TWENTIETH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART V[ 513 



LIVING COST INVESTIGATION 



By your direction, I started late last summer to make an inquiry into 

 cost of commodities in common usage with a view of attempting to fix 

 the responsibility for the high prices which have been prevailing for 

 some time past. 



With this end in view I formulated a series of questionnaires asking 

 the buying and selling prices of a large number of articles commonly 

 utilized by residents of this state, and distributed sevei'al hundred of 

 them to the department inspectors. Independent investigations were 

 also conducted by the Deputy Commissioner, the Chief Inspector of 

 Weights and Measures and myself, at the same time. 



The facts contained in the returned questionnaires were carefully 

 tabulated and compared with a large amount of other data which had 

 been collected. Where evidences of unusual or unfair profits were 

 apparent, the matter was taken up with the responsible merchants. The 

 fact that he was aware that he was under surveillance usually sufficed 

 to cause the merchant to revise his prices. 



In considering the situation it was found that there were a number 

 of reasons entering in to bring it about. 



1st. The drain on the resources of the world by a long period of 

 under production due to war conditions. 



2nd. The extravagance of the public. 



3rd. Too wide a spread between the price received by the producer 

 and that by the consumer. 



(a) High cost of doing business. 



(b) Cumbersome methods of marketing and delivering. 



(c) Profiteering. 



(d) Speculation. 



Regarding the first point, little need be said. Everyone, of course, 

 realizes that with war as the world's industry for practically four years 

 and a half, there was a great decrease in the amount of energy devoted 

 to the production of things which we require as civilians, and that what- 

 ever surplus existed in these commodities, would soon be exhausted. 

 Such, indeed, has been the case, and we ended the war with an acute 

 shortage staring us in the face. 



Things will never be as cheap as they were before the war; to make 

 them so, the cost of all raw materials must come down, and labor must 

 prepare itself to receive lower wages. Most of the relief to be secured 

 will come from the education of the public, the rest from legislation. 



In conducting this investigation an attempt was made to avoid the 

 mistake of starting it with too much publicity and too many promises, 

 for we of the department realized that tqo many investigations of like 

 nature had started as thunderous sounds and ended as faint hollow 



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