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Show P Living Cost -Remains Up Many Factors Count In Principal Causes t NEW YORK. What is holding ' the cost of living up, when the price of basic raw materials has fallen so far since last fall? Commodity prices, at wholesale, j have retreated since then about half-way back to their O.P.A. levels, on the average, but the cost of j living has dropped back only about one-eight of the way. However, the average weekly wage in factories is about one-twelfth of the way 1 back. ' The recession so far adds up to this: 1 Producers are getting considerably consider-ably less for many raw materials but not all. It costs almost as much to live as it did last year and the workers' average pay has been only slightly touched. Roughly, the same factors that retarded the cost of living's pace upward In the months when wholesale whole-sale commodities were soaring are now acting as a drag as It slips slightly lower. Between June, 1946, and January, 1948, wholesale commodities went up at a dizzy pace. The cost of Bvlng climbed steadily, but more slowly. Between January and September Sep-tember of last year, commodities ai a whole were on the downgrade, but fee cost of living still edged upward. Since then the cost of living has receded, but much more slowly than prices have fallen. , Rent controls and price absorption absorp-tion by processors and retailers . acted as a drag on the cost of 1 living on the upgrade. Braking . liie decline of the cost of living , now are: rents, as high and ap- parently going higher; the normal . time lag between retail and whole-3 whole-3 sale price changes; continued high r labor costs; continued high taxes; 1 and, of course, substantial profits. 5 On June 15, 1946, the index, in r which 1926 prices are 100, stood at . 120.65. By January 15, 1948, it had y reached 207.61. It was back to 186.41 by September 15, 1948. |