The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. TUESDAY, JUNE 10, 1913. THE COST OF LIVING.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVI, Issue 30, 10 June 1913, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLE R. TUESDAY, JUNE 10, 1913. THE COST OF LIVING.

The report of the Minister for Labour for the Dominion of Canada for 1912, submitted a few weeks ago, is of more than usual interest and importance in so far as it deals with the far-reaching effects of the heavy rise in the cost of living in Canada during the past few years. The Miniate*

points out that while wholesale prices reached during 1911 a level previously unknown in the present generation, there was a still further and decidedly pronounced advance during 1912. Striking an average from 287 representative articles included in the record of the Department, the rise in 1912 over 1911 amounted to no less than 6.5 per cent. The effect of an advance like that of the past year, especially as coming on the top of nearly a decade and a half of mounting prices, and with the prospect of continuance ; is necessarily far-reaching. The : rise in the cost of living has struck | at the standard of comfort, often with serious results to many whose incomes have not been similarly advanced ; while business in many instances, notwithstanding a widespread prosperity, has been unsettled I if not embarrassed by the unstable condition of values. In Canada the! movement for higher wages has been more active than in any year since 1907 or 1903, these being the two previous periods in which adjustments in the altered price conditions prevailing since the opening of the century wore mose extensively made. At the same time public meetings have been held to discuss the question of the increasing cost of living, resolutions have been passed by- various public: bodies, investigations have been made by various Boards of Trade, and widespread complaints have been received by the Government from public institutions unable to cope with the increasing expenditures entailed by the higher pri-

ccs. From this it will be seen that af-

airs in Canada, so far as industrialsin and the cost of living are concerned, do not differ greatly from ;hose of our own country, and that similar problems are facing the peo-

e of Canada and the people of Ausalasia. The report discusses the uises of the general increase in the

)st of articles of food, etc., and cites

le following as contributing factdrs: [) The comparative failure of the orld crop of 1911, which raised the lice of farm and food products; (2)

the exceptionally severe winter of 1911-12, which intensified the effect of the shortage in crop; and (3) the industrial and trade expansion which set in as the year advanced. In addition,

it appears, there is a pretty general feeling in Canada that the operation of trusts and combines and the failure of the Government to enforce the Anti-combine Law have contributed materially towards the upward trend of pices.