PLAIN LIVING AND DEAR.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9995, 16 March 1910, Page 4

PLAIN LIVING AND DEAR.

I An illuminating article on the cost I of living in the United States is contributed to the "Sydney Morning Herald" by Mr D. J. Quinn, who writes from personal and painful ex- [ perience. He quotes reliable figures to show the great advance in the prices of various commodities. In the last thirteen years breadstuffs have doubled in price; eggs have risen from 6d to Is 2d a dozen; mutton has doubled; bacon has risen from 2d to 5Jd, potatoes from 3s ljd per 1801b to 7s 2d; textiles from 6s 6£d to 103 2JJ. These are wholesale prices. With twenty years' experience of boarding-house life in various coun- | tries. Mr Quinn thinks the average boarding-house is as good an index as one can find to the community's standard of living. In a typical 1 New York boarding house he paid £2 5s a week for a noisy, ill-venti lated room, and meals that by their poverty would ruin the poorest class boarding house in any Australian city. The food was plain to the last degree—even jam was unknown —and wholly unappetising. The border buttered his bread on the cloth or in the palm of his hand with the knief he had used for hia meat, and stirred his tea or coffee with his porridge spoon. Bacon was divorced from eggs, and ham from chicken, and reunion could be brought about only by payment of an addition to one's bill. There were, of course, better boarding houses. Mr Quinn made a round of some, and had the privilege of paying £5 to £7 a week I for their' hospitality. The cheapest dinner to be had at a good restaurant j costs about six shillings. These classes of boarding-houses were frequented by men in business. If Mr Quinn's picture is a true one, artisans and labourers who have to live in boarding-houses must fare even worse

than this. "I have seen Italian labourers in New York who do a hard day's work on a loaf of bread which they bring with them to their job in the morning. What kind of meal they have when they reach their homes or lodgings I cannot say, but from what I saw of the cheaperJunch shops ar d restaurants freqented by working people. lam satisfied that the American worker does not and cannot afford to live nearly so well as his ! British and Australian fellows."