Page 2 Advertisements Column 3

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 23 September 1907, Page 2

THE COST OF LIVIXG. " ago an investigation made .•cpreseutativo of the Lyttelton liuics in Christehurck allowed that the popular belief that the cost of living had vastly increased in recent years was uot well founded. The standard of living had considerably improved, and the expenditure of the average family was larger; but the prices of what are commonly known as the necessaries of life, with the single exception of meat, were' actually lower than they were twenty or thirty years before. A similar investigation iji Wellington has now disclosed practically the same facte. A Post reporter touud that in 188:2 the Victorian Sugar Company was charging , .Uo a ton for sugar, f.o.b. at Melbourne winch meant £42 a ton landed in Xew Zealand. At the present moment sugar is being sold at exactly half that figure. At the same time oatmeal was selling at i;i(i a ton, about the price it is realising to-day, and Hour at £lO 15s a toil, some 15s a ton dearer than it is at the present time. Potatoes selling at £3 a ton at Oamaru cost £i a ton m Wellington. Currants were landed twenty-live years ago at 5',4d a pound, and are now sold retail at 4d to 41/4 a pound. Dressed rice quoted at a ton in 1882 is now on the market :.,t Alio las a ton, and the price of treacle, has fallen from jclO a ton to £5 or M a ton. Jam that cost (is 8d a dozen wholesale in 1882 can now be bought retail at the rate of Is for three tins in many shops. Coarse salt has declined 111 price froiu £i IJ S Od a ton to £3 a ton, kerosene from Is 8d a gallon to lid a gallon, and candles from »i/ 4 d a pound to (i'/od a pound. Fresh meat has largely increased in price, but tinned meats and tinned fish have declined, and the lrugal housewife probably could furnish her table 25 per cent, cheaper to-day than she could in the early eighties. Rents, of course, have increased, as the accommodation has improved, but simple clothing is lower now than it has ever been before.