Usually capitalism in agriculture is judged on the basis of data concerning the size of farms or the number and significance of large – in terms of land area – farms. We have partly examined, and shall partly examine further, data of this kind, but must note that all of this represents indirect data, since the size of land area by no means always and by no means directly indicates the actual large-scale character of an enterprise and its capitalist nature.

Data on hired labor is incomparably more convincing and indicative in this regard. Agricultural censuses of recent years, for example, the Austrian census of 1902 and the German census of 1907, whose analysis we shall take up elsewhere, have shown that the use of hired labor in contemporary agriculture – and especially in small agricultural enterprises – is far more significant than is commonly thought. Nothing refutes so absolutely and so vividly the petty-bourgeois fable about "labor-based" small-scale agriculture as these data.

American statistics have gathered very extensive material on this question, since in the questionnaire for each individual farmer it is recorded whether he spends anything on hiring workers and, if so, what sum exactly. Unlike European statistics – for example, those of the two countries just named – American statistics does not register the number of hired workers present at any given time with each proprietor, although this would have been very easy to establish, and the scientific value of these data, as a supplement to the data on the total sum of expenditure on hired labor, would have been very great. But what is worst of all is the utterly worthless elaboration of these data in the 1910 census, which on the whole was worked up immeasurably worse than the census of 1900. All farms in the 1910 census are divided into groups according to land area size (as in 1900), but, unlike in 1900, the data on the use of hired labor are not broken down according to these groups. We are deprived of the possibility of comparing small and large, in terms of land quantity, enterprises with respect to their use of hired labor. We have at our disposal only average data by states and by regions, i.e., data that lump together capitalist enterprises with non-capitalist ones.

We shall examine below separately the data for 1900, which was worked up better, and for now we shall present data for 1910. The data actually pertain to 1899 and 1909.

From these data there emerges first of all with certainty that agriculture bears the most capitalist character in the North (55.1% of farms employing hired labor), then in the West (52.5%), and least of all in the South (36.6%). And so it must be, given the correlation of a settled and industrial region with a colonized region and with a region of sharecropping. The data on the percentage of farms employing hired labor are, of course, more suitable for precise comparison between regions than data on the height of expenditure on hired labor calculated per 1 acre of cultivated land. For the comparability of data of the latter kind, it would be necessary that the height of wages in different regions be identical. We have no data on wages in the agriculture of the United States, but uniformity of wages, given the fundamental differences between regions known to us, is improbable.

Thus, in the North and West, in two regions concentrating 2/3 of all cultivated land and 2/3 of all livestock, more than half of farmers cannot do without the use of hired labor. In the South this share is smaller only because semi-feudal (semi-slave, likewise) exploitation in the form of sharecropping remains strong there. There is no doubt that part of the worst-situated farmers both in America and in all other capitalist countries of the world resort to the sale of their labor power. Data on this American statistics unfortunately does not provide at all – unlike, for example, German statistics of 1907, where these data have been collected and worked up thoroughly. According to German data, of 5,736,082 proprietors of agricultural enterprises (the total sum, including the tiniest "owners") – 1,940,867, i.e., over 30% – are, by their principal occupation, hired workers. Of course, the mass of these farmhands and day laborers with a piece of land falls into the lowest groups of agriculturalists.

Let us suppose that in the United States, where the tiniest farms (up to 3 acres) according to general rule were not registered at all, only 10% of farmers resort to the sale of their labor power. Even in this case we obtain the result that farmers directly exploited by landowners and capitalists are more than a third of the total number (24.0% of sharecroppers, i.e., exploited by former slaveholders in feudal or semi-feudal fashion, and 10% exploited by capitalists amounts to 34%). Out of the total sum of farmers, then, a minority, hardly more than one-fifth or one-quarter, neither hire workers nor are hired out or do not mortgage themselves.

Such is the actual state of affairs in the country of "exemplary and progressive" capitalism, in the country with free distribution of millions of acres of land. The notorious "labor-based," non-capitalist, small-scale agriculture is here too a myth.

How large is the number of hired workers in American agriculture? Is this number increasing or decreasing compared with the number of farmers and with the entire rural population?

To these most important questions, unfortunately, American statistics provides no direct answer. Let us seek an approximate answer.

First, an approximate answer can be provided by figures from statistics of occupations (volume IV of the census works). The Americans "failed to" accomplish this statistics. It was worked up in such a bureaucratic, routine, absurd manner that there are no data on the position of a person in their occupation, i.e., on the distinction between proprietor, family worker, and hired worker. Instead of precise economic division, they contented themselves with "current," "everyday" usage, senselesslessly combining under the rubric of "agricultural workers" both members of farmers' families and hired workers. As is known, American statistics is not alone in this matter in reigning with complete chaos.

The 1910 census makes an attempt to sort out this chaos somewhat, to correct obvious errors, and to distinguish at least part of the hired workers (working out) from family workers (working on the home farm). By performing a series of calculations, the statisticians introduce a correction to the total number of persons engaged in agriculture, reducing this number by 468,100 persons (volume IV, p. 27). Then, the number of women hired workers is determined at 220,048 in 1900 and 337,522 in 1910 (an increase of 53%). The number of male hired workers in 1910 was 2,299,444. If we assume that in 1900 the percentage of rural hired workers in the total number of rural workers was the same as in 1910, then the number of male hired workers in 1900 is determined at 1,798,165 persons. Then we obtain the following picture:

That is, the percentage increase in the number of hired workers is more than five times greater (27% against 5%) compared with the percentage increase in the number of farmers. The share of farmers in the rural population has decreased, the share of hired workers has increased. The number of independent proprietors in proportion to the entire rural population has decreased; the number of dependent, exploited persons has increased.

In Germany in 1907, hired workers in agriculture were counted at 4½ million out of a total number of 15 million family and hired workers. That is, 30% hired workers. In America, according to the approximate calculation presented, 2½ million out of 12, i.e., 21%. It is possible that the availability of free lands distributed gratis and the enormous percentage of sharecropping farmers should lower the % of hired workers in America.

Second, an approximate answer can be provided by figures on the magnitude of expenditure on hiring workers in 1899 and 1909. For the same period of time, the number of hired workers in industry increased from 4.7 million to 6.6 million, i.e., by 40%, and their wages from 2,008 million dollars to 3,427 million dollars, i.e., by 70%. (One must not forget that the rise in prices for products, etc., eliminated this nominal increase in wages.)

Judging by these data, one can suppose that an 82% increase in expenditure on hiring workers in agriculture corresponds to an increase in the number of hired workers of approximately 48%. Making an analogous supposition for the three principal regions, we obtain the following picture:

And these data show us that the increase in the number of proprietors lags behind, for the country as a whole, the increase in rural population, whereas the increase in the number of hired workers outpaces the increase in rural population. In other words: the proportional number of independent persons is decreasing, the proportional number of dependent persons is growing.

Let us note that the enormous difference between the increase in the number of hired workers according to the first calculation (+27%) and according to the second (+48%) is entirely possible, since in the first case only professional hired workers were counted, while in the second – every instance of the use of hired labor power. In agriculture, episodic use of hired labor power has enormous significance, and therefore it should always be adopted as a rule not to content oneself with determining the number of hired workers, permanent and temporary, but to determine, insofar as possible, also in addition the total sum of expenditure on hired labor.

In any case, both calculations show us with certainty the growth of capitalism in the agriculture of the United States, the growth of the use of hired labor, outpacing the growth of rural population and the number of farmers.