Page:Stabilizing the dollar, Fisher, 1920.djvu/260

206 lion of approximately constant computed purchasing power.

Said quantity of standard gold bullion, constituting a gold dollar at any given time, shall be ascertained and fixed, from time to time, by the computation and use of index numbers of wholesale prices as hereinafter set forth.

Provided: That the gold dollar shall remain 25.8 grains of standard gold until some other quantity is fixed under this Act.

(Computation of Index Number and Its Deviation from Par)

Sec. 2. That for the purpose of computing approximately the fluctuations of various wholesale prices in the United States after the year 1920, and of computing index numbers such as will approximately measure the average of such fluctuations, and of computing therefrom the approximate fluctuations in the purchasing power of gold, the Bureau of Standards (or Bureau of Labor Statistics) hereinafter referred to as the Computing Bureau, shall proceed as follows:

(a) From the list of commodities and the quantities thereof marketed at wholesale in the United States in 1909, heretofore compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics from data of the Census of 1910 and other data and published in Bulletin No. 181, Wholesale Prices Series No. 4, the Computing Bureau shall, immediately after the passage of this Act, make up a list of selected commodities comprising about 100 commodities (not less than 75 nor more than 125) deemed by it to be the most suitable (as to importance and otherwise) to be used for computing the said index number.

(b) Immediately after December 25, 1920, the Computing Bureau shall compute, from the best accessible data, the average price of each of these commodities for the year 1920 (to December 25).