HE’S HERE.

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LX, Issue 10886, 12 August 1932, Page 4

HE’S HERE.

MEET THE PERFECT HOUSE KEEPER. Sydney, August 5. With “domestic economy” in the mind of the average man merely as a periodic pay-day speculation, a figure of considerable interest entered the Basic Wage Inquiry to-day (says the Sydney Sun). The perfect housekeeper; an economic sunbeam breaking the clouds of depression; hope of the home—and A Man at that! Because, as Mr A. E. Williams (Federated Clerks’ Union), said William Christopher Colvin, shipping clerk, of McMahon’s Point, had kept a scrupulously careful and meticulous check on household expenditure of his wife and self for the past two years, he was called to see if he could afford the Commission assistance in determining the Basic Wage standard. Tall, grey-haired, neatly attired and wearing pince nez, Mr Colvin produced his carefully compiled table of domestic expenditure, remarking that it “was a household table for every item." Mr Colvin explained that when he and his wife first started ing, they lived in a three-roomed brick house, containing kitchen, bathroom, pantry, laundry, bathheater, electric light, etc., for which they paid £1 15s a week. In the first year of his domestic table he was earning £240 a year, but in the next year he earned only between £l7O and £IBO. Cross-examined by the President (Mr Justice Browne), Colvin said: “A jar of jam might last a month, “We don’t eat much jam.” A pound of rice, he had calculated, lasted a fortnight, and he had found that the desirable variety in meat diet was attained by “adding a little fritz to the other meat occasionally.” Mr Colvin’s average weekly expenditure for 1930 was given as; Rent, £1 15s; bread, Is Id; groceries, 9s 9d; meat and fish, 12s lOd; fruit and vegetables, 2s lid; electric light, 4d; gas, Is Hid; tobacco, ss; union dues, 6d; haircut, 6d. Milk, 2s sd; sundries, Is 7d. “Do you take the newspapers?” queried Mr Williams. Mr Colvin: I take “The Sun” at night and I have to take the morning paper for the shipping. How about recreation?—l can’t afford to go these days. The President: What sort of recreation do you prefer?—l like to see all that’s going; opera and things like that, but I can’t afford to go these days. lam lucky if I get to the pictures once a month. Colvin said that although he had accustomed himself to one suit of clothes a year, it was three years since he had bought his last suit. Mr Williams; And I suppose, as you work among men who look upon beer as a necessary beverage, you would say it should be included?— Yes. I like a glass of beer myself, when I can afford it.