LABOUR PROBLEMS. [To THE EDITOR or THE " SrEcTarort.-] SIR,—Yonr
excellent article and Professor Smart's letter in pour issue of September 6th suggest two considerations
which are perhaps not adequately recognized. We hear con- tinually about the rise in the cost of living which has taken place without any corresponding rise in wages ; and this is apparently true. But is it really true P Free education, free meals, workmen's compensation, old-age pensions, and the rest, are additions, and very large additions, to wages. And as these incontrovertibly add to cost of production, they must be reckoned as efficient causes of the increased cost of living. All this affords a proof and illustration of the plain fact that whatever increases cost of production must fall upon the buyer. And as working men are large buyers of one another's productions, obviously they have among them to pay for the increased remuneration they have secured. It seems like a
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