COST OF LIVING

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 316, 4 July 1912, Page 5

COST OF LIVING

EVIDENCE IN WELLINGTON. By Telegraph—Press Association. . Wellington, Wednesday. Before the Cost of Living Coimnission, Walter Maddison gave evidence that recent statistics collected by the Labor Department as to the cost of living among the working classes lost a good deal of their value by not disclosing the standard of efficiency. This standard could be got from the hospital returns of 1910. The cost per week per head, including patients and staff, was 5s fi%d. In the departmental returns the workers' meat was given as costing Is 0y 2 d, while at hospitals the cost was Is 2Vod. Bread at the hospitals was given as fld, while in the workers' returns it was .)%d. Sixty-two per cent, of the consumers in the hospitals were patients, whose appetites could not be classed as normal. Then though the hospital standard of efficiency was really higher, the prices to workers were considerably higher. As the result of contracts, bread to the hospitals cost 4%(1 a large loaf, and to workers 7d; milk cost BV.d and Is 4d p. gallon respectively. His estimate per family of fiv> persons, of a reasonable standard of living, was £3 8s per week. Higher land values accounted for increased rents. Witness, who is a carpenter, had seen the driving of men in the building trade, James Tudor, builder and city councillor, said the rise in the cost of timber in the last ten years was ten per cent., in some cases fifteen per cent. In unskilled labor the rise would be about twelve per cent., in skilled less than that. A five-roomed house, costing £3OO ton rears ago. would cost £450 now. He did not allow that driving existed in the building trade. Compared with fifteen years ago from fifteen to twenty per cent, more was now paid in wages for building.