Series 2 > Household book of Lady Grisell Baillie

INTRODUCTION
Ixxvii
trades and professions then and now, we shall at least
be enabled to judge by it whether any special com¬
modity has increased or decreased in value from a
purchaser’s point of view. Now it will be seen from
Appendix .iv., which has been prepared from the
Accounts of Lady Grisell and from other sources, and
which the Editor is well aware is far from exhaustive,
that the salaries and wages therein referred to have
increased from six- to ten-fold. It will also be seen
that the increase in the wages of domestic servants,
taking into account the cost of the clothes supplied and
the cost of their maintenance, both relatively greater then
than now, lies somewhere between the same two figures.
Let us therefore take eight, the mean of these two figures,
as representing the decrease in the power of money to buy
the services of men and women, and let us multiply by
eight the price of any article in 1707 before comparing it
with the price of to-day. The result should enable us to
judge fairly accurately whether it has increased or decreased
in value.
As long as income was spent on the employment of
labour, such as servants, tradesmen, doctors, lawyers, etc.,
our ancestors were just as well off as we are to-day. The
same may also be said in regard to one or two items, such
as farmyard produce, keep of horses, etc., but, as will be
seen from Appendix I., the cost of nearly every other
commodity was relatively much dearer then than now.
Even the staff of life, oatmeal, which costs now about 17s.
the boll, cost then about 10s., that is, it was then relatively
nearly five times dearer. This merely brings us to what
we know already, namely, that our incomes go much
further now than then, and that we are consequently much
better off.
Mention has been made of the periodical balance-sheets