Ask Lemmygrad

Sakai's quote reads like he is saying that <15% of 10k settlers who were leaving Europe were proleterian in Europe before they left for America. I think you understood that but wanted to reiterate just in case.

Marx's quote doesn't imply that most settlers were proletarian before they left their home countries. He is just saying that the overadundance of capital in the America due to the forced disposession of indigenous land and the short supply of labour in relation created a phenomenon where where former-wage labourers could become independent peasants and artisans. So even those settlers who had proletarian background could become petite bourgeois. This is still true today in the case of the Zionist freaks who move to illegal Palestianian settlements.