Sec. 7.  Public Workshops.—­Those who are most active in the spread of Unionism among the low-skilled branches of industry, are quite aware that their action, by fencing off section after section of labour from the fierce competition of outsiders, is rendering the struggle more intense for the unprotected residuum.  So far as they indulge any wider view than the interest of their special trades, it may be taken that they design to force the public to provide in some way for the unemployed or casually employed workers, against whom the gates of each Union have been successively closed.  There can be little doubt that if Unionism is able to establish itself firmly among the low-skilled industries, we shall find this margin of unemployed low-skilled labour growing larger and more desperate, in proportion to the growing difficulty of finding occupation.  Trade Union leaders have boldly avowed that they will thus compel the State to recognize the “right to employment,” and to provide that employment by means of national or municipal workshops.  With questions of abstract “right” we are not here concerned, but it may be well to indicate certain economic difficulties involved in the establishment of public works as a solution of the “unemployed” problem.  Since the “unemployed” will, under the closer restrictions of growing Trade Unionism, consist more and more of low-skilled labourers, the public works on which they must be employed must be branches of low-skilled labour.  But the Unions of low-skilled workers will have been organized with the view of monopolizing all the low-skilled work which the present needs of the community require to be done.  How then will the public provide low-skilled work for the unemployed?  One of two courses seems inevitable.  Either the public must employ them in work similar to that which is being done by Union men for private firms, in which case they will enter into competition with the latter, and either undersell them in the market and take their trade, or by increasing the aggregate supply of the produce, bring down the price, and with it the wage of the Union men.  Or else if they are not to compete with the labour of Union men, they must be employed in relief works, undertaken not to satisfy a public need or to produce a commodity with a market value, but in order that those employed may, by a wholly or partially idle expenditure of effort, appear to be contributing to their own support, whereas they are really just as much recipients of public charity as if they were kept in actual idleness.  This is the dilemma which has to be faced by advocates of public workshops.  Nor can it be eluded by supposing that the public may use the unemployed labour either in producing some new utility for the public use, such as improved street-paving, or a municipal hot-water supply.  For if such undertakings are of a character which a private company would regard as commercially sound, they ought to be, and will be, undertaken by wise public bodies independently of the consideration of providing work for unemployed.  If they are not such as would be considered commercially sound, then in so far as they fall short of commercial soundness, they will be “charity” pure and simple, given as relief is now given to able-bodied paupers, on condition of an expenditure of mere effort which is not a commercial quid pro quo.