6 COST OF LIVING IN THE UNITED STATES 
Board in particular for a more exact measure of cost of 
living changes than was afforded by index numbers of whole- 
sale commodity prices or retail food prices. The report 
embodying the result of the Board’s researches’ brought 
together all existing material in the United States that would 
make possible a fairly exact measurement of the percentage 
by which the cost of living among workingmen’s families 
had increased between July, 1914 and June, 1918, if they con- 
tinued to maintain the same standard of living. These data 
were fragmentary and scattered, but when supplemented by 
the results of questionnaires relating to the cost of clothing 
and fuel, and to house rents, they gave a very good general 
estimate of how much more it cost to live in 1918 than in 
1914, at the same standard of living. In November, 1918, 
data were collected more systematically and the National 
Industrial Conference Board began to build up its files of 
retail merchants, real estate brokers and others closely in 
touch with current prices of the goods and services in daily use 
by families of small and moderate means. The co-operation 
of these correspondents in furnishing prices has made possible 
the continuation of the series. In March, 1919, estimates 
were interpolated for the years 1915, 1916 and 1917 for 
which extensive data do not exist, and from then on the 
series has been complete. Two reports were issued in 1918 
and three in 1919. Beginning in January, 1920, prices were 
collected every month on a somewhat more limited basis. 
Reports were published three times a year, through July, 1923.3 
Since then monthly statements have been and are now being 
made public. 
The year after the National Industrial Conference Board 
began its series of index numbers of the cost of living, the 
General Court of Massachusetts created a special Com- 
mission on the Necessaries of Life to deal with problems con- 
nected with rising prices. This commission is a research as 
! National Industrial Conference Board, Research Report No. 9, “Wartime 
Changes in the Cost of Living,” Boston, August, 1918. 
See pp. 58, 60, of this volume. 
# National Industrial Conference Board Research Reports Nos. 9, 14, 17, 19, 25, 
28, 30, 33, 36, 39, 44, 49, 54, 57, 60, 63. 
* These were cumulated through 1924 in the volume on “The Cost of Living 
in the United States”; in the present volume the 1925 figures have been added.