The current, and still more this prospective, case of the quasi-self-directing middle class may fairly be illustrated by the case of the American farmers, of the past and present. The American farmer rejoices to be called "The Independent Farmer." He once was independent, in a meager and toil-worn fashion, in the days before the price-system had brought him and all his works into the compass of the market; but that was some time ago. He now works for the market, ordinarily at something like what is called a "living wage," provided he has "independent means" enough to enable him by steady application to earn a living wage; and of course, the market being controlled by the paramount investment interests in the background, his work, in effect, inures to their benefit; except so much as it may seem necessary to allow him as incentive to go on. Also of course, these paramount investment interests are in turn controlled in all their manoeuvres by the impersonal exigencies of the price-system, which permits no vagaries in violation of the rule that all traffic must show a balance of profit in terms of price. The Independent Farmer still continues to believe that in some occult sense he still is independent in what he will do and what not; or perhaps rather that he can by shrewd management retain or regain a tolerable measure of such independence, after the fashion of what is held to have been the posture of affairs in the days before the coming of corporation finance; or at least he believes that he ought to have, or to regain or reclaim, some appreciable measure of such independence; which ought then, by help of the "independent means" which he still treasures, to procure him an honest and assured livelihood in return for an honest year's work. Latterly he, that is the common run of the farmers, has been taking note of the fact that he is, as he apprehends it, at a disadvantage in the market; and he is now taking recourse to concerted action for the purpose of what might be called "rigging the market" to his own advantage. In this he overlooks the impregnable position which the party of the second part, the great investment interests, occupy; in fact, he is counting without his host. Hitherto he has not been convinced of his own helplessness. And with a fine fancy he still imagines that his own interest is on the side of the propertied and privileged classes; so that the farmer constituency is the chief pillar of conservative law and order, particularly in all that touches the inviolable rights of property and at every juncture where a division comes on between those who live by investment and those who live by work. In pecuniary effect, the ordinary American farmer, who legally owns a moderate farm of the common sort, belongs among those who work for a livelihood; such a livelihood as the investment interests find it worth while to allow him under the rule of what the traffic will bear;