PRICES STILL GOING UP

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 74, 27 March 1912, Page 8

PRICES STILL GOING UP

THE POSITION IN AUSTRALIA. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, 23rd March. The price of everything continues, to go up in Australia. The thing is gey ing chronic. Higher wages are paid today than ever were paid before, but the spending power of a sovereign is not neaily so great to-da.y as it was tome years ago, and it is a question whether the average worker is any better off under the new artificially-created conditions than he was in the old days. Now* the cost of living is to be. still further increased. The oyster-saloon keepers have raised their prices, and we shall no longer be ab!o to get a plate of the "succulent bivalves" for a shilling, but must now pay eighteen-pence. But not only are the oyster-saloons increasing prices, cafes and tea-rooms generally are raising the tariff. We have not reached the, prices that prevail in America, but we are getting near them. Everybody is going to be hit by the new arrangement. There, is to be a minimum charge of Is in the cafes, no matter what you eat, and tea, or coffee, nr« no longer to bo given in with a meaj — they are to be charged for separately. Some of the places are standing out, but most of them have adopted the new arrangement, and doubtless it is only » matter of time, and they will all be in it. The present award of the Hotel, Cafe, and Restaurant Employees' Wages Board expires on Ist April, and the proprietors evidently expect further demands to be made upon them. It is the usual thing nowadays when an award expires to adopt an Oliver Twist attitude, and ask for more. Everybody is getting more, and everybody is paying more all the time. How long it will last one does not know, but there must come a day when the breaking point will be reached at last — or is the science of econoq^cs a thing) with no bottom in it? And just now it is interesting ' to note that even the price of legislation is going -vp — the members of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly are taking steps to give themselves £500 a year instead of £300. Of course, they do not work (legislatively) for more than half the year, but what does that matter? And what does it matter that the elec- j tors have not' been consulted on the point?