Page:Karl Kautsky - The Road to Power - tr. A. M. Simons (1909).pdf/66

 a majority, not only of the, but even of the electorate, in the German Empire.

The exact figures of the laboring population from the census of 1907 are not yet available. We must therefore take those for 1895. When we compare these with the election of 1893 we obtain the following:

In 1893 the number entitled to vote was 10,628,292. On the other hand, there were in 1895 15,506,482 persons active in industry. Subtract from this figure the number of those under twenty years of age, and one-half of those between twenty and thirty, and we have 10,742,989, as the nearest figure obtainable of the male industrial workers of voting age. This number is almost identical with the number of those entitled to vote in 1893.

Of the male industrial workers of voting age in agriculture, industry and trade (reckoned in the same manner) there were again 4,172,269 independent producers and 5,590,743 wage workers and salary force. If we consider, however, that in business (trade and industry) alone, that of the 3,144,977 heads of business more than one-half, 1,714,351, a single person was both employer and employe, and that therefore the overwhelming majority of these fall within the circle of interest of the proletariat, then we are not exaggerating when we accept the statement that in 1895, while there were three and a half million such "independent" producers who were interested in private property in the means of production, there were more than six million proletarians who were interested in the abolition of this private property.

We may take it for granted that the remaining strata of the population that are to be considered, while insignificant in numbers, is divided in about the same way. This is especially true of those who are classified as "independent without occupation," and who are composed upon the one side of rich capitalist landlords and