II.1. Survey

To consider meaningfully the standard of living of a person, of a family, means: to establish what amount of goods for use this consuming economy disposes of during a given economic period; it means further: to put this amount in relation to the material requirements of life, that is, to examine how far that quantity of goods for use suffices to fulfil the necessary conditions of an existence worthy of a human being, how far it leaves room for the satisfaction of cultural and luxury needs. To investigate the standard of living of a mass whose individual members have differentiated incomes means: to form groups, means to establish how large are the components of that mass that belong each to a definite level of culture, which one can distinguish, say, as poverty, need, sufficiency, comfort, wealth; means in particular, no doubt, also to find out how the “bulk” of this mass of population lives, that is, say, the half that lies between the lowest and the highest quarter. To compare the standard of living of two masses — two nations, two social classes within a nation or each in a different nation — with each other (whereby the absolute findings first receive their proper life) would thus mean: to examine how the structure of the groups is shaped in each of the different masses.

Everyone who is at all familiar with the sources knows that carrying out such a programme for a whole country, indeed even for a single social class within a country, meets with the greatest difficulties. What one would need would be a complete inventory of the material make-up of all the households of a country or of a stratum of the population, and that of course does not exist. What comes nearest to such an inventory are the compilations of individual household budgets, of which every nation possesses a more or less good selection (the United States is best supplied with them). And it is natural to begin the investigation from them. But one will soon become aware that this way does not lead to the goal. For the defect that attaches to every budget, and to every larger collection of budgets too, is this: that they give no information about the extent of their validity; that is, that they say nothing about the percentage of a mass (as which, in accordance with our purposes, we now always wish to regard the proletariat) for which they are typical; but that above all they fail for comparisons too, because they do not let it be seen whether they correspond to the same level of income in each of the two masses compared. So one will after all have to resolve, even if unwillingly, to take a detour, which nevertheless leads one closer to the goal one is after: the detour by way of money income, that is, in our case, money wages.

True, here too the obstacles are numerous: no country, not even the United States, has comprehensive and reliable wage statistics. But one will be able to manage. For what is available in the way of material on wages, especially over there, is sufficient to give us a rough picture of the structure of the money income of the working class, or at least to let us recognise the outlines of this picture. Once one knows the stratification by money wages to some extent, two ways are open to ascertain the standard of living: again a detour, by way of establishing the prices of the individual articles of consumption, and a direct way: the use of the household budgets. For this can now be done with advantage, after each budget has been assigned its proper place on the scale of all incomes, so that in comparing one can in particular also establish whether the two budgets correspond each to the same level of income in the two masses (countries), whether one is thus really comparing proportionally equally placed economies with each other.

I shall therefore first attempt to give a picture of the level and gradation of money wages in the United States, and to compare the figures obtained with those of other countries, in particular of Germany.