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Rh unobtainable. It is important to emphasize this uncertainty, for it is the fact that exact measurements of general price changes cannot be made in times of disturbance, and indeed it is difficult even to define the quantity we wish to measure; tendencies can be observed clearly, but only rough measurements can be made and fine comparisons lead to error. The maximum level was reached in March 1920 by the Economist index number, in April by the Statist, in July by the Board of Trade. By Dec. 1920 the Board of Trade index was back at the level of the beginning of 1920, that of the Statist at the level of July 1919, and that of the Economist at the level of May 1919. The difference is mainly due to the varying proportions given to cereals and textiles, which had fallen rapidly, and to meat and minerals which had fallen little in the three numbers.

Table IV. (from the Monthly Bulletin of Statistics of the Supreme Economic Council, vol. ii., No. 5) shows the index numbers for several countries.

(II.) Wholesale Prices of Selected Commodities.—When we come to commodities separately, the measurements can be made more exactly subject to the two following qualifications. During the war period the ordinary sources of supply were so disturbed that pre-war kinds and qualities were no longer in the market (in the Economist index number only 19 out of the 44 quotations included were not subject to some modification of kind); and a statement of prices is generally taken as meaning the price at which a purchaser can obtain the goods he desires and at which a merchant is willing to sell, but in the time of control and rationing these conditions did not obtain, and the price was fixed by other conditions than those which influence a free market.

Table V. is based on the prices tabulated in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, July 1920, pp. 640-5, by the editor of the Statist. The index numbers have been recast, the average price in 1913 being taken as 100 for each commodity; the totals have been obtained by grouping together the separate entries on the same plan as in the original, but the change in base year affects the results, which thus differ from those given in Table II. in the same way as if the weights had been changed. 

It is at once evident that the various prices have not followed the same course; the extremes in 1919 are tin, whose price rose only 28% in 6 years, and Russian flax, where the rise is 323%. This great divergence of itself shows that the general index number cannot have great precision; but in the absence of means of improving it, we cannot do better than take this number (shown in the line “Grand Total” in Table V.) as measuring the general inflation of wholesale prices.

The prices as recorded are the resultants of at least five nearly distinct forces, viz. the general inflation of prices, the conditions

of supply and demand for the separate commodities, the control of supply, the control of prices, the change of quality. In 1915