FROM THE ARCHIVES:Government price controls on practically all economic activities continued long after the second World War. An approved increase in restaurant prices in 1947, partly as a result of a threatened catering industry strike, led to a sudden surge in prices with the following consequences for those the headline on this report termed "business girls". –
JOE JOYCE
THE ACTUAL and proposed increases in the price of restaurant meals have created a serious problem for the business girl with a small, fixed salary, and who live in bed and breakfast lodgings or furnished apartments. Hundreds now have to deprive themselves of a full luncheon daily and the proposed increases will mean even less food.
According to a number of girls interviewed by an Irish Times reporter their salaries vary from £2 10s, to £5 a week. They find it impossible to secure full board and lodgings, and have to buy their principal meals in town.
One girl said that her particular restaurant had increased the luncheon price by 1s. and tea by 6d., and she said she would be forced to miss meals if she could not find a cheaper restaurant. Her salary was fixed at £4 2s. 6d., and had been for four years. She was not a member of a trade union, and saw no prospect of securing an increase. Although, she said, it was almost impossible to keep to it, she had worked out the following budget:
£ s. d.
Bed and breakfast ......... 1 10 0
Lunch at the new price of
3/6 ...................... 1 4 6
Tea at 2/- ........................ 14 0
Supper at 1/6 .................. 10 6
------------
£3 19 0
This, she said, did not include such essentials as clothes, fares, laundry, and shoe repairs, or any allowances for sickness, and as her salary was only £4 2s. 6d. a week, she had to do without lunch frequently and just had buns and coffee at a snack-bar. She was aware that some restaurants supplied good meals at cheaper prices, but it was not always possible to get to them.
A shop girl said she had a small bed-sittingroom and cooked snack meals there. She could not afford daily luncheons and mostly frequented the snack bars.
In some cases, coffee cost 8d. a cup, and tomato or other sandwiches often brought the cost of the “snack” to 2s. 6d. The proposed increase, she said, would mean that hundreds of girls would not get any decent luncheons at all. She managed to cook a really good meal at home only on Saturdays and Sundays.
All of the girls welcomed the suggestion made in yesterday’s Irish Times that the Dublin Corporation should establish municipal restaurants to provide meals at reasonable prices. They instanced the case of one co-operative restaurant in the city which yesterday supplied a luncheon consisting of potato soup, baked fish, potatoes, peas, and apricot pie for 2s. 3d.
A doctor said that he had attended hundreds of girls whose illnesses arose mainly from the fact that they had no decent midday meal.
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