xlii 
There is, however, as already mentioned, a very important difference 
between the services obtained for the payment of rent in England and in 
Germany. When an English workman has paid his rent he has in nearly all 
cases not only paid for the use of the rooms that he inhabits, but also for all 
the services provided by the Local Authority out of the rates. The landlord, 
that is to say, in most cases pays the rates for which the tenant would other 
wise be directly liable, and recoups himself out of the rent charged. In a few 
cases in England and Wales where such payment by the landlord is not in force 
an amount equivalent to the rates was added by the investigator to the rent 
paid by the tenant, so that the rents stated in the Report on the United 
Kingdom in all cases include, or cover, the payment of rates. But in Germany 
local taxation is paid by means of an addition to the State income tax, and, 
consequently, the workman who has paid his rent has nevertheless still to pay 
taxes. The rents of the two countries may be rendered strictly comparable as 
regards the services covered by the rent paid only by deducting from the 
English rent a proportion equivalent to that paid on account of local rates (so as 
to exclude local taxation on both sides of the account), or by adding to the 
German rent a proportion equivalent to the average income tax paid by a work 
man inhabiting a tenement of each given size (so as to include local taxation on 
both sides). The latter process, however, offers such great difficulties that the 
attempt to form any such estimate has had for the present to be abandoned. 
Even as regards the first process, there are unfortunately no official statistics 
which enable the exact relation of local rates to rents in England to be determined. 
Accordingly, with a view to making some estimate as to the amount of rates 
paid by the working classes in the towns investigated, the Local Authority of 
each town on which a report had been made, was asked to state, if possible, 
the total rates paid during the year 1905 on typical working-class tenements 
of the predominant rents given in the report on their town. From replies 
received from 50 towns it is possible to estimate that local rates form in most 
cases from 20 to 26 per cent, of the total rent paid by the tenant, or an average 
of about 23 per cent. In a number of towns, however, this includes the rate 
for water, which is frequently, though not always, a municipal service ; and 
this particular service is also generally included in the rent in German towns. 
The amount of the water rate has not always been distinguished in the replies 
received, but in those cases in which information is given the water rate 
amounts usually to about 5 per cent, of the rent. As an approximate 
estimate, then, it appears that local rates, less the water rate, may be taken as 
forming some 18 per cent, of the rent paid for working-class tenements in the 
industrial towns of England and Wales. If this deduction is made from 
English rents, so as to render them more comparable with the German figures, 
we find that German rents (apart from local taxation) bear to English rents 
(apart from the portion that has to be allocated by the landlord to local 
taxation) the ratio of 101 to 82, or 123 to 100. In other words, the work 
man in a German town pays for housing accommodation about one-quarter more 
than the workman in an English town, for the same number of rooms, exclusive 
in both cases of local taxation. 
(ii.) Prices and Budgets. 
Prices.—The difficulties in the way of any complete comparison of the 
relative prices ruling for similar commodities in England and in Germany, so 
far as they affect the expenditure of the working classes of the two countries are 
sufficiently obvious from what has been said above as to the differences between 
the budgets. The German drinks coffee, not tea ; he eats grey bread not 
white ; he consumes practically no mutton and a good deal of pork. Further 
than this it must be remembered that some commodities which are nominally 
. the same are yet not in all cases strictly comparable. Thus German meat is in 
general sold without bone and without fat, as mentioned above, while bacon is 
chiefly sold as pure fat for cooking purposes, &c., and the typical German 
Limburg cheese is unknown in England. Neglecting, however, such minor 
differences, the predominant prices paid by the working classes of the two 
countries for commodities quoted in both were as follows :—