Especially during a month like the present when festivities and social nts generally coming on] top of seasonable sicknesses cause the householder to groan under} more than ordinarily heavy load of bills, it is difficult persuade people that the cost of living here has decreased. 'That it has done so, however, during' october and November is shown] by the figures calculated by the [National Tariff Commission! which during recent years has taken over from the Bureau of] Markets of the Treasury Department the work of preparing some lof the few statistical tables yet available for China. From fa perusal of the table, which was published yesterday," it will be seen that there are two specially high points in the cost of living this. year—that for February, when the index number went up)
136, and then in September when it was only slightly lower, namely 136.3. Since the latter month the index number actually [shows a drop of over ten points, to 1252 in November. While this el
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.