CONSUMPTION IN CANADA—DAVIDSON. 9 
Europe and America, as the following tabular comparison shews. 
The table is taken in part from Schénberg’s Handbuch and in 
part from U. 8. Labor Reports :— 
Great Britain.| Prussia. Ontario. | Massachusetts. Illinois. 
Percentages on 
| Hoods :....%: 51.36 50.00 39.0 49.28 41.38 
Clothing... 18,12 18.00 18.0 15.94 21.00 |} 
en Gye oe 13.48 12.00 17 19.74 17.42 
Fuel | 3.50 * 5.00 8.1 4,30 5.63 
Sundries. .. 13.54 15,00 18.9 10.73 14.57 
These percentages are all calculated from working-class 
family budgets, except in the case of Prussia, where a family of 
intermediate class was taken to give gross incomes of something 
like the same amount. ‘The real measure of well-being probably 
consists, at least for men of the same race, in the amount which 
may be expended on the vague class of sundries; and in this 
comparison, Canada comes out well. The shewing would not 
have been so favorable had we taken the average of the five 
cities, for then it would have been 8.5 per cent of the income only. 
The question of the value of these returns is almost settled 
by the large degree of correspondence between independently 
reached results; but the Provincial Statistician, Mr. Blue, was 
at the trouble to mcet the objection that, to sav nothing of the 
conclusions based on them, the figures themselves were untrust- 
worthy, by carefully examining the food expenditures of various 
public institutions. The force of the objection is that while most 
householders can tell how much they spend on rent and fuel, and 
perhaps also on clothing, they can make a rough estimate only 
of the household expenditure on food. Mr. Blue went into the 
matter exhaustively and examined the food accounts of colleges, 
. asylums, military barracks, ete., and embodied his conclusions in 
a paper read before the American Public Health Association, and 
reprinted in the Ontario Bureau of Statistics Report, 1886, in 
which he says :— 
