LIVING COSTS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 90, Issue 57, 11 March 1946, Page 8

LIVING COSTS

ITALY’S BIG RISE Interesting facts about cost of living in Italy were given by Mr. C. Meahen in a talk to members of the Wellington Rotary Club on his experiences and observations as Commissioner for the War Purposes Committee of the Joint Council of the Order of St. John and the Red Cross Society. When he left Italy a few weeks ago living costs were 20 to 30 times greater than in 1939. The rise had been greater In the Rome and central Italy area, and least in southern Italy and Sicily. The increase had not been due to the rise in the price of rationed goods, but to the prices in the black market. "A workingman with a wife and three children,’ he said, “was paid on the average 250 lire (12s 6d) a day. Before the war he would have earned 36 lire a day, but his 36 lire then bought far more than did his 250 lire to-day. With a day’s pay in 1940 he could have bought 31b. of bread. 251 b. of macaroni, 351 b. of flour. 6ilb. of oil, or 4ilb. of meat. With one month’s pay he could have bought 10 pajrs of shoes, or enough cloth for three suits. In 1945 his day’s pay is only sufficient to buy 81b. of bread, 61b. of macaroni, 6ilb. of flour, and lib. of oil or 2ilb. of meat, whilst one month’s pay is only sufficient for one and a-half pairs of boots and not even cloth enough for one suit. To keep a family of five costs from 15,000 to 20,000 lire a month (£37 10s to £5O), or twice the income of a man earning as much as 250 lire a day. Unefiiployment benefits, old-age penlions, soldiers’ allowances amounted to nothing like that. The gap could be filled if more than one member of the family worked, but that was not always possible.

“When L left there were 45,000 unemployed in Bari. A great many families had been compelled to sell their private possessions, such as clothes, books, furniture, jewellery, etc., in order to keen going. But even that expedient could not go on for ever, so it was not surprising that burglary, theft, banditry, and prostitution had increased during the last vear or two. Tf the gan cannot De filled, a lower standard of living must ensue.” ___________