ART, VI.-THE COST OF LIVING OF THE WORKING CLASSES.

1. Cost of Living of the Working Classes. Report of an enquiry by the Board of Trade into Working Class Rents, Housing and Retail Prices, together with the standard rates of wages prevailing in certain occupations in the principal industrial towns of the United Kingdom. 1908. [Cd. 3864.]

2. Cost of Living &c., &c., in the principal industrial towns of the German Empire. 1908. [Cd. 4032.]

3. Cost of Living . . . in the principal industrial towns of France. 1909. [Cd. 4512.

4. Cost of Living . . . in the principal industrial towns of Belgium. 1910. [Cd. 5065.]

THE

HE boyish phrase that something is as big as a bit of chalk or as long as a piece of string provokes a smile in the man who dogmatises boldly upon national degeneration, or the condition of the working classes, without more than a childish modicum of the sense of precise measurement or any clear idea of the criteria to be measured. At best he is comparing vague impressions of the present with almost complete ignorance of the irrecoverable past.

Our knowledge upon the all-important question of the condition of the people is very imperfect. Exact observation, minute, synthetic, on a well-organised plan, attained its highest level in Le Play's monumental work 'Les Ouvriers 'Européens,' 1855, one of the great books of the world, though the late Lord Acton preferred in his list of the hundred best books to include the same author's more didactic treatise La Réforme Sociale.' Le Play's method was to spend a month or two with or near a workman's family, designated by good local judges as fairly typical, and to portray it with photographic fidelity and microscopical thoroughness-its history, its property, its annual income and expenditure, its tastes, habits, health, morals, work, pleasures, problems, its housing and environment-in fine almost every detail relevant to its well-being. Every article of furniture is inventoried and valued, every garment appraised. A separate profit and loss account is opened for the pig. The value of the wife's work about the house is estimated and allowed for. The sense of humour is set at defiance. The result is such a

picture of industrial life in Europe fifty years or more ago as has never been equalled. To turn over the pages is to make a sociological tour more interesting and instructive than the most enthusiastic philosopher is likely ever to be able to make in his own person. Thirty-six families are studied, from the rag-picker of Paris to the Tartar shepherd on the Caucasian steppes. The Société d'Economie Sociale, founded by Le Play, continues his work at the rate of one or two monographs a year. This is the intensive method. It has been followed to some extent by Mr. Charles Booth and Mr. Rowntree, and in a little volume of 'Family Budgets,' 1896, compiled by the Economic Club of London. The instrument is too delicate to be handled with complete success by a public department, though in Germany municipal, State, and Imperial authorities have all in partial measure essayed it. The United States set the example of the extensive method on a large scale in 1890 by the compilation of the budgets of some thousands of workmen's families, with the averages and percentages dear to statisticians. This method has a different aim. It is more summary, less personal, not diving down beyond certain externals capable of tabulation-the expenditure on rent, food, clothing, and so forth.

UNITED KINGDOM.

Our own Government has entered somewhat tardily upon this same path of extensive enquiry. A tentative effort was made in a small Blue Book in 1889, Returns of Expenditure by Working Men' (Cd. 5861). But the first serious attack on the problem was made in the so-called Fiscal Blue Books (Cd. 1761 of 1903 and Cd. 2237 of 1904) which contained memoranda on the consumption of food and the cost of living of the working classes in the urban districts of the United Kingdom, based on 1944 budgets of working-class families. These memoranda were admittedly imperfect in respect of the rents usually paid for workmen's dwellings and the range of prices for food stuffs. The bulky Yellow Book of 1908 (Cd. 3864) attempts to remedy these defects and to establish a standard of comparison applicable to different districts of the United Kingdom and also to foreign countries as a basis for comparing working-class conditions at home and abroad. It has been followed by enquiries on similar lines in respect of Germany, France, Belgium, and the United States, upon which last country the Report has not yet been published. The purpose of the present article is to give a summary though not uncritical

account of the methods followed and the results obtained so far as the cost of living is concerned.

The difficulties of the Board of Trade undertaking were enormous. They were with doubtful wisdom increased by the decision to take the month of October 1905 as the standard for all prices, and the discovery of these old prices is already becoming no easy matter. What is the price of bread to-day in London ? Even after ruling out 'fancy 'bread' in which milk, lard, potatoes, or other special ingredients may be found, the variations are wide. The West End baker with a high rent, heavy rates, long credits, bad debts, and expenses of book-keeping and delivery, must needs sell at a higher price than the East-end Co-operative store, where the customer pays cash down and takes his loaf away. Yet a loaf is a loaf; and when the weight and quality are the same we are comparing like with like. Rent is a more complicated matter. The number of rooms may be the same, but one family may live in a basement or an attic, another on the best floor. The size of the rooms may differ. One residence may be in a pleasant quarter with a bright cheerful outlook, the other in a squalid dreary neighbourhood. Every parish in London has its working-men. One lives near his work and pays a high rent: another pays less rent but has to expend time and money daily in getting to and fro. We may know what is spent in rent, but what is received in return can hardly be tabulated.

It follows that the condition of the working-classes is not fully known when we have set out their money wages and certain figures of their expenditure. Nor are such figures, even if complete, by any means an infallible guide to the utilities enjoyed. A good housewife (perhaps before her marriage a well-trained domestic servant) will feed and clothe her family well, while another mother, taken from the factory and unable to patch or darn or to cook a decent meal, will spend the same amount with a lamentably inferior result. But the figures are, nevertheless, a useful indication, a first approximation for comparative purposes, of which we do well to avail ourselves. They are solid footing from which to advance in our knowledge of the subject. The method adopted by the Board of Trade is to fix the metropolis as the standard for each country, except that in England the middle zone of London is taken, by which is meant the area lying between the City, W., N.W., and S.W. districts at the centre and the outlying suburbs bordering on the country. The prices selected are those which predominate in the returns

for each locality. If two rooms are the general rule in a particular town their rent is compared with that of two rooms in the metropolis, if three the comparison is with three. For articles of food an index number is composed by comparing the prices of commodities which enter most commonly into the dietary of the working classes. Here again the composition and efficacy of the dietaries vary considerably. The Scottish workman eats much oatmeal and little imported meat, the English workman much imported meat and little oatmeal. For this reason both imported meat and oatmeal are excluded from the index number, a decision open to serious criticism. The Irishman consumes more potatoes. Why not exclude potatoes? And where are we to stop in this direction, especially when we are dealing with foreign countries? It would have been interesting if the average quantities of different articles of food consumed per family in England, Scotland, and Ireland had been taken and the values of typical dietaries worked out in calories or units of the energy which they are calculated to supply. We are but at the beginning of investigation on these lines though the beginning is substantial. Let us turn to the results.

In the United Kingdom ninety-four industrial towns have been selected, of which seventy-seven are in England and Wales, eleven in Scotland, and six in Ireland. The occupations singled out for examination are those most generally distributed-the building, engineering, printing (hand-compositors only) and furnishing trades. The prevalence of the four- and five-roomed type of dwelling among these classes is remarkable. The difference of rent in London (the middle zone as above defined) and in the provinces is shown in the following table:

If rent in London be represented by 100, Croydon and Plymouth (with Devonport) stand next at 81, Newcastle-onTyne 76, Birkenhead 70, gradually descending to Macclesfield 32. The Eastern counties generally show the lowest mean index number, cheap land and low wages reflecting their influer in the cost of houses. Sanitation improves in

England from North to South and in other respects the types. of houses show considerable local variation. Moreover if the neighbouring towns of Halifax and Huddersfield be compared, the rents for two, three or five rooms at Halifax are much lower, while if four rooms be taken as the basis the rents at Halifax are higher. This is by no means a solitary example. Caution is, therefore, necessary in drawing conclusions from the indications of comparative rents. Overcrowding, as might be expected, is less frequent in the very low-rented towns, but it is not always at its greatest in the localities where rent is highest.

In Scotland the urban workman generally lives in a flat of one, two or three rooms. The predominant weekly rents are for one room 2s. to 2s. 6d., two rooms 3s. 10d. to 4s. 3d., three rooms 5s. 2d. to 6s. 5d. The range of local variation is much narrower than in England and Wales. Thus Edinburgh (with Leith) 100, is in much the same position as Glasgow 99, and only two towns fall below 84, viz.. Perth 76 and Galashiels 69.

In Ireland, Dublin stands apart as London does in England. The demand for working-class accommodation in Dublin is rather in excess of the supply, which consists in great measure of large houses once occupied by the wealthier classes and now let as tenements. The rooms in Dublin are, therefore, usually more spacious than those in other Irish towns. Local rates are also higher. In Dublin the rents are for one room 2s. to 3s., two rooms 3s. to 4s. 6d., three rooms 4s. to 6s., four rooms 6s. to 8s., and five rooms 8s. to 10s. Taking Ireland as a whole the predominant weekly rents are for one room 1s. 6d. to 2s. 6d., two rooms 2s. 6d. to 3s. 6d., three rooms 4s. to 5s., four rooms 5s. 6d. to 6s. 9d. The index numbers are Dublin 100, Limerick 69, Cork 66, Belfast 61, Londonderry 54, Waterford 53.

Passing to the prices of provisions and such household commodities as fuel and light we find many curious variations. Food is generally dearer in Scotland and Ireland than in England and Wales, and this is true even of Irish butter, which costs 1s. a pound in most English towns as against 1s. 2d. in Ireland. The qualities of the articles are not always the same for different towns, as the predominant prices are selected from returns rendered by representative tradesmen having a working-class clientèle and by co-operative societies. But we might have expected that the ubiquity of multiple shops' or branches of large trading companies, the facilities of the parcel post, and the readiness of great central stores to