The Board of Trade announced on Thursday that the Index
Figure of retail prices on January 1st was 165, four points below the figure for December 1st and eleven points below the figure for November 1st, the highest yet recorded. The Index Figure for October 1st was .164. Any decline of this arbitrary standard is most welcome, except perhaps to the Civil servants and the railwaymen whose salaries have mounted as the Board of Trade's estimate of retail prices rose. But it remains to be seen whether the movement of prices, which is reflected and exaggerated by the Index Figure, will continue downward. A year ago the Index. Figure was 125; the cost of living was nominally two and a-quarter times as great as in. July, 1914. Prices must fall heavily if we are even to return to the level of January, 1920, which was very high. Yet it is plain that until the decline in prices has come and gone there can be no genuine revival of trade. People will not buy on. a. failing market, and attempts to maintain artffitially high prices and wages can only delay the recovery.
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