"'In combining the percentages of increase for the respective items, in order to determine the average increase for the budget as a whole, food was taken as constituting 43 per cent. of the total family expenditure, rent 18 per cent., clothing 13 per cent., fuel and light 6 per cent., and sundries 20 per cent. Applying the Board's percentages of increase for the respective items to this distribution of the budget, the average increase is 52 per cent. The distribution of budget items just given is an average based on cost of living studies made by several United States Government bureaus and other agencies, covering in all 12,000 families. "The proportions of these major items of expenditure can be varied within narrow limits, but no reasonable arrangement would cause a wide change in the increase in the total cost of living as given above. For instance, if, instead of this average distribution of the budget, food be allocated as much as 45 per cent., rent and clothing 15 per cent. each, fuel and light 5 per cent., and sundries 20 per cent., the indicated increase in the total cost of living, using the Board's percentages of increase for the respective items, would be 54 per cent." All articles of food, we are told, show a considerable increase in price since 1914, exceptional advances being recorded in the case of flour, lard, and cornmeal. The item of rent, says the report, "showed such wide variation that no general average applicable to all sections of the country could be reached," but the 15 per cent. estimate "is apparently ample to cover the increase in wage-earners' rents in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, and St. Louis, which alone include several millions of the country's industrial population." Of the increase in clothing prices we read: INCREASED COST FOR WEARING APPAREL "Information secured from retail stores in cities well distributed throughout the country indicates increases in prices of the most common articles of wearing apparel, ranging from 50.5 per cent. for women's dollar blouses up to 161 per cent. for men's overalls. Striking increases occurred in the prices of certain yard goods, where advances in cost over 1914 prices amounted, in a number of cases, to more than 100 per cent. "Men's hosiery, selling for 15 cents in 1914, cost in June, 1918, usually not less than 25 cents, and women's hosiery, selling for 25 cents four years ago, brought 45 cents in June of this year. Knit underwear, the report finds, had increased nearly 100 per cent. Women's shoes of a standard grade increased 88.5 per cent.; men's 69 per cent. Women's kid gloves which in 1914 cost $1 averaged more than $2 in June, 1918.