Cost of living in German towns

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 866449027

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-93831

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Cost of living in German towns

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: Stat. Off.

Year of publication:: 1908

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (LXI, 548 Seiten)

Collection:: Economics Books

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y i GENERAL REPORT. The number of towns visited by the investigators of the Board of Trade in the course of the Enquiry, of which the results are summarised in this General Report, was 33 : of these 19, or more than one-half, are in the Kingdom of Prussia, five in Saxony, three in Bavaria, and the remaining six in other states of the Empire ; the map given as a frontispiece to this volume shows their wide geographical distribution. The populations of the towns range from 2,040,000 in Berlin and 803,000 in Hamburg to 25,000 in Aschaffenburg, 18,000 in Stassfurt and 13,000 in Oschersleben ; but it must be pointed out that the inhabitants of the 33 towns do not constitute the whole industrial population to which the results of the present investigation apply, for Charlottenburg and other urban areas surrounding Berlin are dealt with in the report upon that city, Altona (168,000 inhabitants) is included with Hamburg and Leopoldshall with Stassfurt, and in other cases—of which Königshütte is a notable example—the particular town forming the subject of a report is only the centre of a district throughout which almost identical conditions prevail. The range of industrial occupations covered by the reports is very wide—it includes coal-mining, the metal industries, engineering and ship building, the hardware and cutlery trades, the textile trades (cotton, wool and silk), paper-making, brewing, printing, the chemical trades, sugar-refining, the various branches of the building trades, dock labour, a number of miscellaneous trades, and the municipal services. One of the purposes of the Enquiry being to obtain, so far as possible, information comparable with that given for the towns of the United Kingdom in the Report on the Cost of laving of the Working Classes (Cd. 3864), issued by the Board of Trade in January, 1908, the information collected for the present volume relates mainly to the same date (October, 1905) as the information contained in that Report ; but some additional data relating to later dates are included in the separate town reports, and also in this General Report (pp. xxxvii-xxxix). These also include much information as to the general conditions of industrial life and labour in Germany, including such matters as the distribution of occupations and organisation of industry, wages agreements and hours of labour, factory rules, workmen’s societies and institutions, housing, public health administration, vital statistics, municipal enterprise and local taxation. The purpose of this General Report is, first, to summarise the results arrived at in respect of the three main heads of the Enquiry—rents, prices and wages, and to compare the German towns among themselves in regard to these matters ; and, secondly, to endeavour to make such comparisons as may be possible between these results and those arrived at for the English towns in the report already mentioned. PART I.—REPORT ON GERMAN CONDITIONS. (i) Housing and Rents. In order to ascertain the rents paid for the kind of dwellings usually occupied by the German working classes, information was obtained from the municipal authorities, from individual house-owners, and from large numbers of tenants through the trade unions. In each town a number of houses were visited by the Board of Trade investigators, partly for the purpose of verifying the information obtained as to rents, and partly that some account might be given in each case of the general character and standard of housing accommodation. The prevalent type of working-class dwelling in Germany is a flat in a large house containing a minimum of six or seven tenements. This may fairly b 2 290 S 8

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