There are two words, as yet quite unfamiliar to American readers, which are met with constantly in European works on Socialism and are heard on every hand in political discussions--_proletariat_ and _bourgeois_. The proletariat are the wage-earning class, the poor, the underlings. The bourgeois[1] are roughly the middle class. The French divide them into _petits_ bourgeois and _grands_ bourgeois. Werner Sombart divides them into lower middle class, the manual laborers who represent the guild system, and bourgeoisie, the representatives of the capitalistic system.[2] It will thus be seen that these divisions have a historical basis. The upper class reflect the days of feudalism, of governmental prerogative and aristocracy. The middle class are the representatives of the guild and mercantile systems, when hand labor and later business acumen brought power and wealth to the craftsman and adventurer. The lower class are the homologues of the slaves, the serfs, the toilers, whose reward has constantly been measured by the standard of bare existence. Socialism arises consciously out of the efforts of this class to win for itself a share of the powers of the other classes. It is necessary to understand that while this class distinction is historic in origin it is essentially economic in fact. It is not "social"; a middle-class millionaire may be congenial to the social circles of the high-born. It is not political; a workingman may vote with any party he chooses. He may ally himself with the conservative Center as he sometimes does in Germany, or with the Liberal Party as he sometimes does in England, or with either of the old parties as he does in the United States. On the other hand, a bourgeois may be a Socialist and vote with the proletarians. Indeed, many of the Socialist leaders belong to the well-to-do middle class. This class distinction, then, is economic. It is a distinction of function, the function of the capitalist and the function of the wage-earner. Let us go one step further; it is a distinction in property. The possessor of private wealth can become a capitalist by investing his money in productive enterprise. He then becomes the employer of labor. There are all grades of capitalists, from the master wagon-maker who works by the side of his one or two workmen, to the "captain" of a vast industry that gives employment to thousands of men and turns out a wagon a minute.