THE STANDARD OF VALUE z
future obligation. Whenever the time element enters into a
transaction as in making a loan, or in entering into a lease, or
in agreeing upon a salary or wage, which is expected to continue
for an indefinite time, the money unit would be supplanted by
the commodity unit, by the com, because of the undoubted
greater stability of the value of the latter; but, ultimately,
payment would still be made in money.
Having thus attempted to show that a value unit is conveniently
 at hand, and that its general adoption is practical, it
remains to show that its introduction and use in ordinary transactions
 and particularly where compensation for services is in
question need not be deferred until Congress has acted, nor even
until further studies have been made by the Department of
Labor or any other branch of the government on which the
definition and description of the commodity unit is to be based.
The data at hand are quite sufficient to serve in the interim.
The general commodity index numbers as ascertained and computed
 by the Department of Labor would afford a sufficiently
close approximation for immediate purposes.
It may safely be assumed that any index number based on the
prices of numerous commodities, preferably always including
food and clothing, will show the general trend of prices, and, also,
this being the main point, that even though the price change for
the individual articles may not always have been weighted in the
exact proportion of the nation’s consumption of each, the final
result as expressed in the index number will be a sufficiently close
index of the cost of living. It will, therefore, be safe to say that
the index number based on all commodities (over 300 as used
by the Department of Labor) gives a sufficiently close approximation
 for all practical purposes to the changing value of the
dollar when this value is measured by the ‘“ com ” as herein
defined and suggested. If the commodity unit as defined be
adopted and the ““ com ” be accepted as a measure of value, the
average purchasing power and therefore the average value of
$100 and of 100 coms in the ten-year period goo to 1909 would
have been identical and the com at the time that this chapter

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