This picture, exaggerated as it will appear to those who have not seen it, brings home to us the essential character of free competition for low-skilled labour where the normal supply is in excess of the demand.

If other forms of low-skilled labour were put up to be scrambled for in the same public manner, the scene would be repeated _ad nauseam_.

But because the competition of seamstresses, tailors, shirt- finishers, fur-sewers, &c., is conducted more quietly and privately, it is not less intense, not less miserable, and not less degrading.

This struggle for life in the shape of work for bare subsistence wages, is the true logical and necessary outcome of free competition among an over supply of low-skilled labourers.
Sec.3.The Multiplication of "Small Masters."-- Having made so much progress in our analysis, we shall approach more intelligently another important aspect of the "sweating system." Mr.Booth and other investigators find the tap-root of the disease to consist in the multiplication of small masters.

The leading industrial forces of the age, as we have seen, make for the concentration of labour in larger and larger masses, and its employment in larger and larger factories.