WHAT ANTI-FREE-TRADERS TUINK OF FREE-TRADE 29 



hundreds ? Wliy is it that the bnildinf,' contractor, who puts 

 up a notice outside his works at eiLjht o'clock in the morning 

 that " Hands " are wanted, replaces it by another at noon the 

 same day, intimating " No more hands wanted " ? The reply 

 will be found in the indisputable fact that our present means 

 of employment — our professions, trades, manufactures, and other 

 industries — are totally incapable of affording full employment 

 to those vast masses of the working population which now 

 necessarily depend upon such sources of occupation. The labour 

 market is, therefore, always congested and must remain so. 



Glutted Labour Markets 



The clerk, typist, dressmaker, milliner, shop-assistant, 

 " Hands " in textile factories, navvies, and dock labourers are 

 all subject to the pressure which congestion of labour involves ; 

 they have been sufferers from it for many years as they are 

 suffering from it to-day ; and it is absolutely certain that unless 

 other, readier, and more stable forms of employment are found 

 for that large section of the working community, which exist- 

 ing professions, trades, and manufactures cannot employ, and 

 will not be able to employ in the future, the congestion must 

 continue and the people must suffer. 



It is affirmed by Free- trade adversaries that views such as 

 these are held by so vast a number of people nowadays that 

 the alarming features of the situation can no longer be hidden 

 from the public who have hitherto regarded the phenomenal 

 poverty of the people, and the widespread increasing unemploy- 

 ment of great numbers of our workers, as a simple result of an 

 intelligible economic law, and as an inevitable consequence 

 of human life, and, therefore, as a Necessity. 



