Manawatu Herald. TUESDAY, APRIL 3, 1917. THEN AND NOW.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1694, 3 April 1917, Page 2

Manawatu Herald. TUESDAY, APRIL 3, 1917. THEN AND NOW.

THM “Increased Cost oi' Living” is ii topic wliicli is so personally interesting to every class of the community that all light upon its perplexities is welcome, says the Lost. Old diaries and ledgers east oblique sidelights on the problems oi' today, through the medium ot the taels of yesterday, and one falls to comparing the household hills of 1850 with those of 1017. Lor example, within the leather-hound brass-clasped pages of one such diary of 1856 (he wages of a, day labourer arc* set down at (is. while weekly wages varied f rom £T 5s to £1 Kis. Some idea of the spending power of those same wages is embodied in the following list of prices of household necessaries. Tea at 9d to Is per li) was doubtless in great demand, hut sugar must surely have been a luxury at (iid or 7d per lb. Duller at Is 3d per lb was probably used with mire, dripping was no doubt familiar to the palate even of “grown-ups,” and the children's “pieces” were surely spread with Jam. Flour at that time cost from 17s to £1 4s per hundred ll»., some times rising as high as 30s per hundred lb. A sheep cost 12s, mutton was lid per 11). and land) 7d. The purchase of six fowls is entered at 12s (id, and a pig at £1 IDs; another pig mitered at £3 10s shows a considerable difference in the pigs. The entry of £0 10s as the price of a heifer shows that prices for ’ cattle were good, while the mention of lib. of candles at 9d conjures up a vision of the tallow “dips” which made the ordinary use of (he time, real candles at 9d probably being for guests’ room or sitting-room. One feature strikes the reader very strongly, and that is the absence of entries for luxuries; no mention is made oi them. It was only the simple necessities of a simple life which had to be found from the modest wages of the time. Coal, which is rarely mentioned, was £2 10s for small coal, and large £3, while the rare entry ot “cask of beer” 11s 4d, is a peg on which one can hang no theories, for the simple reason that the size is left to the imagination. But it was evidently a rare luxury in those days of the simple life in New Zealand.