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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XXVI For Butter the extreme range of prices was from Is. (a price which was given as predominant only in Hamburg-Altona) to Is. 3\d. The kinds usually bought are slightly salted. For Potatoes the predominant prices quoted per 7 lb. showed, as was to be expected, a somewhat wide range—from 1 ^d. in Stettin and Königshütte to 3in Brunswick and Stassfurt. For Bread it appeared desirable to use, for statistical purposes, the prices for the numerous kinds of " grey ” bread (z.g., a mixture of rye and wheat in various proportions), since these were obtainable for all the towns investigated, whilst prices for black (rye) bread were procurable in only 15 out of the 33 towns. As there is in Germany nothing approaching to a standard quality loaf, and the proportions of rye and wheat in grey bread vary considerably, the extreme range of prices in October, 1905, was very wide, the limits being 4\d. and vS^rf. per 4 lbs. The lower limit was quoted in Magdeburg, Brunswick and Stassfurt (all in the Central Germany group), and in Flauen, whilst the upper limit was quoted only in Remscheid. The predominant range (as shown in the above table) was 4jc/. to The price of Milk showed singularly little variation, the range being only from 2d. to 3d. per quart. The lower limit was, however, quoted only in Oschersleben, and the upper limit of 3d. only in Mannheim ; in all the other towns the price was 2\d. to 2\d. The prices of Coal are affected to a large extent by the distance of each town from the coalfields. The entire range in October, 1905, was from l\d. per cwt. at Königshütte, the centre of the Silesian coal area, and &\d. at Essen and Bochum, in the midst of the Rhineland-Westphalia coal district, to Is. H^d. at Stuttgart and Is. 9¡d. at Mülhausen—both of these being South German towns remote from sources of supply. In the mining districts coal is frequently supplied cheaply at the pits to the miners, or even free (as at Königshütte) ; elsewhere briquettes are largely used by the working classes (for instance, at Berlin, Aachen, Düsseldorf, Leipzig and Brunswick) for heating purposes ; as is also lignite (brown coal), often in the form of little more than coal-dust, for cooking purposes. The Meat consumed in Germany is almost entirely home-killed meat. The variations in price between the towns are not very great, ranging as expressed in index numbers (Berlin = 100) from 94 to 116, the differences between one town and another being due probably both to differences in the actual prices for identical commodities and to varieties of taste and habit. From the Tables in Appendix III (pp. 499, 500), it will be seen that as a rule there are for each kind of meat no differences in price, except for the very best cuts (such as beef steak and mutton or pork chops), between one cut and another. This is due to the fact that in most of the towns neither the butchers' nor their customers distin guish, either in quoting prices or in cutting up the meat, between the various parts except, as already indicated, in the case of certain special cuts which are not bought to any large extent by the working classes. The meat is generally sold entirely w ithout bone, or with only a small, proportion of bone. It may be added that in most of the German towns, where as a rule the inspection of the meat supply is very stringent, there is an institution known as the “ Freibank,” practically a municipal meat stall or shop, where the flesh of animals which has fallen short of the standard of soundness imposed by the municipal inspectors is sold at a low price after being subjected, if necessary, to treatment (usually boiling) intended to render it safe for human consumption. This institution is found, for example, at Berlin, Breslau, Munich, Leipzig, Chemnitz, Königsberg, Mülhausen, Brunswick and Zwickau. Though of some importance to the very poor, the amount thus sold at the " Freibank ” in any town is very small relatively to the total consumption of meat. In order to obtain for each town an indication of the level of prices there as compared with other towns, index numbers have been constructed, the level of

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