London, Sept. 1.
The discussion in the Malay States as to the relative cost_ of living at home and in the East interests us; every paper will publish family budgets showing how hard it is to exist at all on the usual diminutive salary of the present day. Every reader asks himself if he or she could do better.
Existence here on, £100 a year is pretty hard. Even the postman gets rather more than £150 a year while next Sunday there is to be aw mass meeting of civil servants in Trafalgar Square to protest against the policy of the Treasury in compelling ex-servicemen admitted to the permanent staff to start at the usual small salary for beginners. In the grade under consideration, These men get—with bonus—rather less than £3 a week; if there were no bonus their weekly remuneration would be only £80 a year. They say they cannot live on such a small sum.
To be quite candid I do not see how, in the towns, it is possible for anyone to live at the rate of £100 @ year unless he take a room or two in some poor district, lives on the cheapest of food and dispenses with any attendance at all other than what a landlady, may afford him. It is so equally in the provinces. Go for instance—and I am quoting from experience—into the poorer districts of Manchester and for a bed-sitting room and your meals—except your midday repast—you will do very well if you can get a passable ly it is two guineas, so your £100 quotation of 35/- a week. Usual.
a@ year vanishes and you have nothing left for any of the many outlays which you cannot escape. If you go into the purely country districts your room may cost you a trifle less but your food will be quite as expensive. It is a fiction that life in the country is _necessarily cheaper. Recently I was checking, some returns of those who had migrated from the towns to the country lured by the anticipation that their personal expenses would be less. Apart from actual rent they found everything dearer notably meat and vegetables STAY WHERE YOU ARE, Those who come home should never forget that whatever the ills they flee they will find others far worse here. The tax-collector is ubiquitous. Taxation is very heavy indeed, but rates are far more onerous, since you may be pretty well certain that you will in this respect pay as much or nearly as much as you do in rent. Water gas and electric light all cost more. Coal is a very serious charge. All oil is in the hands of longer. All labour is costly,. yet, the Profiteers, Once upon a time!
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.