Letter to Karl Marx, September 1, 1851

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 1 September 1851


First published slightly abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 1, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in MEGA, Abt. III, Bd. 1, 1929
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 38, pp. 450-451

TO MARX IN LONDON


[Manchester,] Monday, 1 September [1851]

Dear Marx,

Once again you must excuse me.

I still haven't been able to make a start on the Proudhon:[1] having for the past 4 days been plagued by the most atrocious toothache, which has rendered me quite incapable of anything. On top of that my brother[2] (whom you know) is arriving this evening from London and will keep me from my work for heaven knows how long. Que le diable emporte l'exposition![3]

I can't send the £5 I promised for today until tomorrow, since there is absolutely no money at all in the firm's cash box, and so I won't be able to get it until tomorrow.

The triumphant article in the Lithographische Correspondenz on the unity finally achieved by the honest emigres is belied by another lament and the attacks by the 'Prussians' on the 'South Germans' and on Ruge the 'Pomeranian' in the very same number of the Lithographische Correspondenz. Sic transit gloria[4] — their joy was short-lived. It's a good thing that, having so many friends in both the new societies,[5] we'll be molested by neither.

Have you read the edifying article in today's Daily News about that genuine whore and putative baroness Beck, who breathed her last in Birmingham, whilst in the hands of the English police?[6] A delightful business, the more so since it revealed that that importunate mendicant, 'Dr' Heinemann was also a spy in the direct pay of the 'newly established foreign department of the British police'. You will remember how suspect that base creature has always seemed to us. Again, the handing over of documents 'concerning a German communist association existing in London' explains the chicanery of the police last summer, and I should like to know to what extent Mr Christian Joseph Esser is involved in this affair. Do you know the 'Baron Soden' who vouches for these stories and offers to provide proof? It would be a good thing if we could have this man secretly investigated. There would be no difficulty in finding a pretext and much would emerge about the rascally elements among the emigres which might later come in useful. I shall get hold of this number of the Daily News and keep it; it's a document that may be of use some time or other.

In Liverpool and London the bankruptcies have already begun and The Economist, despite the evidence it adduces that the country's TRADE is exceptionally healthy, i.e. that most of the surplus capital is invested in soundly based production, has to admit that East India is again over-stocked and that the old story of consignment goods and cash advances is once again the rule rather than the exception in Indian trade.[7] Next week it proposes to tell us how to run the consignment business on a sound basis—to which I much look forward. In the meantime the spinners and weavers here are making an enormous amount of money—most of them are booked up until the New Year, and in the country they generally work until at least 8 o'clock in the evening, that is, between 12 and 12 1/2 hours, and often longer.

They are spinning yarn at 7-8d a pound from cotton at 3 3/4 to 4 1/2d per pound; the cost of spinning these coarse counts is barely 1 1/2d per pound, hence, with a weekly production of 12 million pounds (with 600,000,000 pounds of raw cotton imports) and taking the coarse counts as the norm, English spinners as a whole are earning £75,000 a week, 3 3/4 million pounds a year net. The same holds good if, instead of Nos. 6-12, we take an average yarn count of 18-24 and many of those who can use inferior cotton on good machines earn, not 1 1/2d per pound of yarn, but 2 1/2d. All this dates back to the fall in cotton prices in April and May, and the people who buy relatively more twist than anyone else are the Germans. When the trouble starts—and the present state of TRADE will certainly not persist beyond March at the latest—and if at the same time the fun begins in France, it will be keenly felt by the Germans, with all that unsaleable yarn on their hands, and in this way, too, the country will be well prepared.

Let us dedicate a silent tear to the shade of Brüggemann.[8] Never before, perhaps, has a worthy citizen met with more undeserved misfortune— sit illi terra levis.[9]

Your
F. E.

  1. ↑ Reference to Engels' 'Critical Review of Proudhon's Book Idée générale de la Révolution au XIXe siècle.
  2. ↑ Probably Hermann Engels.
  3. ↑ Confound the Exhibition! (i.e. the Great Exhibition in London in 1851.)
  4. ↑ Thus passes away the glory.
  5. ↑ The German Agitation Society and the Refugee club.
  6. ↑ 'Remarkable Case of Fraud by an Austrian Spy.—Sudden Death of the Impostor', The Daily News, 1 September 1851.
  7. ↑ 'Indigo', The Economist, No. 417, 23 August 1851.
  8. ↑ At the end of August 1851 German newspapers reported that the editor of the Kölnische Zeitung, Brüggemann, had been deported from Cologne for opposition articles published in his newspaper. But these reports, based on rumours, turned out to be false.
  9. ↑ May the earth lie lightly upon him.