INTRODUCTION 
7 
well as an administrative body in that, among other activi- 
ties, it undertakes to measure changes in the cost of living 
each month. Its report! published in February, 1920 con- 
tained a series of index numbers showing the relation of 
prices by months since 1910" to average prices in the year 
1913, which was adopted as the normal or base period. Six 
annual reports have been published,” and special memoranda 
are issued each month, so that a complete index series by 
months is available. 
In 1918 and 1919, in order to satisfy the requirements of 
the National War Labor Board for further information on 
the cost of living, the United States Bureau of Labor Sta- 
tistics made another investigation of the cost of living in the 
United States. This included many of the localities in which 
the cost of living of shipyard workers had previously been 
investigated, but was in some ways far more representative 
than the earlier studies. Retail prices were collected in 31 of 
these localities for June and December, 1919, and for June, 
19203 in 32 localities for December, 1920, May, September 
and December, 1921, March, June, September and December 
of 1922, 1923, 1924, and for June and December, 1925. From 
these, index numbers of the cost of living have been computed 
for each locality separately, and they have also formed the 
basis for the computation of an index of the cost of living for 
the country as a whole, with average prices in 1913 as a base. 
These numbers are published regularly in the Monthly Labor 
Review. 
In addition to these two indexes for the country as a whole 
and one for the important industrial state of Massachusetts, 
a number of local indexes of the cost of living have been 
computed. Of these, the only official one is that compiled 
by the Industrial Commission of Colorado for the city of 
Denver. In Rochester. N. Y.., New Bedford, Mass., and 
1 An eatlier report on the cost of living in Massachusetts was issued in 1910. 
Massachusetts, Commission on the Cost of Living, Report, Boston, May, 1910. 
The later figures make possible estimates of changes in the cost of living in Massachu- 
setts since 1901. See, for example, National Industrial Conference Board, Research 
Report No. 41, “Family Budgets of American Wage Earners,” New York, 1921, 
pp. 65-66; also, Table 5 (p. 89) in the present volume. 
.. 2 Report of the Commission on the Necessaries of Life, op. ¢it., 1920; ibid., 1921; 
ibid., 1922; ibid., 1923; ibid., 1924; ibid., 1925. 
8 Washington. D. C.. was added in December, 1920.