uch as we find under the "sweating system." In order to
keep the wage of low-skilled labour down to this minimum, which can only
rise with an improvement in the alternatives, it is not required that
there should at any time exist a large number of unemployed. A very
small number, in effective competition with those employed, will be
quite as effectual in keeping down the rate of wages. The same applies
to all grades of skilled labour, with this important difference, that
the minimum wage can never fall below what is required to induce less
skilled workers to acquire and apply the extra skill which will enable
them to furnish the requisite supply of highly-skilled workers. Trade
Unions have instinctively directed all their efforts to preventing the
competition of unemployed workers in their respective trades from
pulling down to its minimum the rate of wages. The strongest of those
have succeeded in establishing a standard wage less than which no one
shall accept; unemployed men, who in free competition would accept less
than this standard wage, are supported by the funds of the Union, that
they may not underbid. Unions of comparatively unskilled workers, who
are never free from the competition of unemployed, and who cannot
undertake permanently to buy off all competitors ready to underbid,
endeavour to limit the numbers of their members, and to prevent
outsiders from effectively competing with them in the labour market, in
order that by restricting the supply of labour, they may prevent a fall
of wages. The importance of these movements for us consists in their
firm but tacit recognition of the fact, that an excessive supply of
unskilled labour lies at the root of the industrial disease of
"sweating."

Sec. 2. The Contributing Causes of excessive Supply.--The last two chapters
have dealt with the principal large industrial movements which bear on
this supply of excessive low-skilled labour; but to make the question
clear, it will be well to enumerate the various contributing causes.

[Greek: a]. The influx of rural population into the towns constantly
swells the supply of raw unskilled labour. The better quality of this
agricultural labour, as we saw, does not continue to form part of this
glut, but rises into more skilled and higher paid strata of labour. The
worse quality forms a permanent addition to the mass of inefficient
labour competing for bare subsistence wages.

[Greek: b]. The steady flow of cheap unskilled