f occupation of 1882 established that, out of 5,273,344
farms, only 391,746, or 7 1/2 per cent., employ machinery. Out of the
24,999 large farms, however, containing over 100 hectares of land,
machinery was in use on 20,558, or 82 1/4 per cent. Naturally, it is the
larger farms only that can utilize machinery. The application of
machinery on a large surface, all of one product, engages labor only a
comparatively short time, the number of male and female hands,
absolutely needed on the place and for tending the cattle, is reduced,
and after the field work is done, the day laborers are discharged. Thus
with us, just as in England and in a still higher degree in the United
States, a rural proletariat of grave aspect springs up. If, in view of
the shortness of the season, these workingmen demand correspondingly
high wages when they are needed, their impudence is denounced; if, upon
their discharge, they roam about in hunger and idleness, they are called
vagabonds, are abused, and not infrequently dogs are set upon them to
chase them from the yards as "tramps," unwilling to work, and they are
handed over to the constabulary for the workhouse. A pretty social
"order."

Capitalist exploitation of agriculture leads in all directions to
capitalist conditions. One set of our farmers, for instance, has for
years made enormous profits out of beet-root and the production of sugar
therewith connected. Our system of taxation favored the exportation of
sugar, and it was so framed that the tax on beets yielded but an
infinitesimal revenue to the treasury of the Empire, the premium on the
exportation of sugar being large enough to almost swallow the tax.

The rebate allowed the sugar manufacturers per double quintal was
actually higher than the tax paid by them on beets; and this premium
enabled them to sell large quantities of sugar at the expense of the
domestic tax-payers, and to extend ever more the cultivation of the
sugar-beet. The profit that accrued from this system of taxation to
about 400 sugar factories was estimated at over 30 million marks for
1889-1890: on an average 78,000 marks per factory. Several hundreds of
thousands of hectares of land, previously devoted to raising grain, were
turned into beet-root fields; factories upon factories were started, and
are still being started; the inevitable consequence is an eventual
crash. The large returns yielded by the beet-root cultivation affected
favorably the price of land. It