If allowed to live free, there will never be slums of the hard working, never happened or will happen. It didn't even happen during the "Great Depression". Their will be a revolution or Civil War before that. I'll bet you would probably be telling the rioters/rebels about benefits of the "Free market" - if it were to come to that. LOL
So, so wrong.
How prevailing wages became law:
In that early industrial era, almost all jobs were low paying and worker protections were non-existent. Even worse, though the courts had ruled otherwise, those who sought change using collective action were still often viewed as part of a ”criminal conspiracy.” For workers, conditions couldn’t be worse. While the economy as whole continued to expand, most industries (and their workers) suffered from fairly regular and sometimes extreme business fluctuations – making work relationships tenuous at best and making job security an all but impossible goal to achieve.
In such an economic environment, employers were free to “bargain” with workers – primarily to see which one would work for the lowest wage. With exploitation so pervasive, workers could find themselves working up to twelve or more hours per day and seven days a week for less than subsistence. For workers with families, their economic plight often made it necessary to have more than one income – forcing both parents to work many hours each day for meager pay and often forcing children to work instead of going to school.
However, even before the end of the last century, many Americans began to question why such conditions were afflicting an ever-greater number of workers. More to the point, a growing number came to believe that, having an economic system that favored businesses which paid the least possible wages was clearly incompatible with our country’s founding principles of freedom, equality, justice, and the “pursuit of happiness.” In fact, many reformers went further, charging that it was blatantly hypocritical for America to espouse the benefits of a “free enterprise system” while the reality was increasing impoverishment