The progress of the German working classes in the last quarter of a century . area is owned by peasants cannot properly be omitted in a con-sideration of the working classes. Whether weagree with Goldsmith that a peasantry should be their 1A hectare = nearly 2£ acres (more exactly, 2-471 acres). 2The exact figures are these. Of the 3,285,984 hectaresoccupied by small peasants (with from 2 to 5 hectares each),81/23 per cent, was owned by the cultivators. Of the 9,721,875hectares occupied by middling peasants (with 5 to 20 hectareseach) 9055 per cent, was owned by the cultivators
The progress of the German working classes in the last quarter of a century . area is owned by peasants cannot properly be omitted in a con-sideration of the working classes. Whether weagree with Goldsmith that a peasantry should be their 1A hectare = nearly 2£ acres (more exactly, 2-471 acres). 2The exact figures are these. Of the 3,285,984 hectaresoccupied by small peasants (with from 2 to 5 hectares each),81/23 per cent, was owned by the cultivators. Of the 9,721,875hectares occupied by middling peasants (with 5 to 20 hectareseach) 9055 per cent, was owned by the cultivators. Of the9,869,837 hectares occupied by big peasants (with 20 to 100hectares each) 91-98 per cent, was owned by the the census volume on agriculture, Die Landivirthschaft imDeutschen Reich (Statistik des Deutschen Eeichs, , Band 112),p. 16*. 3 Sering in Schriften des Vereins fur Socialpolitik, xcviii., p. figures for the several States are conveniently collected inWagner, Agrar- unci Industrie-stoat, 128 n. 62 PROGRESS OF GERMAN WORKING CLASSES. THE PEASANTS 63 countrys pride, and regret like him that when oncedestroyed it can never be supplied, or whether weregard their disappearance with equanimity, we haveto allow that, while they exist, they form at least oneof the most important of the labouring classes. Toshow the part the peasant plays in German life, Ihave here reproduced in a simpler form one of themaps in the agricultural volume of the last OccupationCensus. It shows the proportion of the agriculturalland occupied—and to the extent of more than nine-tenths owned—by the central class of middling\ Now in the last two or three decades a remarkablething has taken place in Germany in regard to thesepeasants. Two Occupation Censuses were taken, in1882 and 1895, and these showed that a movementwas taking place which was one of the most importantthat could possibly manifest itself. The figures aregiven on p. 64. The quite unexpected
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