Morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven [Conn.]) 1848-1894, 1892-07-25


any place, notwithstanding the search we
have maintained. where such clothing "a
displayed to view. The truth Is that for
the lower grade of goods and workman
ship in the clothing line prices in the two
countries are about equal. And in HIGHER
grades the situation is fomething like this:
The same goods which, vixen cut in the
American style, and fitted with American
exactness, and finished according to the
American quality of well-pai workman
ship, would cost you in the land of the
Stars and Stripes about forty-five dollars
You can get put together and hung on your
back here for say twenty five dollars But
for the twenty dollars you may have saved
in money you will pay swfully dear in the
sacrifice of comfort. We write feslingly
upon this point, repeated experiments in
cheap English clothing having fully con-
vinced us that garments which come at so
low price are never properly made, that
they never ht and never give satisfaction.
Nevertheless, you can get q good suit of
clothes here-quite as good as any you can
get in America The only thing is that, to
do this, you must go to some fashionable,
high priced tailor-a man who keeps good
hands and pays fair wages. Here you will
find yourself quite well suited in both the
literal and fgurative sense. You will find,
too, that the cost will be, IL anything,
little more than your tailor In New York
would have changed.
1t would be ungenerous, after saying all
this, not to make an admission favorable
to the other side of this question. We do
it cheerfully. We admit that in rents the
Englishmsn has decided advantage over
us. He can get shelter cheaper than we
can, as rule, though not in all cases. 1t
would be awful indeed If he could not,
considering how much worse of he is at
the weeks end in wages. But against
this advantage we may well instance, with
a very pardonable sensation of pride, the
large proportion of American workmsn
who are above the necessity of paying
rent, from the fact that they have become
their own landlords These solemn LON
don dailies, in their comments upon the re-
port of the British consul at Chicago, are
telling their fellow subjects, for election |
purposes, that workingmen seem to be Sin |
no better condition to save money in the |
United States than in England" 1t takes |
all they get, and more than they are able
to get, they assure US, to cloths and feed /
their families respectfully, because prices |
are so high. When, however, they inform |
us incidentally, in the same connection, |
that, on the testimony of their own repre- |
sentative in that territory, something like |
one-half of the wage esrners within the |
consular district of the middle west are |
living in their own houses, they give away |
the whole case. This is letting the cat ont |
of the bag with a vengeance.
But people in both countries need some
thing more than clothing and shelter.
Home is more than four square walls,
II needs something 10 endear IL"
In America the ordinary workman thinks |
that home, to be a real home, should have |
a carpet on the floor and, perchance, mu- |
sicsl instrument in the parlor. And If the |
cost of things is so much less here than in |
the United States, or. in other woris, IL |
English wages have the same buying pow |
er in England as American wages have in |
America, why is it that the homes of Eng
lish workmen are not frightened generally |
in the same wsyi The American work |
man likes meat, and, as rule, he eats it |
from two to three times a day. He gets
it, too, in most sections of the country, at
trifing cost. With spring chickens OBJ
tainable at twenty-five cents each, and q |
good biz fowl for roasting or boiling at |
from thirty to forty cents, he can occa-
sionally treat himself to even such luxu- /
~ AS that. But here meat is meat and /
chickens fly too high altogether to ever sit, |
excerpt on the very rarest occasions, on the |
table of the workingman. If you can
pick up fowl here for sixty-five cents you
are lucky indeed. You will generally find
them roosting in the market-the few that
are avsilable-st about the altitude of
from eighty cents to dollar and a quar-
ter. Here is another instance Of the dirt
cheapness, so to speak, of living in Eng
land.
of course they tell us here that working
people do not need such delicacies as these
If they do not it is well they do not We
are told indeed that they do not need much
meat of any kind, and here again are con-
gratulations in order. for how on earth
could they get much, if they needed ii
ever SO badlyi For our own table, We are
paying on the outskirts of London twenty
two cents a pound for only a fairly good
roast of beef. For steaks We pay twenty
four cents, and for the best mutton chops
even more than that Recently, in a mar
ket town about fifty miles from London,
we put down two dollars for leg of NUT
ton weighing nine pounds, and when
you consider that to thoueands of agri-
cultural laborers living in the vicinity of
that market town the two dollars we
were assessed for only enough meat to last
medium-sized family couple of days
represent twO-thirtls of a weeks income,
you will get some idea both of what wages
are in this country and of the utter fallacy
of the proposition, SO strenuously contend
ed for over here just as this time, that the
English workman is as well off relatively
as the workman in the United States.
Such an idea is all mooushine. To be sure
the English workman manages to live
much cheaper than the American. He lie
compelled to do this because his earnings
are 80 much smaller. He does Is, however,
not because prices are lower, but rather as
the result of the economy he is forced to
practice, and the privations to which he
subjects himself in the heroic effort to
cut his coat according TO the small meas
ure of cloth doled out TO him. II. T.