CONSUMPTION IN CANADA DAVIDSON. 



Europe and America, as the following tabular comparison shews. 

 The table is taken in part from Schonberg's Handbuch and in 

 part from U. S. Labor Reports : 



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 independent^ 

 reached results; but the Provincial Statistician, Mr. Blue, was 

 at the trouble to meet the objection that, to say 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, etc., 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 : 



