Commodity prices versus the general price level

Most writers, both popular and learned, dealing with price relationship and price movements, seem to accept the familiar index of commodity prices at wholesale as an adequate measure of the board general price level. The object of this article is to show that these indexes of commodities at wholesale, very largely influenced in their movements by speculative activity in the great basic commodities like wheat, cotton and the rest, differ too widley from most other known types of price indexes, as the cost of living, wages, rents, etc., to be accepted as a valid measure of the whole. Both in their long-ime trend and in their short-time variations they differ widley from the theoretical general price level and from an actual computation of the latter. The question iis vital in the problem of monetary and economic stability.