494 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



profits which compose the money-income of society and, per se, the 

 direct means of acquiring the necessities and comforts of life. The 

 measuring and estimating of changes in the cost of living, therefore, is 

 resolved into a comparative study of incomes and expenditures. If in- 

 comes, expressed in terms of money, are found to increase more rapidly 

 than contemporary expenditures or to decrease less rapidly, costs of 

 living may be said to be declining; if converse relations exist, virtual 

 costs are advancing. 



It is doubtful whether a careful comparison of aggregate income and 

 expenditure in the United States, during the regime of advancing prices 

 following the depression of 1897, would show any considerable differen- 

 tial in their relative changes or any remarkable increment in the aver- 

 age cost of living. But it is quite possible that aggregates and aver- 

 ages may remain unchanged while a radical readjustment of incomes 

 and costs is effected among individuals or among the differently cir- 

 cumstanced groups which compose the social organism. Indeed, it is 

 quite plain that a readjustment of respective shares in the distribution 

 of the total income among the different classes of the population is the 

 raison d'etre of present economic discontent, and a careful analysis of 

 the apportionment of the " national dividend " affords a key to the 

 current problems of living costs. If an increased proportion of the 

 social income finds its way into the pockets of fortunate individuals and 

 favored classes of society, other persons and groups must suffer a rela- 

 tive decrease in purchasing power. Since all buy in the same market, 

 a part of the population possesses an increased proportion of cash to 

 the prices which must be paid, and the exchequers of the less fortunate 

 are inversely affected. In other words, persons identified with one eco- 

 nomic class may experience an actual decrease in their cost of living, 

 despite rising prices, while others must carry an increased burden, and, 

 possibly, a third group may be affected not at all. 



Space forbids an analytic treatment of the factors which have con- 

 tributed to the unusual price movement of the last twelve years; they 

 include such industrial and social phenomena as have affected the rela- 

 tive supply of and demand for the standard metal, on the one hand, and 

 the supply of and demand for the things which make up a living on the 

 other. That the unprecedented increase of the gold supply is a potent 

 factor can not be denied ; that there are other factors of equivalent sig- 

 nificance is quite certain. Among the latter, are such socio-economic 

 tendencies as effect a relative or per capita decline in the annual supply 

 of the necessities and comforts of life and a consequent increased social 

 cost of production, as well as an advanced scale of prices. 



The following may be properly enumerated as characteristic attri- 

 butes of social and industrial evolution which may contribute to chan- 

 ging costs : 



