The class struggle, therefore, presents itself in the present stage of social development, in capitalist countries, as a conflict between the wage-paying and the wage-paid classes. That is the dominating and all-absorbing conflict of the industrial age in which we live. True, there are other class interests more or less involved. This is especially true in the United States with its enormous agricultural industry, to which the description of the industrial conflict cannot be applied. There are the indefinite, inchoate, vague, and uncertain interests of that large, so-called middle class, composed of farmers, retailers, professional workers, and so on. The interests of this large class are not, and cannot be, as definitely defined. They vacillate, conforming now to the interest of the wage-workers, now to the interest of the employers. Thus the farmer may oppose an increase in the wages of farm laborers, because that touches him directly as an employer. His relation to the farm laborer is substantially that of the capitalist to the city worker, and his attitude upon that question is the attitude of the capitalist class as a whole. At the same time, he may heartily favor an increase of wages for miners, carpenters, bricklayers, shoemakers, printers, painters, factory workers, and non-agricultural laborers in general, for the reason that while a general rise of wages, resulting in a general rise of prices, will affect him slightly as a consumer, and compel him to pay more for what he buys, it will benefit him much more as a seller of the products of his farm. In short, consciously very often, but unconsciously oftener still, personal or class interests control our thoughts, opinions, beliefs, and actions. It is impossible with the data at our disposal at present to make such an analysis of our population as will enable us to determine the particular class interests of the various groups. Of the twenty-four million men and boys engaged in industry there are some six million farmers and tenants; three million seven hundred and fifty thousand farm laborers; eleven million mechanics, laborers, clerks, and servants; one million five hundred thousand professional workers, agents, and the like; and about two million employers, large and small. Accurately to place each of these groups is out of the question until such time as we have a much more detailed study of our economic life than has yet been attempted. We may, however, roughly relate some of the groups.