LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE COST OF LIVING IN THE UNITED STATES.
[TO Tax EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.)
SIR,—Several times I have been on the point of calling your attention to statements made in your columns similar to the following (December 5th, p. 793) :—
"But we may point out that in reckoning earning-power we must not forget the buying-power of the wages earned; the American labourer is highly paid in money because, owing to protective tariffs, he has to pay outside prices for commodities ; viewed in relation to the command of goods that his wages possess, they are not so high as those of his English counterpart, —they are, in fact, so unsatisfactory that the country is now shaken by a revolution on the part of the labourer and the debtor against the rest of society."
There was ground for such a statement twenty years ago ; there is none now, nor has there been for some years. Indeed, the situation is now reversed.
One pound sterling in the United States buys more of the necessaries of life than in Great Britain. The Massachusetts Bureau of Labour statistics gave the difference some years ago at 10 per cent. A committee of the Senate of the United States reached practically the same conclusion. It is obviously so, because 65 per cent, of a working man's family expenses go into the month; every article that does so is cheaper upon this side of the Atlantic than upon the other. We send them to you, in many cases paying railway freights for a thousand miles, and ocean carriage. Besides this, the British working man's tobacco is taxed thirteen times as much as the American; his beer double ; his tea and coffee are taxed. In the United States they are free. The clothing worn by the masses, being domestic manufacture, is as cheap here as in Britain; woollen clothing slightly dearer, all cotton goods slightly cheaper. Fuel is much cheaper here. The only item which is dearer is rent. May I ask you to refer to an article in the Contemporary Review, September, 1894, "Britain and the United States : Cost of Living," which led to a long editorial in the London Times after a few days of its publics, tion. At all events, let me hope that before the Spectator allows such a statement to appear again in its columns it will investigate the facts.—I am, Sir, &c., ANDREW CARNEGIE.
5 West 51st Street, New York, January 21st.
[The writer of the quotation spoke of commodities only. If Protection does not raise the prices of the protected com- modities, why is it maintained ?—ED. Spectator.]
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