REVIEWS 



History of Prices diiri>ig the War: International Price Comparisons. 

 By Wesley C. Mitchell, assisted by Margaret L. Goldsmith and Flor- 

 ence K. Middaugh. Division of Planning and Statistics, War Indus- 

 tries Board, in co-operation with Department of Commerce. Govern- 

 ment Printing Office, Washington, 1919. Pp. XIII + 395. 



"International Price Comparisons," one of a series of bulletins pre- 

 pared by the War Industries Board on the history of price fluctuations 

 during the war, gives the wholesale prices from January, 1913, to De- 

 cember, 1918, by months, quarters, and years, of 491 series of com- 

 modities (not allowing for duplication). For each commodity are 

 given the quotations in foreign units and currency and corresponding 

 quotations of the closest American equivalent article in American units 

 and currency. There are also given for each commodity the relative 

 prices, based on a scale of 100, equal to the average price in the respec- 

 tive countries for the twelve months July, 1913, to June, 1914. 



The relative prices of diiTerent commodities covered for each country 

 are averaged by using median prices, to form index numbers of the 

 general price levels of the country. The countries covered (compared 

 in each case with the same or equivalent commodities in the United 

 States) are: United Kingdom (150 articles), France (44), Italy (36), 

 Japan (36), Russia (23), Australia (66), India (24), Germany (30), 

 Austria (14), Denmark (17), Norway (18), Sweden (12), Argentina 

 (21). Price movements in Canada and the United States are com- 

 pared by means of index numbers. For some of the countries (Ger- 

 many, Austria, Italy, Russia, Denmark, Norway, India) figures for the 

 last two or three years are lacking. 



"The outstanding fact established by the . . . tables is that the 

 extraordinary rise of prices which started in Europe on the outbreak 

 of the war spread over the whole commercial world. Remoteness from 

 the chief scene of conflict did not protect Japan or Australia from a 

 revolution in prices ; difference of economic organization did not pro- 

 tect India ; the maintenance of neutrality did not protect Argentina. 

 No other development has ever demonstrated so forcibly the strength 

 of the economic bonds that unite all the nations of the globe in a 

 common fortune. 



"The American price fluctuations were distinctly less violent than 



843 



