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“Oh, well how much do ladies' high buttoned shoes cost now?” He remembered it as though it were an existing thing, instead of a thing that we had wiped out. Of course, it was partly done to tease and make a joke out of.
But the list had been revised way back in '35 to'36. However, instead of being reduced in size, it had been increased. We took off the ladies' high buttoned shoes and the long-legged underwear, but we added an infinitely largo number of things, such as electric toasters and things like that.
My idea was that we should price basic commodities only, with no manufactured goods at all. You get into such complications when you got into manufactured goods. In pricing food items, which, of course, is a very important item in the cost of living, you got down into the habits of different groups of people. We have so many people in this country with different nationality backgrounds that they have very varied food habits. The price of macaroni and tomato sauce is very important in an Italian ancestry area, and the price of certain kinds of kosher goods is vital in certain Jewish areas. It becomes very difficult. You split it up into so many little segments in order to price everything that everybody eats that you get into, I thought, an
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