In countries where access to unused land is free, the productiveness of labour applied to such land marks the minimum of wages possible; in countries where no such access is possible, the minimum wages of unskilled labour, whenever the supply exceeds the demand, is determined by the attractiveness of the alternatives named above.
A margin of unemployed labour means a bare subsistence wage for low- skilled labour, and it means this wage earned under industrial conditions, such as we find under the "sweating system." In order to keep the wage of low-skilled labour down to this minimum, which can only rise with an improvement in the alternatives, it is not required that there should at any time exist a large number of unemployed.

A very small number, in effective competition with those employed, will be quite as effectual in keeping down the rate of wages.

The same applies to all grades of skilled labour, with this important difference, that the minimum wage can never fall below what is required to induce less skilled workers to acquire and apply the extra skill which will enable them to furnish the requisite supply of highly-skilled workers.

Trade Unions have instinctively directed all their efforts to preventing the competition of unemployed workers in their respective trades from pulling down to its minimum the rate of wages.

The strongest of those have succeeded in establishing a standard wage less than which no one shall accept; unemployed men, who in free competition would accept less than this standard wage, are supported by the funds of the Union, that they may not underbid.