Word: ewan
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Tucked away in the second-floor recesses of the great, grey Department of Labor in Washington sits a little-known but influential man: Ewan Clague, commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It is he, knee-deep in charts and statistics, who figures out how high the cost of living has gone. Last week he reported that his sensitive consumer price index (based on 200-odd household commodities) had advanced sharply (.6%) since Sept. 15 to an alltime high ceiling of 174.8%. (The base figure of 100% is based on living costs in 1939.) It would be considerably higher...
...hour wage increase. Steel then promptly raised its prices 5½%. A fifth round in steel, however, should not set off another round for everybody; all basic industries, except steel and John Lewis' coal diggers, had already got a raise since the Korean war began. Before Ewan Clague's cost-of-living index inched up again, there was a good chance that some kind of wage and price controls would be clamped on. When that happened, the brief, happy, between-wars interlude of freedom in the market place will be gone...
...index had risen another 0.5% in the month ending Sept. 15, it added a comforting note. The price of food, said BLS, went down 0.2%. But consumers, who have noticed no discernible drop in food prices, had reason to wonder: How accurate is the index? Last week, stocky, rumpled Ewan Clague, commissioner of Labor Statistics confessed that consumers have a point. The BLS index is out of plumb, and he has started to true...