gs as steadily become thinner, and finally will be unable to carry the
burden. All around, in the immediate vicinity of the cities, the
villages also assume a city aspect, in which the proletariat is heaped
up in large masses. The municipalities, generally out of funds, are
forced to lay on taxes to the utmost, and still remain unable to meet
the demand made upon them. When finally they have grown up to the large
city and it up to them, they rush into and are absorbed by it, as
happens with planets that have swung too close to the sun. But the fact
does not improve the conditions of life. On the contrary, they grow
worse through the crowding of people in already overcrowded spaces.
These gatherings of masses--inevitable under modern development, and, to
a certain extent, the raisers of revolutionary centers,--will have
fulfilled their mission in Socialist society. Their gradual dissolution
then becomes necessary: _the current will then run the other way:
population will migrate from the cities to the country: it will there
raise new municipalities corresponding with the altered conditions, and
they will join their industrial with their agricultural activities_.

So soon as--due to the complete remodeling and equipment of the means of
communication and transportation, and of the productive establishments,
etc., etc.--the city populations will be enabled to transfer to the
country all their acquired habits of culture, to find there their
museums, theaters, concert halls, reading rooms, libraries, etc.--just
so soon will the migration thither set in. Life will then enjoy all the
comforts of large cities, without their disadvantages. The population
will be housed more comfortably and sanitarily. The rural population
will join in manufacturing, the manufacturing population in agricultural
pursuits,--a change of occupation enjoyed to-day by but few, and then
often under conditions of excessive exertion.

As on all other fields, bourgeois society is promoting this development
also: every year new industrial undertakings are transferred to the
country. The unfavorable conditions of large cities--high rents and high
wages--drive many employers to this migration. At the same time, the
large landlords are steadily becoming industrialists--manufacturers of
sugar, distillers of liquor, beer brewers, manufacturers of cement,
earthen wares, tiles, woodwork, paper goods, etc. In the new social
order offal of all sorts will then be easi