COST OF LIVING

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10517, 4 January 1912, Page 6

COST OF LIVING

EFFECT OF DROUGHT ANF> LARGE GOLD OUTPUT. Mir R. H. Broker, in an a.dda*es«befcre the Royal Statistical Society on "The Course of Prices at Home and Abroad, 1890-1910," said, i;n comparing price* in 1910 with these of the decade IS3O-99, that wholesale nn-iic.es had risen in Britain by ahoult 15 per cent., irn Germany and the United States by about 30 per cent., and by intermediate amounts in France and Canada. Mr Hooker attributed the cause of higher prices partly to the increased goM output. We were also "near the crest of one of these waves due to increased demand fo\ material's, especially minerals, wliiVh periodically recur in prices, and which are gen«ra% associated with industrial prosperity." Thirdly, the price' of food lad risen very greatly during the past three months 1 owing to.-the drbughity. siuimimier in, North-Western Bull-op©.' "The- effect of the large output of gold would probably persist for some time, and prices might, be expected to oscillate round an average that was not likely to decrease at piresent.