“We may stop here to ask, is there any stage in this process at which it would have been proper to limit the issue of currency? The main demand for currency is to meet the weekly wages bill. If wages increase, whether because more workpeople are employed, or because rates are higher, additional currency must be brought each week into circulation. If the supply were cut off, a substitute would have to be found. At the outbreak of war there was not enough legal tender money to satisfy our additional requirements and at once postal orders and even postage stamps were used to make good the deficiency. If men and women are to be employed and paid, means of paying them must be found, and an arbitrary limitation of currency would merely inflict intolerable inconvenience upon the public.” Relation of Wages to Cost of Living It is customary to measure the cost of living among the working-classes according to the basis of the Ministry of Labour. The Ministry works on an average pre-war working-budget of food, rent, clothing, light and fuel, and miscellaneous items, and ascertains its cost month by month. (See _Labour Gazette_, February 1921.) The cost in July 1914, is taken as 100, the greater cost each month since appearing as 100 and something; this is called the “index-number.” What the Ministry does, therefore, is to measure the average increase in the cost of maintaining the pre-war standard of living of the working-classes; it does not, however, take in account any modification of the standard, which, of course, was customary; as for instance margarine used when butter was not obtainable. Lord Sumner’s Committee on the Cost of Living to the Working Classes (_Parliamentary Paper_, 1918, Cd. 8980), showed by actual investigation that the index-numbers of the Ministry did not then represent current conditions, but were too high. On the other hand, the Joint Committee on the Cost of Living[10] is of the opinion the figures are under-estimates. All these matters are discussed very fully in the book by Professor Bowley, who gives his own modified index-numbers. Professor Bowley sums it up in these words: “There can be no doubt that some sections, especially the worst paid of the working-classes, were better off in the summer of 1920 than before the war, and it is probable that other sections were worse off. It is not possible to decide whether the average of all wages, measured in purchasing power, had risen or fallen.” If, however, one takes the wages in certain trades, for example, railways, mining, and engineering, and compares them with the cost of living since July 1914, they appear in the following relation: