If it were established as a general rule, that public bodies should always add a “bonus” to the market wage of their employes to bring it up to “fairness,” and take off a portion of the usual “working-day” to bring it down to “fairness,” it would follow quite consistently that a wage equal to, or exceeding, the minimum market rate might be paid to “unemployed” for work, the value of which would be somewhat less than that produced by the lowest class of “employed” workers.  The policy throughout is one and the same, and is based upon a repudiation of competition as a test of the value of labour, and the substitution of some other standard derived from moral or prudential considerations.

So far as the State or Municipality chooses to regulate by an “uncommercial” or moral standard the conditions of labour for the limited number of employes required for the services which are a public monopoly, it is able to do so, provided the public is willing to pay the price.  There is much to be said in favour of such a course, for the public example might lend invaluable aid in forming a strong public opinion which should successfully demand decent conditions of life and work, for the whole body of workers.  But if the State or Municipality were to undertake to provide work and wages for an indefinite number of men who failed to obtain work in the competition market, the effect would be to offer a premium upon “unemployment.”  Thus, it would appear that as fast as the public works drew off the unemployed, so fast would men leave the low-paid, irregular occupations, and by placing themselves in a state of “unemployment” qualify for public service.  There would of course be a natural check to this flow.  As the State drained off all surplus labour, the market value of labour would rise, greater regularity of employment would be secured, and the general improvement of industrial conditions would check the tendency of workers to flow towards the public workshops.  This consideration has led many of the leaders of labour movements to favour a scheme of public workshops, which would practically mean that the State or Municipality undertook to limit the supply of labour in the open market, by providing for any surplus which might exist, at the public expense.  The effect of such a policy would be of course to enormously strengthen the effective power of labour-organizations.  But while the advocates of public workshops are fully alive to these economic effects, they have not worked out with equal clearness the question relating to the disposal of the labour in public workshops.  How can the “protected” labour of the public workshops be so occupied, that its produce may not, by direct or indirect competition with the produce of outside labour, outweigh the advantage conferred upon the latter by the removal of the “unemployed” from the field of competition, in digging holes and filling them up again, or other useless work, the problem is a simple one.  In that case the State