Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 September 1907 — Cost of Living in 1906. [ARTICLE]

Cost of Living in 1906.

A summary of the report just sent to the printer by the United States Bureau of .Labor, of which Charles P. Neill is the head, covering the year' 190 G, shows that the prices of food were generally higher during every month of that year than in the corresponding month of 1905. The price in December was 4 8-lOths per cent higher than the average for the year 1906, and the year as a whole showed a higher average than any since 1890, the period covered by the bureau’s investigation. The increase of last year applied unequally to twenty-five of the thirty articles showing the greatest advance were lard, evaporated apples, pork, bacon, ham, fish, mutton and butter. The retail prices of food were 29-10ths per cent higher than in the previous year. The report deals also with the question of wages for manual workers, and gives figures showing that the advance in wages per hour over the preceding year was greater than the advance in the retail prices of food. That is to say, the purchasing power of an hour's wages asmensured by;food was greater last year than the year before. The increase in this purchasing power was 14-10 tbs per cent. As compared with the ten years’ average from 1890 to 1809, the wages per hour were 24 2-10ths per cent higher, and the number of employes 42 9-10th.s per cent greater, and the average hours of labor a week 4 6-10ths per cent lower. In the principal manufacturing industries of the country the average wages were 4 5-10ths per cent higher than in 1905. The greatest increase was in the manufacture of cotton goods, where the wages were 112-10ths per cent higher, and in only one industry, that of paper and wood pulp, was there a decrease, namely 1 l-10th per cent