Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/236

200 HARVARD LAW REVIEW facie evidence of the increase in the cost of living. The Com- monwealth statistician has found that in Melbourne it took in 1916, 26/6d., to purchase commodities that could be purchased in 1907 for i7/6d.; and the decrease in the value of money is nearly the same elsewhere. That is to say, the increase in the cost of living is over 50 per cent, chiefly owing to the existing state of war. It is a curious fact that there has been little or no attack on the empirical finding of 1907 as to the actual cost of living. Employers generally admit that the amount of 42/- per week was fair at that time; but there have been of late strenuous attacks on the statis- tician's figures of increase. The statistician has taken some forty- ,seven staple articles of food and rent as constmied by all classes of the community, and has found the changes in price of those articles; and he very properly adheres to the same articles and assumes that they are consumed in the same quantities. He does not, as •some people fancy, pretend to show the cost of living in a wage- earner's family, but he shows the depreciation in the value of money as regards the selected commodities, and, as he says, "in normal circumstances properly computed index numbers of food and groceries and house rent combined form one of the best possible measures of those variations in the purchasing power of money which affect the cost of living." Then the Court comes in, and, until the contrary he shown, infers that the depreciation in the value of money which is found in relation to the selected commodities is to be found also in relation to the other commodities. This method is in accordance with the views and in- tentions of the statistician; for he says "once a standard of living or living wage has been fixed the tables published . . . can be legiti- mately used as showing the variations in the cost of living." No party is bound by these tables as by a matter of absolute irrefutable law, but they are on the right method, and the Court makes use of them until it can find better evidence.^^ The criticisms made hitherto on the statistician's findings are made under a misapprehension. It is the practice of the Court to let no consideration of competi- tion with foreign countries reduce what is found to be the proper " Butchers, 10 Com. Arb. 477-84 (1916); Merchant Service Guild, 10 Com. Arb. 225 (1916); Gas employees, 11 Com. Arb. (1917).