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over 100, then we say the index in 1920 is three points over what it was in 1913. Therefore it's gone up. If, on the other hand it goes down below what it was in 1913, we'll say the cost of living has gone down.” It's a very interesting basis for economic study of life in the U.S.A. If you can keep the same commodities priced, an economic historian looking at it sees that the cost of the essentials of life—that is, the essential commodities—went up slowly and gradually over a ten-year period. Then machinery came in, or something else came in on the farm, and greatly increased the yield, and the cost of living went down. It's up to the economic historian to say why it went down.

Long before I had anything to do with all this they had split this up into very refined pricing of a great many articles. I thought it would be best to return to the earlier method of pricing a small number of basic commodities, rather than a large number of finished articles which are in use by working people. I really believe that your index figure would not have been very different. You would have found that the index of the cost of living on basic commodities went right up, just as well as the index on all the folderols of life, including electric toasters, automobiles, motion picture and so on. Tickets to the movies are now on the list. That's regarded as a basic element in the cost of living, apparently. The statisticians love this.