For the lowest paid classes of labourers get, roughly speaking, no more wages than will just suffice to provide them with what they insist on regarding as necessaries of life.

To an ordinary labourer "beer" is a part of the minimum subsistence for less than which he will not consent to work at all.

Where there is an abundance of labour, as is generally the case in low-skilled employments, this minimum subsistence or lowest standard of comfort practically determines wages.

If you were merely to take something away from this recognized minimum without putting something else to take its place, you would actually lower the rate of wages.

If, by a crusade of temperance pure and simple, you made teetotalers of the mass of low-skilled workers, their wages would indisputably fall, although they might be more competent workers than before.