 
tion, collected budgets of families of shipyard workers and 
others living in the same localities in 1917 and 1918, and at 
the same time collected current prices and prices at earlier 
dates in order to measure how much the cost of living had 
increased since 1914, these were not combined into an index 
for the country as a whole until June, 1919. In 1918 and 
1919, however, the Bureau, in cooperation with the National 
War Labor Board, made investigations of family incomes and 
expenditures and also retail prices in 92 localities, including 
I8 of the shipbuilding centers. Later, agents were again sent 
to each of 31 of these cities to collect prices as of June, 
1919, December, 1919 and June, 1920. The percentages of 
change in prices between these respective dates were com- 
puted and linked on to an index constructed by combining 
figures for the 18 shipbuilding centers.! In December, 1920, 
Washington was added to the list of cities, and from that 
date, 32 representative industrial centers in different sections 
of the country have furnished information for the Bureau’s 
cost-of-living index number. These cities had a combined 
Population of 21,071,011 in 1920.2 From 1922, through 
1924, numbers were published regularly four times a year; 
In 1925, only twice. 
_ These figures are constructed on three bases: first, in 19 
Cities current costs are computed as percentages of average 
* Monthly Labor Review, October, 1920, p. 65. 
* In reality 33 cities are included, inasmuch as-Oakland and San Francisco are 
combined. Kor food, as will appear later, reports from 51 cities are used. For this 
tem, the total population representation was 24,466,309. 
A