nite assortment of goods cost $1.00 at one date and $1.10 at another date, these figures may be regarded as index
Fig. 2. Price Movements as Calculated by Using Different Numbers of Commodities (after Wesley Clair Mitchell)
Showing that the percentage rise or fall of the level of wholesale prices in the United States is very much the same whether many or few commodities are included in the calculations.
numbers. Thus the price from time to time of an imaginary market basket containing a representative collection of goods, e.g. one pound of meat, one pound of sugar, one pint of milk, etc., may be considered the index number and is so considered in Chapter IV.
Various systems of index numbers are now before the public,—such as those of Bradstreet, Dun, Gibson, the Annalist, the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Canadian Department of Labour, the London Economist, the London Statist, and the British Board of Trade.
The present index number of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, as perfected by the present Chief of the Bureau, Dr. Royal Meeker, is made up from the wholesale prices of 300 commodities. It gives more weight to the more important commodities, as measured by the amounts marketed in the last census year. It expresses the price level of 1914 by the index
