Year: 1875




The author of the paper on "The Cost of
Living" in the April number of the CornhiA is
all wrong, and as, if he were right, he would
be most aggravating person, it may be worth
while to toll irritated housekeepers why he is
in the wrong. All his facts are, we doubt not,
correct, but the instinct which so illogically or
absurdly denies them all is, we think, correct
too. In feminine phraseology, "He may prove
all he likes, and it doesn't matter, because af-
ter all, you know it isn't so y or in more mas
culine phrase, he has omitted one essential da-
tum in his calculation. His thesis as he puts
it is quite conclusive. You are bound, he says,
when comparing the present with the past cost
of living, to compare actual prices, and not
prices as affected by new wants. You have no
right to say rent is higher because you seek a
bigger house, or education costs more because
you desire higher form of tuition, or rates
are more oppressive when you want so many
new comforts paid out for them. Your expense
for lighting is not to be calculated by your bills
for oil and gas, but by your bills as they would
be if you required only the light with which
your grandfather was content. You ought to
compare the old article at its old price with the
old article at its present price, and then you
will find that there has in most departments of
life been very little increase of cost at all.
You can get the bad old accommodation at the
old price You need not give any more for the
apology for education. You can stay at home
e -, l;l-o - ,-,,,- f,,.ae, 49,. IA - -,;+o of
all the cost of modern travel 1t is most un-
fair to count your increased wants as if they
were increased priyations, or as the writer
puts it,-"Perhaps the oldest, one might "a
ther say the coolest, assumption often made in
discussions upon this subject, is one which real
ly amounts to a claim that all loss arising from
increase of cost is to be regarded as a priva-
ton, and therefore a ground for complaint,
whereas all saving arising from all diminution
of cost or other directions may fairly be regard
ed as being swallowed up by the greater de
mands' of the present age. Beef and butter are
dearer, therefore here is privatiOn; but when
it is urged on the other hand that travelling is
vastly cheaper, the answer will very likely be,
oh but people are obliged to travel so much
more now than they used to do; every one does
so now, even those who formerly never thought
of such a thing, and therefore we, like others,
are forced to do the same Still more is the
same answer resorted to in the case of every
sort of social display. It need hardly be re-
marked that every plea of this sort must bePer-
emptorily rejected


After rejecting every plea, it viii be found
that the cost of living has scarcely increased,
certainly not more than ten per cent, if so much
Meat has about doubled in price, and rent out
side London is a triie dearer, say 20 per cent,
but every other necessary excepting service is
perceptbly cheaper. Taxes are less the cost
of travelling is less books cost less clothes are
nearly the same, and servants wages, though
they seem to have altered, do not in a house
hold of $1,000 per aunum differ by ESQ year.
Every word Of this argument is as true as toall