A LIVING WAGE [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—In
your article on Mr. Seebohm Rowntree's valuable book The Human Needs of Labour you rightly say that the family budget which is given as the minimum for subsistence " cannot possibly be regarded as extravagant." Indeed it cannot. The dietary may be satisfactory in theory in that it contains the proper constituents, but in practice it is extremely Spartan and unsatisfactory. For the family of five persons, including three children, no butter whatever is allowed, no fresh milk, one egg in the week for the whole family, and a sum of 9d. for all the fresh vegetables and all the fruit except 4 lbs. of apples. Only 2 lbs. of sugar are included each week, though the family take tea or cocoa eighteen times besides porridge and puddings for which sugar would be needed. And this dietary is the best that can be afforded by the comparatively fortunate who earn the requisite minimum wage of 53s. in towns and 41s. in the country.
We know that the Ministry of Health has estimated the weekly cost of food per head at 4s. 6id. in a home containing zoo children and with all provisions purchased at contract prices. But the working class housewife is expected (according to Mr. Rowntree's estimate) to give her children a satisfactory diet on about 3s. 6d. a head a week. It cannot be done.
There is another reason for thinking that Mr. Rowntree's estimate is too low. He bases the sum of zos. 6d. for the family's food on the assumption that the bread is baked at home, and states that, if this is not done, one or two shillings must be added to the cost of food. But we know that in the vast majority of families bread is bought : the homes do not contain the equip- ment for baking bread ; and if it were done the cost of fuel would rise. A sum of between one and two shillings per week ought therefore, on this account, to be added to the requisite minimum wage.—Yours, &c., CLARA D. RAGMAN. Cambridge.
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