Having failed as farmers, one-half have become farm laborers, the rest are employed in industry, or have no steady employment at all.[124] With all of them, wages are the chief means of livelihood.[125] The income from their farms is of secondary importance. The gross receipts from sale of produce are absorbed by the taxes.[126] Still the produce of the farm is partly consumed in kind and may serve to supply the owner with some of the necessaries of life.[127] In fact, it proves profitable for the village proletarian to cultivate his plot with the help of hired labor; accordingly, the majority of the proletarians of the Russian villages are not only employees, but also employers at the same time.[128] As yet there is but a small fraction of the village that has evolved into the condition of proletarians proper, whose only economic interest is that of wage labor.[129] _Ad II._ The mean between both extremes, _i. e._ between the independent farmers and the proletarian laborers, is occupied by a transitional class who are farmers and wage laborers at once. The soil being tilled by its owner’s labor, the farmer is supposed to raise live stock. We remember that two horses to a farm is the minimum required to constitute a strong household, the normal approaching three horses upon an average. The proletarians, as a rule, have no horses. The transitional class under consideration is characterized by the ownership of from one to two horses.[130] Within this class a further distinction is to be made as between (A), those with whom outside earnings are to cover only a small deficit in their farming, and (B), those with whom wage labor has become as important a source of income as farming: +----------------------+------------+------------------------+ | | |Income from wage labor. | | |Income from +---------+--------------+ |District of Korotoyak,| farming, | |To 1 household| | Class II. | per cent. |Per cent.| per year, | | | | | rubles. | +----------------------+------------+---------+--------------+ |Section _A_ | 92 | 8 | 6.39 | |Section _B_ | 50 | 50 | 50.47 | +----------------------+------------+---------+--------------+