Page:Karl Kautsky - The Road to Power - tr. A. M. Simons (1909).pdf/90

 The bankruptcy of Russian agriculture, together with the transformation of the United States from an agricultural to an industrial nation, makes it probable that the gigantic stream of cheap food products which has flowed toward Europe will gradually dry up.

The American wheat production, for example, has not been increasing for several years. It has been as follows:

It is thus evident that production is rather decreasing than increasing. Consequently the price shows a decided tendency to increase.

The effect of the stoppage in the importation of food products is made worse by the capitalist combines that artificially raise all prices and freights.

All this is aside from the agrarian tariffs by which the state still further adds to the burden which increasing prices lay upon the laborer.

Added to all this the crisis which came at the end of the year 1907, bringing with it widespread unemployment and the condition of the proletariat became a frightful one, which it remains today. But it is not to be expected that the end of the crisis will bring with it any such upward movement as marked the period from 1895 to 1907. The high price of food products will remain and rise yet higher. The flood of cheap labor power from without will not cease; on the contrary, it will set in with increased power on the appearance of somewhat improved conditions. Most important of all the employers'