"You Itch All Over"

"We play a little numbers game at our house," explained an Atlanta housewife last week. "The kids compare the prices of groceries in the market with the ones stamped on the canned soups and packages at home, to see how much they've gone up. It's a game, and about as much fun as Russian roulette."

It was a game that any number could play, and there was scarcely a U.S. family last week that did not feel the cold muzzle of rising prices pressed against its pocketbook. Officially, the news was told in plain statistics: the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the consumer price index had risen an average .4% between the end of May and the end of June, bringing the index factor to an all-time high of 124.5 (1947-49 average: 100).

Though the price rise in food (1 % ) was the biggest single item on the index, TIME correspondents around the U.S. found that the nibbles that niggled most were such major items as increased medical costs (up in Atlanta 4.5% over last year) and dozens of minor expenses, e.g., shoeshines (up 10¢ to 35¢ in Sacramento) and haircuts (up 25¢ to $2 in San Francisco). Everywhere, middle-income families felt the pinch of such pressures as rising commuter fares, real estate prices, taxi taxes, pipe tobacco and cigar taxes, real estate taxes, school taxes, gasoline taxes. The state of Washington alone has new tax increases this year on liquor (5%), real estate rentals (.4%), business transactions (10%), and even a brand new thought--earth-moving (4%).

From Labor Statistics Commissioner Ewan Clague came the assurance that the sharp swing upward in food prices only represented a seasonal phenomenon, but there was no suggestion of relief anywhere else. It was just like being pecked to death by gnats, observed a Los Angeles homeowner. "No single bite hurts too much, but you itch all over all the time."

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