WHAT IS THE CHARGE OF A PARTON.

It is shown that present inclusive electroproduction experiments cannot distinguish the fractionally charged quark model from certain multitriplet models with integral charges, e.g., the Han-Nambu three-triplet model, which contain additional internal degrees of freedom and predict new "charmed" hadron states which have not yet been observed. Both models are shown to predict identical results if no "charmed" states are produced, and very similar results unless charmed particle production appreciably affects the inclusive cross section.