THE COST OF LIVING.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4512, 6 September 1875, Page 3

THE COST OF LIVING.

(From London Spectator.) The author of the paper on " The Cost of Living," in the April number of the Cornhill, is all wrong, and as, if he were right, he would be a most aggravating person, it may be worth while to tell irritated housekeepers why he is in the wrong. All his facts are, we doubt not, correct, but the instinct which so illogically or absurdly denies them all is, we think, correct too. In feminine phraseology, " He may prove all he likes, and it doesn't matter, because after all, you know, it isn't so ;" or in more masculine phrase, he has omitted one essential datum in his calculation. His thesis as he puts it is quite conclusive. You are bound, he say 3, when comparing the present with the past cost of living, to compare actual prices, and not prices as affected by new wants. You have no right to say rent is higher because you seek a bigger house, or education costs more because you de3ire a higher form of tuition, or rates are more oppressive when you want so many new comfort 3 paid out for them. Your expense for lighting is not to be calculated by your bills for oil and gas, but by your bills as they would be if you required only the light with which your grandfather was content. You ought to compare the old article at its old price with the old article at its present price, and then you will find that there has in most departments of life been very little increase of cost at all. You can get the bad old accommodation at the old price. You need not give any more for the apology for education. You can stay at home if you like, as your forefathers did, in spite of all the cost of modern travel. It is most unfair to count your increased wants as if they were increased privations, or as the writer puts it, "Perhaps the oddest, one might rather say the coolest, assumption often made in discussions upon this subject, is one which really amounts to a claim that all loss arising increase of cost is to be regarded as a privation, and therefore a ground for complaint, whereas all saving arising from all diminutii'n of cost or other directions may fairly be regarded as being swallowed up by the greater ' demands' of the present age. Beef and butter are dearer, therefore here is a priv tion ; but when it is uged on the other hand that travelling is vastly cheaper, the answer will very likely be, ' Oh ! but people are obliged to travel so much more now than they used to do ; every one does so now, even those who formerly never thought of such a ! thing, and therefore we, like others, are forced to do the same.' StiE more is the same answer resorted to in the case of every sort of social display. It need hardly be remarked that every plea of this sort must be peremptorily rejected. After rejecting every plea, it will be found that the cost of living has scarcely increased, certainly not more than 10 per cent., if so much. Meat has about doubled in price, and rent outside London is a trifle dearer, say 20 per cent., but every other necessary excepting service is perceptibly cheaper. Taxes are le3s; the cost of travelling is less ; books cost less; clothes are nearly the same, and servants' wages, though they seem to have altered, do not in a household of £IOOO per annum differ by £3O a year. Every word of this argument is as true as to all housekeepers

over fifty it will be aggravating, and the whole of it is all the same distinctly fa'se. The writer has forgotten or omitted one great factor in his problem,—namely, a definition of his ideas of "necessaries." The question is not whether a pound of meat now costs more or less than it did in 1800, but whether a meal costs more or less ; not whether " education " can be obtained as cheaply, but whether education of equivalent use does not cost more ; not whether " living" is as cheap as of old, but whether living in the same friendships is not very much more costly. The essayist is right when he says there is no justice in placing good drainage against bad, and saying good drainage is the dearer ; but he is only right so long as the drainage is optional, and not a matter of compulsion. The moment a purchase becomes inevitable, and inevitable for some other reason than the mere development of a new desire, the cost to the purchaser becomes a true addition to the cost of living ; and there have been many such additions. This very one of sanitation is such an addition. If it were open to a man to live as his grandfather lived, it would be unfair to quote the plumber's bill against the good old times, but in a city no such a choice is left to the economical housekeeper. He must pay his plumber's bill, or be fined, or die of typhoid, and that bill is a direct increase to his inevitable expenses. To take an even better illustration, the cost of education as a necessity has been extravagantly increased. It is quice true that our sons can. get for £2O a year just as good an education as our fathers got for that amount, that is to say, as much of positive knowledge or positive discipline of the mind, but then of the direct object sought through that education they cannot" get so much. The middle-class man of ISOO bought for his son with his £2O a year a chance of success iu life which he now scarcely buys for six or seven times that sum. One end, at least, of education is to obtain an armor for the battle of life ; and if that armor is essential, and not to be obtained without increased expense, there has been a direct addition to the cost of living. As a matter of fact, we all know this h*s been the case. The essayist's examplar, a professional man in a country town with £IOOO a year, would in 1800 have been liberal if, with a family of two sons and two daughters, he had spent £IOO a year — that is a tithe of his income—on education. He would now, imless very exceptionally fortunate, have to spend £33o—th-it U, a third of his receipts to secure identically the same article, that is, an education for his children which should fit them for their position as well as the previous generation was fitted for a third of the money. It is nonsense to say that the education is better. So is the meat. But a man wants within a fraction as many ounces a day of good meat as of indifferent, and education has become as great a necessary as food—that is to say, without it- the man or woman of the professional grade is weak for the ordinary work of life. Education is a necessity, not luxury, and its increased cost, which is excessive, and will be greater yet, is a direct addition to the cost of living. So is the cost not of hiring servants, but of feeding servants when they are hired.