| 9.3 | 11.6
Clothing | 13.2 | 14.7 | 17.7 | 19.2 | 20.5
Fuel, heat & light | 5.6 | 6.6 | 6.8 | 5.5 | 5.3
Sundries | 20.4 | 20.7 | 22.5 | 20.9 | 22.5
All items | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0
-------------------+-------------+---------+--------+---------+-------

[7] It is interesting to compare the actual cost of maintaining
these two standards in 1914 with that determined by a special
federal investigation in 1908. According to the latter, it was
estimated that $731.64 per year would be required to maintain a
fair standard by English, Irish and French Canadian families,
and $690.60 by Portuguese, Polish and Italian families. A
minimum of existence budget, based on the food allowance of the
federal prison at Atlanta, Ga., and with totally inadequate
clothing, required at that time only $484.41 per year for five
people. (United States, 61st Congress, 2d Session, Document No.
645, Family Budgets of Typical Cotton Mill Workers, pp.
233-245.) The results of the Board's study show that if the cost
of maintaining a minimum standard of living has increased 73%
since 1914, the sum necessary to maintain it at that time would
have been $732.81, exclusive of savings. The cost of maintaining
the more liberal standard on the same basis in 1914, allowing
for a 74% increase since then, would have been $904.54.

It should be pointed out, however, that these increases are estimated
on the basis of the maintenance of an identical standard in 1914 and
1919. As a matter of fact, standards of living have changed greatly
within the last five years. On the one hand, there have been
substitutions as prices have mounted, and on the other, wage increases
greater than advances in the cost of living have in many instances
enabled families to buy more and better goods than ever before. It is
not possible to say which influence has been the more important.

CONCLUSION

From the results of this brief survey of the cost of living among mill
operatives in Fall River, it appears that to maintain a family
consisting of man, wife and three children under fourteen years of
age, at a minimum American standard of living but without any
allowance for savings, $1,267.76 per year will be required, or a
steady income