However, notwithstanding their desperate resistance, the situation of the petty bourgeoisie becomes worse and worse, and this has important social consequences, for example, the increase of the labor of women outside of their own homes. Whole groups of the petty bourgeoisie are so fallen into decadence that the plane of their existence has become the same as that of the proletariat, or has even fallen below it. Finally the contest with the large capitalist means not simply degradation to the petty bourgeois, but absolute ruin. When a crisis comes the small capitalists are the first to feel the shock. Their ruin may come in various ways; their business may be annihilated altogether—in which case they are permanently reduced to the ranks of the proletariat—or it may become dependent upon great capital under the name of home industry, i.e. wage labor masked under the appearance of independence. Only those who have been able to save a part of their capital from the wreck can try fortune once more in another branch of industry where great capital has not yet begun to compete, but they are sure to be pursued and finally overtaken by their enemy. As in the case of the bourgeoisie, the relations which the different members of the petty bourgeoisie have among themselves are determined by the economic system; fierce competition, life in a little circle where ideas cannot be broadened, all this breeds envy, hatred, and meanness. [271] As to intellectual culture a great part of the petty bourgeoisie takes rank between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Generally the children of this class are better taught than those of the proletariat. But since the field of their ideas is very restricted and the struggle for existence requires all their time, their intellectual level remains in general much below the average level of the bourgeoisie. Others still who are of the lowest stratum of the petty bourgeoisie have the same development as the proletariat. The petty bourgeoisie is recruited from the descendants of the same class, then from among the bourgeois who have failed in business, and finally from former proletarians. These last are those who cannot sell their labor for some reason, and try to gain a livelihood by making an insignificant capital of value in trading. Their plane of living does not differ from that of the proletariat unless by being lower.