COST OF LIVING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 10713, 13 January 1913, Page 4

COST OF LIVING.

Mr W. Perober Reeves has a prominent article 121 the Daily Ohronicie 'replying to strictures passed by Mr Ramsay McDonald in discussing the report of the Royal Commission on the Cost of Living. "So New Zealand joins the ranks of those countries that, having raised nominal wages and pursued a. fleeting advantage by sheltering their workshops behind tariff walls, are now confessing that poverty returns to them oncemore, that they have come to the I end of their advantages, and that their people are still baffled in their pursuits of abiding comfort. Tf py- ' erybody who talks of wages and tar- . iffs and such like elusive- benefits ' would commit- this report to heart. Great Britain, by striking out on her own lines, might yet show the world how to raise up standards of life J without resorting to means which must inevitably result in submerging , thorn under costs of living which increase faster than people's incomes." j Mr "Reeves >show, s the otheT»sid>? of the shield. While admitting much of what Mi- MoDonald contends, he points out that the proportion of the breadwinner's wages required to feed a family in New Zealand is less than in other leading civilised countries (except Australia). So far from admitting that the experience of the na=t twenty years is a record of warning and failure, Mr Reeves contends ' that "history has if any, plea- j santer pictures of social and material well-being in a free and educated community than can bo gathered from tho report of the Cost cf Living Commission."