in these questions are necessarily fatal to all schemes of public works,
we maintain that they require to be clearly faced.

Even if it be held that public workshops can furnish no economic remedy
for poverty, this judgment would of course be by no means conclusive
against public emergency works undertaken on charitable grounds to tide
over a crisis. Every form of charity, public or private, discriminate or
indiscriminate, entails some evil consequences. But this consideration
is not final. A charitable palliative is defensible and useful when the
net advantages outweigh the net disadvantages. This might seem self-
evident, but it requires to be stated, because there are not wanting
individuals and societies which imagine they have disposed of the claim
of charitable remedies by pointing out the evil consequences they
entail. It is evident that circumstances might arise which would compel
the wisest and steadiest Government to adopt public relief works as a
temporary expedient for meeting exceptional distress.

Sec. 9. Restriction of Foreign Emigration.--Two further proposals for
keeping down the supply of low-skilled labour deserve notice, and the
more so because they are forcing their way rapidly toward the arena of
practical politics.

The first is the question of an Alien law limiting or prohibiting the
migration of foreign labourers into England. The power of the German,
Polish, or Russian Jew, accustomed to a lower standard of life, to
undersell the English worker in the English labour market, has already
been admitted as a cause of "sweating" in several city industries. The
importance of this factor in the problem of poverty is, however, a much
disputed point. To some extent these foreign labourers are said to make
new industries, and not to enter into direct and disastrous competition
with native workers. In most cases, however, direct competition between
foreign and native workers does exist, and, as we see, the comparatively
small number of the foreign immigrants compared with the aggregate of
native workers, is no true criterion of the harm their competition does
to low-waged workers. Whether this country will find it wise to reverse
its national policy of free admission to outside labour, it is not easy
to predict. The point should not be misunderstood. Free admission of
cheap foreign labour must be admitted _prima facie_ to be conducive to
the greatest production of wealth in this country. Those who seek