It has been said that the condition of the working classes has much improved within this century; this is true in an absolute sense of the skilled artisans; 274 though the improvement has not touched the fringe of labour at all. Even as to skilled workmen, relatively to the enormous increase of wealth in the country, they are in a worse and not in a better condition; this combined with the fact that their political power has grown, makes it certain that they will claim an ever-increasing share in the wealth that they produce; and such betterment they can obviously only obtain at the expense of the capitalist class. The improvement therefore on these terms of a part of the workmen by no means indicates stability in the present fabric of society. For the prosperity of the middle classes gives a standard of comfort to the workmen; and on the other hand it is growing clearer to them that the obstacles to attaining a like welfare are artificially economical, and not essential, and can be done away with by means of combined action in industrial and political directions.
Meantime, though the middle class has increased enormously in numbers, and become very much richer as a class, 275 yet it has its own unprosperous fringe, which has grown beyond measure, mostly because of the great diffusion and consequent loss in market-value of education. This intellectual proletariat, as it has been called, is one of the most disruptive elements of modern society, as it is largely in sympathy with the wage-earners, and is quick to catch up with new ideas, while the position of most of its members is worse than that of an average skilled workman. It must be said by the way that in Germany this element of the poor but educated section of the middle classes is even more important than here.
We have then a large body of proletarian producers, with important allies among the middle classes themselves, who are in an inferior economic position to those whose sole business is making a profit out of them, who do not produce at all. But this better-off working class is above the