Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/40

32 wheat and sugar, we need say nothing more on this head. But few people seem to be aware how, simultaneously with this reduction of the cost of government, there has been an increase of the expenditure of the government for miscellaneous civil purposes, of all of which the workman gets the benefit. It may be stated broadly that nearly £15,000,000 of the expenditure of the central government for education, for the post-office, for inspection of factories, and for the miscellaneous purposes of civil government, is entirely new as compared with fifty years ago. So far as the expenditure is beneficial, the masses get something they did not get before at all. It is the same, even more markedly, with local government. In Great Britain, the annual outlay is now about £60,000,000, as compared with £20,000,000 fifty years ago. This £20,000,000 was mainly for poor-relief and other old burdens. Now the poor-relief and other old burdens are much the same, but the total is swollen by a vast expenditure for sanitary, educational, and similar purposes, of all of which the masses of the population get the benefit. To a great deal of this expenditure we may attach the highest value. It does not give bread or clothing to the working-man, but it all helps to make life sweeter and better, and to open out careers even to the poorest. The value of the free library, for instance, in a large city, is simply incalculable. All this outlay the workman has now the benefit of, as he had not fifty years ago. To repeat the words I have already used, he pays less taxes, and he gets more—much more—from the government. With regard to this question of prices, I have been favored since the delivery of this address with the copy of a letter, dated June 11, 1881, addressed by Mr. Charles Hawkins, of 27 Savile Row, to the editor of the "Daily News," on the cost per patient of the expenditure of St. George's Hospital in 1830 and 1880. The facts stated confirm in an interesting way what is here said as to the cost of articles of the workman's consumption fifty years ago and at the present time. Mr. Hawkins, who was at one time one of the treasurers of the hospital, and therefore speaks with authority, gives the following table and notes: "Although each patient costs now 1s. 1d. less than in 1830, there have been great alterations in the different items of expenditure, viz.:

"Had wheat cost in 1880 what it did in 1830, £1,884 must have been spent in bread and flour instead of £738. The cost of port wine in 1830 was £72 per pipe; in 1880,