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didn't go up, except as the price of automobiles went up. The ordinary ticket buying that had to be done for streetcar fares, and so forth, didn't change. So a good many of the basic items that are essential did not go up as rapidly as food. Food was the thing that people noticed. As a matter of fact, even the price of necessary clothing didn't go up as rapidly as the food did. And the total food didn't go up so much. It was special items that hit people in the eye, like beefsteak and cabbages.

So we had a problem in th Department of Labor with regard to this preparation of our material and the utilization of our machinery and method to serve the war interest. We had not foreseen far enough in advance this great interest in the cost of living. So we had to hastily, in 1940 and '41, throw up some changes, some greater refinements and measurements. I spoke of the earlier revision merely to say that I now again in 1940 and '41 thought what a pity it was that we didn't do what we originally talked about doing—go back to pricing six or ten basic commodities and let it be known it was the index, not the reality. Even when we priced all these commodities, we only gave an index anyhow, and it wasn't the same in every part of the country.