Cheap groceries and lighting are also gains, though it must be remembered that the modes of purchase to which the very poor are driven to have recourse minimize these gains.

On clothes the poor spend a very small proportion of their incomes, the very poor virtually nothing.

In the case of the lowest classes of the towns, it is probable that the rise in rents offsets all the advantages of cheapened prices for other commodities.
The importance of the bearing of this fact is obvious.

Even were it clearly proved that the wages of the working-classes were increasing faster in proportion than the incomes of the wealthier classes, it would not be thereby shown that the standard of comfort in the former was rising as fast as the standard of comfort in the latter.

If we confine the term "poor" to the lower grades of wage-earners, it would probably be correct to say that the riches of the rich had increased at a more rapid rate than that at which the poverty of the poor had diminished.
Thus the width of the gap between riches and poverty would be absolutely greater than before.