It would be easy to multiply figures showing astounding gains in industry, business, foreign trade, and railways; or to multiply stories of scandalous and unfair practices on the part of financiers, but we are not primarily concerned here with the technique of inventions or the history of promotion.[7] The student of social and political evolution is concerned rather with the effect of such material changes upon the structure of society, that is, with the rearrangements of classes and the development of new groups of interests, which are brought about by altered methods of gaining a livelihood and accumulating fortunes. It is this social transformation that changes the relation of the individual to the state and brings new forces to play in the struggle for political power. The social transformation which followed the Civil War embraced the following elements. In the first place, capital, as contrasted with agriculture, increased enormously in amount and in political influence. Great pecuniary accumulations were thenceforward made largely in business enterprise--including the work of the entrepreneur, financier, speculator, and manipulator under that general term. Inevitably, the most energetic and the keenest minds were attracted by the dominant mode of money-making. Agricultural regions were drained of large numbers of strenuous and efficient men, who would otherwise have been their natural leaders in politics. To these were added the energetic immigrants from the Old World. That forceful, pushing, dominating section of society historically known as the "natural aristocracy" became the agents of capitalism. The scepter of power now passed definitively from the masters of slaves to the masters of "free laborers." The literary and professional dependents of the ruling groups naturally came to the defense of the new order.[8] The old contest between agrarianism and capitalism now took on a new vigor.[9] On the side of the masses involved in the transition this economic revolution meant an increasing proportion of wage workers as contrasted with agriculturalists, owning and operating their farms, and with handicraftsmen. This increase is shown by the following table, giving the number of wage earners in _manufacturing_ alone: POPULATION WAGE EARNERS 1850 23,191,876 957,059 1860 31,443,321 1,311,246 1870 38,558,371 2,053,996 1880 50,155,783 2,732,595 1890 62,947,714 4,251,535 1900 75,994,575 5,306,143 1910 91,972,266 6,615,046