See a paper by the present writer in the Jubilee number of the Journal of the London Statistical Society, June 1885; also Note IV in the Mathematical Appendix.
9.For illustrations of the influence of fashion see articles by Miss Foley in the Economic Journal, Vol.III, and Miss Heather Bigg in the Nineteenth Century, Vol.XXIII.
10.In examining the effects of taxation, it is customary to compare the amounts entered for consumption just before and just after the imposition of the tax.But this is untrustworthy.For dealers anticipating the tax lay in large stocks just before it is imposed, and need to buy very little for some time afterwards.
And vice versa when a tax is lowered.Again, high taxes lead to false returns.For instance, the nominal importation of molasses into Boston increased fifty-fold in consequence of the tax being lowered by the Rockingham Ministry in 1766, from 6d.to 1d.per gallon.But this was chiefly due to the fact that with the tax at 1d., it was cheaper to pay the duty than to smuggle.
11.A single table made out by the great statistician Engel for the consumption of the lower, middle and working classes in Saxony in 1857, may be quoted here; because it has acted as a guide and a standard of comparison to later inquiries.It is as follows:
Proportions of the Expenditure of the Family of:
Items of ExpenditureI.II III1.Food only 62.0% 25.0%50.0%2.Clothing 16.018.0 18.03.Lodging12.012.0 12.04.Light and Fuel 5.0 5.0 5.05.Education 2.0 3.8 5.56.Legal Protection1.0 2.0 3.07.Care of Health 1.0 2.0 3.08.Comfort and recreation 1.0 2.5 3.5TOTALS 100.0 100.0100.0I.Workmen with an income of 45 l.to 60 l.a Year.
II.Workmen with an income of 90 l.to 120 l.a Year.
III.Workmen with an income of 150 l.to 200 l.a Year.
Working men's budgets have often been collected and compared.
But like all other figures of the kind they suffer from the facts that those who will take the trouble to make such returns voluntarily are not average men, that those who keep careful accounts are not average men; and that when accounts have to be supplemented by the memory, the memory is apt to be biassed by notions as to how the money ought to have been spent, especially when the accounts are put together specially for another's eye.
This border-ground between the provinces of domestic and public economy is one in which excellent work may be done by many who are disinclined for more general and abstract speculations.
Information bearing on the subject was collected long ago by Harrison, Petty, Cantillon (whose lost Supplement seems to have contained some workmen's budgets), Arthur Young, Malthus and others.Working-men's budgets were collected by Eden at the end of the last century; and there is much miscellaneous information on the expenditure of the working classes in subsequent Reports of Commissions on Poor-relief, Factories, etc.Indeed almost every year sees some important addition from public or private sources to our information on these subjects.
It may be noted that the method of le Play's monumental Les Ouvriers Europeens is the intensive study of all the details of the domestic life of a few carefully chosen families.To work it well requires a rare combination of judgment in selecting cases, and of insight and sympathy in interpreting them.At its best, it is the best of all: but in ordinary hands it is likely to suggest more untrustworthy general conclusions, than those obtained by the extensive method of collecting more rapidly very numerous observations, reducing them as far as possible to statistical form, and obtaining broad averages in which inaccuracies and idiosyncrasies may be trusted to counteract one another to some extent.
