The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-05-28
COST OF LIVING |S
 FELT IN ENGLAND London Board of Trade Makes Comparison INQUIRY IN 2S TOWNS American Workman Pays a Third More For Food Than the
 Laboring Man of Eng
 land or Wales
INQUIRY IN 2s TOWNS
By SYDNEY EPsEY

| Fly SYDNEY EPsBf
 Washington, May 27.-(suecial)-The cost of living is an issue not only in the United States, but in Great Britain as we'll In order to make comparison pe- tween rents paid by working classes' housing, retail prices and rates of wages paid in certain occupations in the two countries, the board of trade in London has caused an extensive inquiry to pc made into conditions which prevail in the principal cities of the United States. The investigation, which was concluded not long ago, is quite as thorough and far reaching as any which has been made by | this government, and throws much ligh, upon living conditions in this country. | The English inquiry was conducted in l2S American towns. practically all or them lying east of the Mississippi, repre- sentative of the industrial centers Of the United States, and having an estimated population in that region of three-fourths of the entire population of the country. Concerning the basis upon which the in vestigation was made, the report which has been submitted to the London board of trade. and which has just appeared in this country, says:
 Ut is in the states laying east Of the Mississippi that American conditions most nearly approximate to those of the olu world, and are such therefore, as can pc most usefully compared. Even Tn the re- stricted area investigation, however various circumstances have made the ln- ouirv one into conditions that are in some respects international and continental, rather than national in character. espe- cially in regard to the great area covered to differences in climate and physical eh- vironment which it embraced to the feo- eral constitution of the United states to the absence of a common body ot aiaoor Legislation, and to the. cosmopolitan char acter of the population.
 The English Investigators found that the weekly hours of labor in the building trades in the United States were Il per cent shorter than in England and Wales ' ner cent shorter in the printing trades, hut per cent longer in the engineering trades
 sneaking of the character of labor, the report says, Accompanying the lnnux or foreign labor, mainly unskilled, ana an extensive demand for labor of this de-
 scription largely used in a comparatively new country a rapid expansion of man Iufactnrinr industries has been taking lplace. accompanied, with or without the
 introduction of labor saving appliances, Inv a very extensive division of labor. These two influences combined the large
 external demand for unskilled labor ana Ithe opportunities for it's absorption not only in unskilled, but in semi-skiiled em- Iplovment. have resulted in an abnormal lv large proportion of unskilled ana semi skilled to skilled workers in the commu-
 nity as a whole. fact which would el- feet appreciably any general weighted comparison between the leNel ol vases III the two countries
 Regarding rents the commissioners found that the American workman pays
 on the whole a little more than twice as
 much as the English workman for the same amount of house accommodations.
 The minimum of the range of rents Tor the United States towns as while ex-
 ceeds by from 50 to 77 per cent the maxi
 mum of the range for towns in England
 and Wales for dwellings containing the same number of rooms
 It is also found that the retail prices of
 food, obtained by weighing the prices ac- lcording to the consumption shown by the British budgets, show, when allowance IS
 made for the increase which has taken place, ratio of 13S for the United States
 as against 100 in England and Wales. In
 other words the prices which the Amer Iican workman pays for his food stun,
 are little more than one-third greater
 than are those paid by the English and
 Welsh workman. M 4.,f t.s s.5.t IA One peculiarity is the comparatively
 small amount of bakers bread consumed
 by the American workman and his family.
 The average being eight and one-quarter pounds a week. as compared with 22
 pounds consumed by the Engishman. It
 is explained, however. that the American
 workman uses, rolls. cakes and biscuit in
 place of bread, on which the expenditure
 is three times as great as in England.
 On the other hand the consumption of
 meat is much larger in the United States
 among workmen than 1t is in the British
 Isles, and also the consumption of veg
 etables is larger. All of which proves
 to the mind of the English investigators
 that the dietary of the family of the
 American working man is more liberal
 and more varied than is that of corre- spending English families.
 Under the conditions; based upon the comparison of wages and prices, the re- , port says that the wages of the American
 
 the United Kingdom by 13o percent, with , slightly shorter hours, while on the other hand his expenditure on food and rent would be about g per cent higher. The commission reached this conclu- sion:
 "The money earnings of the workmen of the United States are rather more than l 2A times as great as in England and
 Wales, and since there is no proof that employment is more intermittent in the , United States than in the United King dom, much greater margin Is available even when allowance has been made for
 the increased expenditures on food and rent t 'The margin Is clearly large, making
 possible a command of the necessaries, corveniences and minor luxuries of life that is both nominally and really greater
 than that enjoyed by the corresponding
 class in the United Kingdom. although the effective margin Is in itself, in practice, curtailed by a scale of expenditure to some extent necessary and to some ex- tent voluntarily adopted, in accordance with a different and higher standard ot material comfort. . -
 Priests nor1ine Pensions