498 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



charge for many forms of professional service, such professions as medi- 

 cine, dentistry and law may fail to command an increase in income 

 sufficient to keep pace with advancing prices. 



To avoid the popular error of attributing an increased cost of living 

 to all persons under a regime of rising prices, and to reveal the actual 

 effect of prices on costs, it is necessary to determine whether the major- 

 ity of the population is included among those whose incomes have 

 failed to respond to advanced charges or among the beneficiaries of 

 high prices. 



In the less fortunate class, which undoubtedly carries an increased 

 burden of living costs, may be enumerated the following: (1) investors 

 in fixed-income securities such as mortgages, bonds and life insurance; 

 (2) unorganized wage earners; (3) salaried persons; (4) members of 

 most professions; (5) proprietors of small-scale industrial and commer- 

 cial enterprises; (6) middle-men and tradesmen not sufficiently organ- 

 ized to advance and maintain their charges coextensively with price 

 movements. 



In the more fortunate class, whose incomes bear a progressive ratio 

 to prices and whose cost changes are, therefore, inversely proportional 

 to price movements, we may expect to find: (1) proprietors of mort- 

 gaged and bond-issuing commercial and industrial enterprises; (2) pro- 

 prietors of highly capitalized and centralized industries not subject to 

 public control; (3) employers of unorganized labor and salaried per- 

 sons; (4) members of highly organized trades and occupations; 

 (5) grantees of public-service privileges whose net'earnings support an 

 advance in "franchise values" during the period; (6) proprietors of 

 natural resources and recipients of tariff protection so circumstanced 

 as to advance prices at will through a monopolistic control of supply. 



There is an intermediate zone of economic condition which is prac- 

 tically free from the characteristic attributes described above. This 

 neutral condition may be attributed to those whose incomes and ex- 

 penditures are alike correlated with current prices, and is doubtless 

 realized by a much larger proportion of the population than may at 

 first appear. Many persons are so identified in their business inter- 

 ests with both characteristic groups as to realize no net change as a re- 

 sult of the advantage of either. Moreover, in so far as business is sub- 

 ject to competitive self-regulation and to reasonable official regulation, 

 there may be a wearing away of economic inequalities of changing 

 prices and a constant recruiting to the normal average of welfare. 



The chief consideration involved in the question of prices and the 

 cost of living is not the numerical measure of price changes nor the 

 aggregate number of persons affected thereby; but rather the changing 

 incidence of the burdens of life upon individuals and classes, and the 

 logical results of disturbed economic stress upon the social structure. 



