XIV average of the ratios gave an index number for the town compared with the predominant level of the towns investigated. The resultant index number for Berlin was then taken as a basis and the index numbers for the other towns adjusted accordingly. In the following Table the index numbers so calculated are given, showing the relative level of rents in each of the German towns as compared with Berlin, the predominant rents in the capital being taken as the base ( = 100). Rent Index Numbers in Descending Order. Town. Berlin Stuttgart Düsseldorf .. Dortmund .. Aschaffenburg Hamburg Mannheim Königsberg Munich Essen Solingen Index No. 100 97 79 68 67 66 64 62 63 62 61 Town. Bochum Elberfeld Barmen Remscheid Breslau Dresden Nuremberg Aachen Crefeld Bremen Plauen Index No. 57 57 57 56 56 54 53 53 52 52 52 Town. Leipzig Dantzig Mülhausen Königshütte Stettin Magdeburg Chemnitz Zwickau Brunswick Stassfurt Oschersleben Index No. 51 49 48 47 46 43 40 38 37 33 28 It will be seen that, as already indicated, there is little difference between the rent levels of Berlin and Stuttgart. Düsseldorf is the next highest-rented town, but the rents there are 20 per cent, lower than in Berlin and Stuttgart. In Dortmund they are 32 per cent, lower than in Berlin, and so the scale descends to Brunswick, a large town with rents 63 per cent, lower than in Berlin, and to Stassfurt and Oschersleben, where the rents are respectively only about one-third and one-quarter of those prevalent in the capital. The index numbers for eight of the 32 towns lie between 60 and 70, and for 12 towns between 50 and 60 ; for two towns they are above 70, and in 10 cases below 50. In the next Table the towns are grouped according to certain geographical districts, which are indicated on the map given as a frontispiece to this volume. Two of these groups are very small, appearing to consist of only two towns each ; but with the North Sea Ports of Hamburg and Bremen the large town of Altona is included, since it is scarcely separable—from the economic point of view—-from Hamburg, and the Silesian group is representative, since it includes Breslau, the second largest city of Prussia, and Königshütte, which, as already pointed out, is the centre of an extensive district of almost identical character. The towns in each group are shown in Table A, appended to this General Report. Rent Index Numbers for Geographical Groups. Geographical Group. Mean Rent Index N umber. Berlin Central Germany Rhineland-Westphalia :— (a) Textile Towns (b) Hardware Towns South Germany Saxony Silesia Baltic Ports North Sea Ports ISo. of Towns 100 35 55 61 65 47 52 52 59