A POPULAR ERROR.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2145, 5 February 1880, Page 3

A POPULAR ERROR.

A writer in the “ Leisure Hour ” says that there is now a current notion among consumers that everything is dearer than it used to he, and this is made the excuse for spending at a higher rate, and for pleading that an income of £7OO or 800 is required to maintain the same scale of living for which £SOO formerly sufficed. No idea can he more unfounded. Bread is untaxed and could be sold at a living profit to a man who earns 6s a clay at half the price formerly paid by his predecessor, who for more skilled work, was paid 2s 6d. Better tea is sold at 2s than at - the beginning of the century cost Bs. Coffee was 2s 6d ; that is excelled in quality by that at present price of Is Gd. Sanded sugar was lOd ; pure sugar is now 4d. Salt, that is now free, paid a duty of 20s per bushel. The daily newspaper, about a fourth of the present size, and an eighth—if that can be measured —of the current quality, cost 4d, while each advertismeut was taxed 2s 6d. A belter hat is now worn at 12s than was formerly supplied at 245. Literature, periodical and standard once so expensive, is now so cheap that it costs less to buy anew copy of a book or pamphlet than to buy the old. The aged can remember when the “ Wavcrloy Novel ” cost fils Gel, and was hired out to rend at Is per vol. for twelve hours. It is now retailed, with all the notes, at fid. Let “the girl of flic period” ask her grandmother what, 60 years ago, straw hats “ came to.” At a Queen’s Assembly the best-dressed lady appeared in a cotton-print (hat a hop-picker now would scorn to wear on Sundays. Leather was taxed, and wo have the benefit of the remission in boots and shoes of far better make at a lower figure. All articles of clothing —even of ornament— arc made greatly more accessible to every purse. Soap was taxed, bricks, tiles, slates, timber, glass. Wine is little more than half its former price. In fact with the exception of beef, mutton, butter, and cheese, the whole cost of living is, cceteris paribus— that is, in reference to the same necessary commodities —very much less in the year 1876 than it was in 1801,