EXPENSIVE RUSSIA

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 18991, 16 April 1936, Page 14

EXPENSIVE RUSSIA

WAGES LAG BEHIND ; HIQP LIVING COSTS LONDON, April 4. Remarkable figures illustrating how far wages lag behind the cost of living in Russia are given by tiie Moscow correspondent of the Daily Telegraph. ■He states the average monthly wage of the Russian worker as £8 -Is Sd/which has a purchasing power less than one-third of that possessed by the same sum in England. The computation in terms of sterling is based on the stabilisation of ti:e new rouble at 24.9 S to the £. The Soviet State Planning Commission, according to the writer, has announced that the 25,275 trades unionists throughout Russia, with an average of 1.7 dependents, will earn an average of 206 roubles a month m 1036, which will be 20 per cent. abo. e the rate for 1935. Giving examples of the oxpc'nsivcness of Moscow foodstuffs, tho qualify of which is below British stand' ards, the correspondent quotes t.c following prices:— Black bread 3s per lb., butter 5s sd, sugar Is 6d, beef and mutton .'ls 3d, apples 2s 9d, tea 29a Id, milk 9d a pint, eggs 6d. He estimates the cost of elothes as follows: Men's suits £ll t.o £4B, woollen overcoats £2O, shoes £3. Women 's clothes are no less expensive. HOW IS IT DONE ?

How Ihe workers can possibly exist on this basis of reckoning, he does not explain. He points out that meals served in restaurants attached to lactones cost Is 6d; children's snack.--, 4ti (free, if necessary). Rents are restricted to a maximum of 10 per cent, of the worker's wages, though Moscow's most creditable building programme has not been able to keep pace with the growth of population in the last 10 years. Tram fares are about level' with those of London 'buses, and travel on. the underground railway is dearer. "In, the light of these figures, it is interesting to note a discussion being featured in English newspapers on the minimum family income necessary for "moderate comfort." The Engineers' Study Group on Economics suggests £317 a year, whicn .would represent an increase in the national income by 50 per cent. The figures are based on a family of 3.7 porsons, with a food budget of £1 18s a week. The budget includes 91b. of meat, 121 b. of bread, 121 b. of potatoes, 101 b. of other vegetables, 91b. of fruit, 71b. of flour, 4lb. of sugar, 21b. of butter, lib. of tea .or coffee. This would provide a minimum of 3660 calories per adult per day. On the contrary, the British Medical Association maintains that 5s lOd per head per week and 3400 calories would suffice. The Health Ministry's estimate is 4s 4d and 3000 calories. Sir John Orr, the eminent authority "on nutrition, contends that diet could be brought to the point, of sufficiency I at an increase of one or two per cent ' in the national income, if a system of distribution could be evolved making "protective foodstuffs," such as dairy products, available to the poorest.