In France similar calculations have been based upon the import prices of commodities, and in Germany (Soetheer's) upon the import prices of goods at Hamburg. The latter are more com prehensive, since Hamburg was so long a free city that practically its entire trade was in com modities imported by sea and land. The calm lotion: of Dr. Soetbeer for Ilanffiturg, based on the average price. of Isli to Is5o. embraced 100 articles, to wide!' were ridded II art Wks from the British trade returns. Neither the more limited •rench calculations nor those of Dr.
Soetbeer developed any mode tff combination other than the simple average.
Ili the United States efiniprehelisiVe statistic's of prices for the period of ISM to Is.:11 were pub lished in the Senate report 011 wholesale prices, ages, and t ra n -portal nut. The report based its calculations upon the prier, of lst;0 and furnished an index number comprising 22:1 dif ferent series of prices. These were combined by the method of simple average, and also by esti mating the importance of the price series as measured by family eonsumption. As in pre vious instances when different methods of combi nation hail barn tested upon the same figures, the results of the two methods differed but lit tle. This price index (dosed with 1891, but-the
1 nited States Department of Labor in its Bul letin has furnished the materi al for carrying the study of price movements down to the present day.
It should perhaps be mentioned that this re port applied the index-number principle to its statement of wage statistics, a procedure which had been previously suggested, but was earried here to exeetation for the first time. it is also applied effectively to the study of transportation rates. The methods of the report, especially as applied to wages, have been made the subject of searching eriticisin liy the English statistician A. I,. Itowley, who has effectively used the index principle in his investigations of the course of wages in England.
Consult: liowiey, Wages in the United King. dom. (Cambridge, 1900) ; id., Elements of Sta tistics (London. 1901) ; Falkner. Wage Statis tics in Theory and Practice (Boston. ISDN. in Publications of the Ant. rican Statistical ...Issocia t ion; :\ I ayo- Sin it ln. Mat is, ie.': and Economics (New York, HOD); Senate Report Fifty second Congress, second session. 1593, four vol umes.