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.
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