WCP2679

[1]

6 St. Kilda’s Rd,

Harrow on the Hill

July 10/1892.

Professor A. R. Wallace, Parkstone.

Dear Sir,

I thank you for your very kind and very suggestive letter of 29th of April. I would have answered it before, if I had not been so extremely busy with my 8 lectures in University Hall.

My 8 lectures on the Variations in the Standard of Comfort of English Wage Earners 1350-1890 are a summary of a larger work, which I have been engaged upon during the last few years, and which I hope to publish here in London next year.

I am glad to be able to say that I have (in my lectures, and still more in the MS to my book) devoted a great deal of attention to such considerations as you point out in your letter. Estimates of the purchasing power of daily wages are of no value for analysis of the Standard of Comfort, unless these estimates are [2] with the utmost care supplemented by an estimate (for each class of wage earners) of irregularity of employment, hours of labour, hygienic conditions of work and life, child labour, female labour, nature of housing and housekeeping, taxation, truck, trade expenses, ect., [sic] etc.

Before I went to my historical and statistical investigations, I carefully systematised these "corrections to the purchasing power of daily wages" and analysed their theoretical position towards the Standard of Comfort of the Wage Earner.

Of course Mr. Giffen’s¹ writings on the comfort of workmen are utterly valueless, because of his neglecting to treat these corrections in a straightforward and scientific spirit.

Hoping one day to have the honour of making your personal acquaintance.

I am, | dear sir, | yours faithfully | Gustav Steffen²[signature]