conditions of the whole working class. So long as they occupy a more favorable position in the industrial world, the trade unions will have something to conserve. They become conservative.
We see the small, struggling farmers, who have probably very little to lose in this world save their debts and their mortgages, counting themselves in a class of possible property owners and small exploiters, and generally throwing their support into movements promising petty reforms, when nothing but the abolition, or downfall of the system of private ownership in the means of production and distribution, can possibly help them.
The petty shop-keepers rail more against the "outrageously" high wages and the short hours of the skilled workers than against the large business organizations, like the packing interests, or the great monopolies, that hold them constantly on the edge of failure. Desper-
