of combination among low-skilled labourers.  It is possible, however, that a growing sense of comradeship, aided by a general recognition of the justice of a claim, may be generally relied upon to furnish a certain force which shall restrict the competition of free labour in critical junctures of the labour movement.  If public opinion, especially among workmen, becomes strongly set in favour of letting capital and labour “fight it out” in cases of trade disputes, and vigorously resents all interference of outsiders offering to replace the contending labourers, it seems likely that this practical elimination of outside competition may enable combinations of unskilled workmen to materially improve their condition in spite of the existence of a large supply of outside labour able to replace them.

Sec. 6.  Can Trade Unionism crush out “Sweating"?—­But here again it must be recognized that each movement of public opinion in this direction is really making for the establishment of new trade monopolies, which tend to aggravate the condition of free unemployed labour.  Unions of low-skilled labour can only be successful at the expanse of outsiders, who will find it increasingly difficult to get employment.  The success of combinations of low-skilled workers will close one by one every avenue of regular employment to the unemployed, who will tend to become even more nomadic and predatory in their habits, and more irregular and miserable in their lives, affording continually a larger field of operation for the small “sweater,” and other forms of “arrested development” in commerce.  It must always be an absorbing interest to a Trades Union to maintain the industrial welfare of its members by preventing what it must regard as an “over-supply” of labour.  No organization of labour can effect very much unless it takes measures to restrict the competition of “free labour”; each Union, by limiting the number of competitors for its work, increases the competition in trades not similarly protected.  So with every growth of Trade Unionism the pressure on unprotected bodies of workmen grows greater.  Thus it would seem that while organization of labour may become a real remedy for “sweating” in any industry to which it is vigorously applied, it cannot be relied upon ever entirely to crash out the evil.  It can only drive it into a smaller compass, where its intenser character may secure for it that close and vigorous public attention which, in spite of recent revelations, has not been yet secured, and compel society to clearly face the problem of a residue of labour-power which is rotting in the miserable and degraded bodies of its owners, because all the material on which it might be productively employed is otherwise engaged.