GOVERNMENT: New Yardstick

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Businessmen have long been dissatisfied with the Department of Labor's weekly wholesale price index. So has the Department of Labor. For one thing, accurate weekly checks were made on only half the 900 different commodities that the index was supposed to cover. For another, the relative importance of individual items in the index was based on sales during 1929-31. The result was that items which had since increased vastly in importance, e.g., rayon, were given much less weight in the index than they deserved. Newer items were left out entirely. Last week, after months of preliminary tooting, the department issued a new weekly index to replace the old.

The new one is based on 115 sample commodities which, the department holds, accurately reflect the trends in all 900.

Though the job of revaluating all the commodities will not be finished until mid-1950, it has already begun to make a difference. The final report on the old weekly index last week showed that wholesale prices had dropped 0.1% for the week ending Nov. 13. Next day, the first published report on the new index, which covered the week ending Nov. 16, showed that prices were up 0.1%.