CONSUMPTION IN CANADA—DAVIDSON. 3 
governmental machinery ; but until the community is so far 
educated that there is a statistical or economic association in 
every parish, we can hardly hope for the fullest information. 
Consumption is in its nature a private concern, and man wilt 
require to be much more methodical than he is at present before 
we can present anything like a picture of the consumption of a 
people. At the present time we are compelled to use what infor- 
mation we have as an indication of the complete result; and 
generalizing from the experience of individuals, treat the con- 
sumption of certain articles, for which the government provides 
statistics which may be relied upon, as representing the whole. 
It is necessary first to shew in what proportions the people 
of Canada expend their incomes, because otherwise we should 
not be able to estimate the importance of the results obtainable 
for the consumption of specific articles. If the total expenditure 
of a people on food amounts to no more than fifty per cent. of 
its income, an increase in the consumption of coffee will mean a 
less increase of prosperity then it does for a people which spends 
seventy per cent. of its income on food. In the latter case it 
means that the people are rising from the lowest class, where the 
necessaries ot life absorb the greatest part of the income, to a 
condition where other considerations are becoming important; in 
the former case it may mean a change in the form of consump- 
tion only. This aspect of the question has some immediate 
practical importance. In the discussion of the financial aspects 
of prohibition, little attention has been paid to the fact that not 
all the expenditure of the Canadian citizen is on taxable goods. 
Prohibitionists claim that the fifty million dollars annually spent 
upon intoxicants will necessarily be spent on other articles, and 
that the government need not confuse the issue by dark sugges- 
tions of direce taxation; for consumption will not be reduced, but 
simply changed. But, though the same amount will still be spent, 
it does not follow that it will be spent in such a way as will 
provide a reveuue. In so far as it is spent on food, there would 
be an increased consumption of food-stuffs on which, while the 
consumer may be paying a tax in the shape of enhanced prices, 
