National Affairs: Creeping Up

The restive Consumer Price Index was still giving the Administration—and the rest of the U.S.—the creeps. Setting a new record for the fifth month in a row, it crept up in January to a mark of 118.2 (the 1947-49 average = 100), thus stood .2 above December, 1.1 above September, and a sharp 3.6 above January 1956. The 3.6 climb in a single year seemed all the more creepy by contrast with the index's behavior during the first three Eisenhower years: twitching upward in some months and downward in others, it gained only .7 from early 1953 to early 1956.

For 1.4...