MR. CHAMBERLAIN ON THE COST OF LIVING.
MR. CHAMBERLAIN'S utterances have of late assumed a character which makes a commentator a useful, if not a necessary, part of his political equip- ment. The sacred text is often obscure, and at times to the uninstructed eye seems almost to contradict in one passage what it has said in another. What is called in reference to the first three Gospels the synoptic problem has its counterpart in the speeches and letters of our fiscal evangelist. We have to deal, indeed, with a single author instead of with three, but the need for a reconciling exegesis is equally great. Hereafter, probably, these documents will be published with a harmony directed to show that apparent discrepancies are really undesigned coincidences, and that what hasty readers have taken to be instances of self-contradiction can become in the hands of an ingenious interpreter merely complementary parts of one great whole. When this valuable work comes to be called for it ought undoubtedly to be entrusted to the capable hands of Mr. Griffith Boscawen. He has, indeed, the advantage, so rarely possessed by commentators, of being able to extract from his author a text that suits the interpretation he wishes to establish. In the letter he has addressed to Mr. Chamberlain on behalf of the Tariff Reform League he gently instructs his oracle as to the answer it is expedient he should give. He has been greatly shocked by two statements, one wholly false, the other altogether misleading, which are constantly being made by the opponents of tariff reform. The false statement is that Mr. Chamberlain proposes to tax raw materials ; the misleading statement is that his policy will involve taxing the food of the people. As to the first, Mr. Boscawen suggests to Mr. Chamberlain that he has already denied it several times ; as to the second, he reminds his chief that his intention has always been to balance the imposition of taxes on certain articles of food by the remission of taxes on certain other articles, "so that the general cost of living would not be raised." Mr. Chamber- lain can follow as well as lead when he thinks it expedient, and in this case it is highly expedient. His reply to Mr. Boscawen is no new declaration of policy ; it is simply an acceptance of what his disciple submits to him as an accurate abridgment of all that he has been saying since his memorable speech at Birmingham. No taxation of raw materials, no increase in the cost of living. The innocence of his proposals is demonstrated by this single sentence. This is all we are asked to pay for a united Empire and a restored agriculture.
With regard to raw materials, it may be enough to say in passing that Mr. Boscawen is not quite accurate in his statement of the charge which MrXhamberlain's opponents bring against him. What we at least have always said, and say still, is that Mr. Chamberlain has committed himself to a policy which must in the end compel him to tax raw materials. For the moment, however, we find more interest in the latest form of the project of taxing food. Possibly Mr. Boscawen may have brought Mr. Chamber- lain to see that the higher wages which he originally promised to the working man may not after all be forth- coming. Consequently it is safer to limit himself to changes which the Chancellor of the Exchequer in a Chamberlain Ministry can introduce into his Budget at his pleasure. The newest version of the speech which Mr. Chamberlain contemplates making in every working man's cottage he enters in the course of his autumn cam- paign has little or nothing in common with the earliest form. It is no longer, Food will be dearer, but you will have more money to spend on it'; but, The taxes on food will be so cleverly recast as not to "increase in the slightest degree the cost of living of any family in this country." The working man may not be any better off than he is now, but he will certainly be no worse off. This satis- factory result will be obtained, Mr. Boscawen tells us— and Mr. Chamberlain accepts the statement—by taking off from one article of food the equivalent of the duty which is laid upon another. Man, as we know, does not live by bread alone. He is a consumer of other substances on which at present large duties are paid. When these are taken off or reduced, what he loses in one form he will regain in another.
With this information in our hands, it becomes possible to forecast with some approach to accuracy the dietary future of the British working man. He is to pay more for his quartern loaf. This much is admitted. But the increased price of bread will be counterbalanced by the greater cheapness of other kinds of food. At this stage, the working man may be pardoned if he asks with some anxiety,—What other kinds of food? *Upon this head he need not remain a moment in doubt. He will find the whole field of compensating cheapness mapped out for him on p. 365 of the "Daily Mail Year-Book" for 1903. The two main items that will admit of a large reduction of duty are sugar, which last year paid £6,399,228, and tea, which paid £5,792,967. When Mr. Chamberlain's pro- posals have been accepted by a grateful people a tax of £12,000,000 a year may be imposed upon corn without the cost of living of any family in the country being increased in the slightest degree, since there will be correspond- ing remissions of duty on sugar and tea. Exchange is no robbery. If the working man has to pay so much less for one sort of food, he loses nothing by being made to pay more for another sort. But the working man in question will have a right to inquire into the relative values in point of nutriment of the food that is to cost him more, and the food that is to cost him less, in consequence of Mr. Chamberlain's fiscal policy. It is but poor com- fort to a hungry man who has to buy two loaves a week less from his baker to hear that he can buy so many ounces more tea and so many pounds more sugar. They will not serve the same purpose. There is nutriment, no doubt, in sugar, but it is not a thing to make a meal on, and in the manufactured forms in which it is most easily taken it too will be made dearer by the Sugar Convention. Tea is not food at all. It is a stimulant which may quicken the appetite, and may also so injure the digestive organs as to destroy the appetite,—the latter, in view of the increased price of bread, being the more convenient result of the two. The dyspeptic clerk who has to forego one of the too few slices of bread-and-butter which now form his luncheon will find very little satisfac- tion in a second cup of tea. Possibly he has been advised to avoid tea altogether, and if he attends to the warning he will lose half the benefit of the lower prices which Mr. Chamberlain has kindly arranged for him. Sugar, again, is strictly forbidden to gouty and rheumatic persons, and the old notion that gout was the special possession of Peers who had too little to do, and Aldermen who had too much to eat, has long been exploded. Poor man's gout is now a recognised and common variety of the malady ; and what will be the emotions of the sufferer when his friends who belong to the Tariff Reform League console him for the effects of the Corn-duty by counselling him to wash down his diminished tale of bread by larger and more numerous draughts of tea, and not to spare the sugar?
Perhaps he will wander off to other articles on which the duty will have been abolished, in the hope that among them he will have more chance of reconciling the claims of health and appetite. Cocoa, if we may trust to advertise- ments, has extraordinary virtue, from the point of view of nourishment, and the experience of Newnham and Somerville seems to show that it is equally valuable as a factor in the building up of brains. But unfortunately cocoa only brings in £255,301 to the ,year's revenue, so that if the whole duty were taken off there would be no appreciable change in the cost of living. Raisins, again, though they have been highly praised by eminent physicians, bring in still less, and when we are dealing with the food-bill of a nation we want economies that can be reckoned in millions. The too stimulating tea, the not easily digested sugar, seem, therefore, to be the only substitutes for the bread that the British workman has been wont to regard as the staff of life, unless—for there is an alterna- five—the classification of one stimulant under the head of food leads by an irresistible logic to a similar treatment of others. Can it be reserved for Mr. Chamberlain to prove once for all that alcohol is food? In this direction there may lie vast possibilities of popularity with his country- men. If a working man can put tea in the place of bread, may he not with still greater reason give beer that honoured position ? There is, or should be, malt in it, and malt has barley for its parent. It is true that beer is as bad for gout as tea, besides having additional disadvantages when too much of it is taken. But a revolution in Imperial policy cannot be accomplished without sacrifices, and, on the whole, we feel sure that to make up for the increased cost of bread by making beer cheap would be more generally appreciated than any form of compensation that Mr. Chamberlain will have it in his power to offer. Secure in the gratitude of his countrymen for this unlooked-for boon, he will be able, if it pleases him, to tax even raw materials while he calls upon them to join their voices with his in the immortal stave :— " Back and side go bare, go bare; Foot and hand go cold;
But belly God send thee good 'ale enow, Whether it be new or old."
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