and sugar,--all at the expense of the
propertyless masses.

According to the census of the eighties, there were 8,547,285 farms in
France; 2,993,450 farm owners had an average annual income of 300
francs, the aggregate income of these being 22.5 per cent. of the total
income from farms; 1,095,850 farm owners had an average annual income of
1,730 francs, the aggregate income of these being 47 per cent. of the
total income from farms; 65,525 large landlords, owning 109,285 farms,
drew 25.4 per cent. of the total agricultural revenues:--_their
possessions embraced more than one-half of the agricultural lands of
France_.

Large agricultural property is becoming the standard in all countries of
civilization, and, in virtue of its political influence, it sways
legislation without regard to the welfare of the commonwealth.
Nevertheless, the tenure of agricultural land and its cultivation is of
high importance to social development. Upon land and its productivity
depends first of all the population and its subsistence. Land can not be
multiplied at will, hence the question is of all the greater magnitude
to everyone how the land is cultivated and exploited. Germany, whose
population increases yearly by from 5,600,000 heads, needs a large
supply of breadstuffs and meat, if the prices of the principal
necessaries of life shall remain within the reach of the people.

At this point an important antagonism arises between the industrial and
the agricultural population. The industrial population, being
independent of agriculture, has a vital interest in cheap food: the
degree in which they are to thrive both as men and as workers depends
upon that. Every rise in the price of food leads, either to further
adulterations, or to a decline of exports, and thereby of wages as a
consequence of increased difficulties of competition. The question is
otherwise with the cultivator of the soil. As in the instance of the
industrial producer, the farmer is bent upon making the largest gains
possible out of his trade, whatever line that may be in. If the
importation of corn and meat reduces the high prices for these articles
and thereby lowers his profits, then he gives up raising corn and
devotes his soil to some other product that may bring larger returns: he
cultivates sugar-beet for the production of sugar, potatoes and grain
for distilleries, instead of wheat and rye for bread. He devotes the
most fertile tracts to tobacco instead of vegeta