which at retail and on credit would cost three rubles now cost two. In reality the profit is greater. Let us take, for example, the house: if these rooms were rented singly,[1] there would live in these seventeen rooms—each with its two windows, three and four persons—a total (say) of fifty-five; in two rooms with three windows, six persons each; and in the two with four windows, nine persons each. Twelve and eighteen make thirty, and fifty-five in the little rooms; thus the whole apartment would contain eighty-five people. Each of them would pay three and a half rubles a month, which makes forty-two rubles a year. And so these petty landlords, who make a business of renting out 'corners,' take for such an establishment forty-two multiplied by eighty-five,—3,570 rubles. Our members have this same establishment for 1,250 rubles, almost three times as cheap. So it is in a good many things, almost all, everything. Probably I should not reach the true proportion, if I estimated the saving at one-half; but I shall place it also at a third. And this is not all. With such a mode of life they are freed from the necessity of incurring many expenses, or, rather, they need many less things."
Viérotchka here offered, as an example, shoes and dresses. Let us suppose that from this the quantity of things bought is diminished by one-fourth; instead of four pairs of shoes, three are sufficient, or three dresses are worn as long as four used to be. This proportion is also too small; but see what results these proportions give:—
| The cheapness of the things purchased is reckoned as causing a saving of one-third part; that is, suppose that for three things two rubles are spent instead of three; but, according to our system, these three things satisfy as many necessities as in the old system would have been satisfied by not less than four: that is equivalent to saying that for our 200 rubles our seamstresses have as many things as, according to the old system, they got for 300 rubles; and that these things, according to our system, afford them as many comforts as in the old system would have been afforded by a sum of ..... | 400 rubles |
"Compare the life of a family spending 1,000 rubles a year with the life of a family spending 4,000 rubles a year. Isn't it true that you would find a great difference?" contin-
- ↑ Uglanai. Literally, by corners, referring to the custom of putting a number of people into one room.
