and certainly a great portion, of the "new" middle class, are in reality just as much a part of the proletariat as the merest day-laborer. Except, of course, in those instances where, by reason of the amount of their salary, they are in a position to, and do, save and invest. In so far as such investment takes place (as in the case of those who invest the remnants of their capital while depending for their support mainly on some useful occupation) they are on the border line between capital and labor, and are akin in their position to the ruined peasants who, before abandoning their villages, attempt to remain farmers by doing "something on a side." These cases are, however, not very numerous, and their condition is merely transitory. Another exception that should be noted is of those cases where the salary is so large that it evidently exceeds the value of the labor of the recipient. It will be found, however, in such instances, that such salary is paid only to capitalists who are really in control of the corporation which pays it to them, and is part of the process by which the big capitalists relieve the small ones of part of the profits coming to them. With these negligible exceptions, salaried persons are really part of the proletariat, no matter what they themselves think about it.
It is true that by reason of their descent, associations, habits and modes of thought these persons feel a certain solidarity with the upper class rather than with the class to which they belong. But this does not change their social-economic status, and, so far as their usefulness for the work for socialism, they present a problem which is only different in degree, but not in kind, from the general problem of the organization of the working class for its emancipation from wage-slavery. In the solving of the special problem, as well as in the general, the change in the character of the middle class is of quite some importance.
And the character of the middle class has changed. Nay, the character of the whole capitalist class has changed by reason of this substitute of corporate undertakings in place
