Page:Karl Kautsky - The Road to Power - tr. A. M. Simons (1909).pdf/69



The lion's share of the increase in the number of voters falls to the proletariat and this in a higher degree than in the period from 1882 to 1895.

The figures of the census of 1905 are also strikingly significant as showing industrial progress.

As a general thing the cities are much more favorable to the political life and organization of the proletariat and to the extension of our teachings than the open country. It is therefore highly significant that the population of the latter has retreated before that of the cities.

How swiftly this change is proceeding is shown by the following table. The country population includes all those living in communities having less than 2,000 population, and the city population those living in communities of more than 2,000.

In a period of thirty years the city population has more than doubled, while the country population has not only relatively but absolutely decreased. While the city dwellers have increased more than twenty millions, the number living in the country has decreased nearly one million. At the time of the establishment of the German empire the latter formed almost two-thirds of the population; today they form but a little over two-fifths.

So the economic development operates to continuously