Cost Of Living

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 12, 13 January 1948, Page 5

Cost Of Living

Interesting Dip Into * Ten-Year-Old Paper there are very few people left who believe the pretty little bedtime story about how the cost of living has not gone up. If there were any, a look at a ten-year-old newspaper would convince them, not only that costs of most of the things necessary for the running of a home have doubled, but that wages in most trades and callings have not risen by anything like the same percentage. A glance through the “want ads” -of 1938-39 show that trade wages are up ’some pence an hour, but that the chief increases apply to youngsters and certain unskilled or semi-skilled jobs. The bulk of the wage-earners have nothing like compensation for the difference between 8/11 and anything from 35/to £3 for a yard of body** carpet, to mention only one item common to most modern households. Lounge Suite, £ls A furnishing house advertising in the “Beacon” of April, 1939, offered a three-piece lounge suite, with fully sprung seats and edges, covered in tapestry, for £ls. Nowadays the .same firm asks just £4O more than that and can justify every penny of the rise on a costs basis. Similarly, if one wanted to buy a four-piece oak bedroom suite today, one might decide to jack up a used wire on packing cases and stow the spare clothing in a suitcase underneath after getting a quote of £BO. Those suites cost just on £3O back in 1939. ■Oh no, the cost of living hasn’t risen! Sad Wailings A Wellington article reported the sad wailings of an Englishman who was going back home on account of our high cost of living. A suit of clothes had cost him £B. Another couple with two children had also •decided they’d had enough. He was >: earning 2/10 an hour on a 44-hour basis and had to pay £4/8/- a week for board for the whole family. No tears spring to 1948 eyes at this record of suffering. All we have to bear now is prosperity on a 40-hour week* with no accommodation at all and bed and breakfast per person (if available) at anything from £2 to £5 a week according *o the locality. Suits For 85/But to return to the man with the suit at £B. That was a pretty good .suit those’ days. Tailored, with all mod. cons, built in. One could get a workday suit for 85/-, every bit as good as many sold today for ten guineas. Warm overcoats could be had as low as 47/0. Where is one to be had today below £5? The sort of shoes that cost anything from £2 upwards today could be bought then from a guinea to 31/6, with the average for men or women about :25/-. Two ounce tins of cigarette tobacco cost 1/9, tinned salmon (3/11 today) lOd. Coloured towels, 22” x 46” were advertised * at 5/- a pair. 'Car, With Radio, £265 Used cars can hardly be regarded -as figuring in the cost of living, but a comparison might be of interest. Here are a few from the advertise--ments in the Beacon on May, 1939: 1937 V 8 de Luxe, with radio, £265; 1934 Morris 10/4, splendid order throughout, £195; 1937 Singer 9, :£230. Those were dealers’ prices, not the panic offers of hard-up citizens trying to turn the old bus into an honest penny before the big, bad capitalist who held the mortgage foreclosed.