SOME STRIKING FACTS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LII, Issue 17154, 2 October 1926, Page 18

SOME STRIKING FACTS

HOW WORKERS’ LOT HAS IMPROVED In the economic section of the British Asocmtion Professor Henry Clay had some startling things to sav in regard to the present social conditions. These- are some of his points:— There is less superficial difference in clothing between the classes than there was before the war. The poor have a greater variety of food than in any earlier age. Rich and poor en'joy the same fllsms, music-halls, wireless, and football matches. There is a shortage of houses, largely due to the fact that we are no longer satisfied with the kind of house in which th(' poor lived in the nineteenth century. The working man’s family to-day enjoys an intellectual education hotter than' the middle class boy, or indeed probably the boy of any class, enjoyed lifty years ago. The motor, an ostentatious mark of class distinction, has given a false impression of the number and riches of ihe new rich. Even that distinction is rapidly disappearing. The'combination of progressive taxation with the extension of social services provided by the State has had the effect of transferring a considerable portion of their income from the rich to the poor. National insurance and the dole hail maintained unimpaired the standard of life of the working classes in spite of a great, war and the most profound and prolonged industrial depression.