Incomes

With the laborer's silk shirts and automobiles, and the stenographers' fur coats and silk stockings, business men as well as moralists have been duly impressed in recent years. Unlike most moralists, however, business men have been pleased at these signs of the time, taking them as indications of a constantly rising standard of living and an expanding domestic market for merchandise.

The National Bureau of Economic Research, after profound and lengthy researches, has recently presented statistics which go to show what everyone knew already--that average incomes in this country were apparently on the increase. The national income during 1909 is placed at 27 billion dollars and in 1913 at 32 billion; it rose gradually to a peak of 74 billion in 1920, and relapsed to 62 billion in 1921.

These figures, however, do not allow for the violent changes in the buying power of the dollar over this period. In "current dollars"--that is, money at its present purchasing power--the average income in this country in 1909 was $791; in 1913 it had increased to $864; from here it shot up to $1851 in 1920, and the next year fell back to $1537.

The business man is duly impressed by this carefully prepared scientific explanation of what happened four years ago. But in forming an opinion as to the future, he is more apt to watch his truck driver's neck or his stenographer's legs than the deep-revolving historical conclusions of even the most eminent statisticians.