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, there- 
fore, 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 fam- 
ilies in 92 localities. Average family budgets were evolved 
from the data obtained, and future changes in prices of