AR?' OF ECOl?OMIC DEYELOPMEI?' ?7 When large public works are to be undertaken it is of the utmost importance to make the best possible forecast of the f.uture course of prices and wages rates during the period of construction. projects have been estimated Big irrigation canal in India and their commencement having been delayed some eight or ten years it has been found necessary to increase the estimate .by nearly 15 per cent merely owing to the rise of prices and labor rates which took place in the meantime. ?,, The only method of forecasting the future course of pt ices and wages is by inference from the experience hundred years or more. yearly index numbers of o? the past induction the wages should are available. For selected four series wages respectively in prices of the well known and To facilitate prices and years back will 'For Indian prices I have index numbers prepared by of artisans in the Labor Department building trade of the Board to 1874, and before that date I have wages of artisans in the building trade These .index numbers of prices and wages in England be. found plotted in the diagram facing p. 40. selected the series of the Commercial Intelli- have chosen those compiled by of Trade taken of London? the back the be plotted for as many as figures the sake of illustration I have of figures: namely, prices and England, and in India. For English have taken Layton's figures ? compounded index numbers of Mr. Sauerbeck back to 1860, those of the late Professor W. Stanley Jevons for the earlier years from 1782 to 1860; the two curves being recalculated so as to meet at this date, and so that the index number for 1900 is 100. As an example of a series of index numbers of wages in England, I
