44 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WAGES

mentally this required that rates of pay should be adjusted
at regular intervals in accordance with fluctuations in living
costs.
During the first months of the conflict, when the attempt
was being made to adjust industry to war needs, difficulty
was experienced in securing a sound basis or index for
determining changes in living costs either nationally or by
localities. The newly created wage-adjustment boards in
the mining, manufacturing, and transportation industries
had to do the best they could with the data available. It
was soon evident, however, that an accurate, scientific
index was absolutely necessary in order to reach uniform
as well as just decisions. In the autumn of 1917, therefore,
 after the first fixing of wages in the shipyards of
the Pacific Coast by the Shipbuilding Wage Adjustment
Board, its chairman, Mr. V. Everit Macy, took up the
matter with President Wilson, and as a result, Dr. Royal
Meeker, Commissioner of Labor Statistics, was instructed
to formulate an index based on pre-war conditions, and
by constant investigation to ascertain and publish regularly
a living-cost index for the period of the war. Large
appropriations to expedite this important undertaking were
supplied by the President from the war emergency funds
under. his control.

BubpGETARY AND CosT-0F-LIVING INVESTIGATIONS

The Commissioner of Labor Statistics immediately made
an investigation of the cost of living of representative
families of industrial workers in the principal cities and
industrial centers of the country. This comprehensive
cost-of-living and budgetary survey covered 12,096 families
 in 92 localities. Average family budgets were evolved
from the data obtained, and future changes in prices of