136 COST OF LIVING IN THE UNITED STATES 
and of cotton yard goods and garments made of cotton, are 
shown in Chart 5a and Chart 5s. 
Hosiery and knit underwear prices followed the general 
trend of yard goods and ready to wear quotations, reaching 
about the same level as the latter and, in some instances, 
not having fallen back so far. Indeed, in December, 1925, 
only knit underwear, men’s overcoats, overalls and women’s 
gloves and hats were twice or more their pre-war prices; 
among the yard goods, percale and gingham were more than 
double their 1914 price. The lowest prices, relatively, in 
December, 1925, were for women’s muslin combinations, 
3397, above their pre-war price; and for men’s work shirts 
of the better sort, 44% higher. Every other item was more 
than 509%, above its pre-war price. 
Prices of shoes, gloves and hats, on the whole, advanced 
to the peak about as the prices of other clothing items, the 
difference being that the cost of these items for women ad- 
vanced more and those for men less than the average. This 
relationship has been consistently maintained throughout 
the period of downward movement, also, so that while in 
December, 1925, the average prices of women’s shoes, gloves 
and hats were 89%, 103%, 1019 and 138% respectively 
above the pre-war level, corresponding articles for men were 
only 649, 669, and 87% higher. 
Clothing Budgets 
How important these various price changes were rela- 
tively is not seen until the articles covered are combined 
somewhat in the proportion in which families use them. 
For this purpose, as already explained, the tentative cloth- 
ing budgets were constructed. Index numbers for men’s 
clothing and for women’s clothing and for both combined, 
obtained by weighting the prices of the separate items by 
their relative consumption importance, are shown in Table 7. 
From the beginning of the series, which shows percentages 
of increase first in June, 1918, above the level of July, 1914, 
men’s clothing as a whole had advanced in cost more than 
1 See pp. 34 ff. of this volume. In the earlier reports published by the Board, 
che dollars and cents cost of these budgets was given. As explained on page 36 of 
‘his volume. this method of weighting was given up in July, 1925.