Page:Karl Kautsky - The Road to Power - tr. A. M. Simons (1909).pdf/89

 unprotected strange laborers was rendered doubly bitter by the rise in the price of food products.

One of the most important factors in maintaining the standard of life of the European working class was the fall in the price of food products since the '70s, to which we have already referred. It raised the purchasing power of their money wages, softened the effect of their fall during crises, and during the time of revival permitted the real wages to rise faster than money wages, in so far as agrarian taxes did not offset the favorable effect of lowering food prices.

But within a few years the price of food products has again begun to rise.

This movement can be most clearly followed in England, where it has been unaffected by any agrarian tariff. According to Conrad's table the price of wheat per ton was:

On the other hand, in recent times, according to the quarterly statistics of the German Empire, prices are as follows. In Liverpool La Plata wheat from July to September was:

Naturally the price has varied in the different years with good or bad harvests. But it, nevertheless, appears as if we were now confronted with a rising price of food products, not as a temporary but a permanent phenomenon.