red and fifty
thousand farm laborers, as regards their economic _interests_, with the
general mass of wage-workers, with one important qualification. So far
as they are in the actual relation of wage-paid laborers, hired by the
month, week, or day, and bearing no other relation to their employers,
they belong, in their economic interests, to the proletariat. But there
are many farm laborers included in our enumeration who do not hold that
relation to their employers. They are the sons of the farmers
themselves, expecting to assume their fathers' positions, and their
position as wage-paid laborers is largely nominal and fictitious. How
many such there are it is impossible to ascertain with anything like
certainty, and we can only say, therefore, that the position of the
class, as such, must be determined without including these. But while
this class has economic interests similar to those of the industrial
proletariat, because of their isolation and scattered position, and
because of the personal relations which they bear to their
employers--farmer and laborer often working side by side, equally hard,
and not infrequently having approximately the same standards of
living--these cannot, to any very great extent, become an active factor
in the class conflict in the same sense as the industrial wage-workers
can, by engaging in strikes, boycotts, and other manifestations of the
class war. Still, they may, and in fact do, play an important role in
the _political_ aspects of the struggle. Let a political movement of the
proletariat arise and it will be found that these agricultural laborers
will join it not less enthusiastically than their fellows from the
factories in the cities. It would probably surprise most thoughtful
Americans if they could see the organization maps in the offices of the
Socialist Party of the United States, dotted with little red-capped pins
denoting local organizations of the party. These are quite as common in
the agricultural states as in the industrial states. So, too, in
Germany. The movement is politically nearly as strong in the agrarian
districts as elsewhere. This is a fact of vital significance, one which
must not be lost sight of in studying the progress of Socialism in
America.

Third: Of the exact position of the remaining groups it is very
difficult to speak with anything like assurance. In an earlier chapter
we have noticed the persistence of the small farm in America, and the
fact that