Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/479

Rh our working-men to many young and support large families decently. They know what it means for a man with a family to lose his job and see his family starve and be evicted from their tenement; and a great many naturally refuse to subject the woman they love to the danger of such a fate, or to hang such a heavy burden about their own necks in the economic struggle. They postpone marriage until they have saved up a little capital to protect them against loss of employment; or, as often happens, they postpone marriage until it is too late, and never marry at all.

Next comes the great rise in the cost of living, which is a perennial source of complaint and perplexity to both rich and poor. This is a rather hackneyed subject, and I will not burden the reader with statistics of prices of the various food-stuffs and other necessaries; but merely make two general comparisons. The United States Bureau of Labor computes each year an "index number" from the average prices of the most important commodities, which shows most accurately the general trend of prices. Now this "index number" rose from 90.4 in 1896 to 122.4 in 1906, a rise of 35.8 per cent. Supposing the same rate of advance since 1906, and it has probably rather accelerated, average prices as shown by the index number would be 54 per cent, higher in 1912 than they were sixteen years ago in 1896, just before the Spanish war. This means that on the average $1.54 will now go no farther than a dollar did in 1896; and consequently, unless a family which received about $500 a year in 1896 now gets at least $770, it has actually become poorer, for it can really buy less commodities.

The second way of gauging the increased cost of living is by comparing reliable estimates made at different times in the same places of the yearly income absolutely necessary to support a family of two adults and three children, the "standard" or "average family." In 1902-3, for instance, a prominent official of one of the largest charities in New York City stated that about $624 a year is necessary for a family of five in that city. The New York Bureau of Labor declared in 1902 that "$520 a year is inadequate for city workmen." Robert Hunter, the well-known authority on social conditions in New York, states in "Poverty" that "while $624 a year is probably not too high for New York City in view of the excessive rents, etc.," he considers only $460 "essential to defray the expenses of an average family in the New England states, New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio and Illinois." He wrote this in 1904. And now in 1911 the Sage Foundation of New York states: "Families having from $900 to $1,000 a year are able in general to get food enough to keep body and soul together, and clothing and shelter enough to meet the most urgent demands of decency." This was the result of an investigation among 391 families living in the New York tenements. This agrees very well