means the case. The language of common life
very frequently attaches at different times different conceptions to
the words "workingman" or "working class," and we must therefore, in
due time, get a clear conception as to what meaning we will attach to
these designations.

With this problem, however, we are not concerned at the present
moment. We must rather begin this presentation with a different
question: The working class is only one class among several which
together form the body politic, and there have been workingmen at
every historical period. How, then, is it possible, and what does the
statement mean, that a particular connection exists between the idea
of this special definite class and the principle of the particular
historical period in which we are living?

To understand this it is desirable to take a glance into history--into
the past, which properly interpreted, here, as everywhere, gives us
the key to the present and points out to us an outline of the future.
In this retrospect we must be as brief as possible, or we shall be in
danger (in the short time which is before us) of not reaching at all
the essential subject of the discussion. But even at this risk we
shall at least be obliged to cast such a glance into the past, even if
it is limited to the most general considerations, in order to
understand the import of our question and of our subject.

If, then, we go back to the Middle Ages, we shall find, in general,
that the same classes and divisions of the population which today
compose the body politic were already in existence, although by no
means so fully developed; but we find, furthermore, that at that time
one class, one element, is predominate--the landholding element. It is
land proprietorship which in the Middle Ages is the controlling
influence in every particular, which has put its own special stamp
upon all the institutions and upon the whole life of the time: it must
be pronounced the ruling principle of that period.

The reason why land ownership is the ruling principle of that time is
a very simple one. It lies--at least this reason is quite sufficient
for our present purposes--in the economic conditions of the Middle
Ages and in the state of development of production. Commerce was then
very slightly developed, manufactures still less. The chief wealth of
every community consisted, in greatest measure, in the products of
agriculture.

Personal property at that time, in comparison