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,