Letter to Karl Marx, April 20, 1852

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 20 April 1852


First published 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 39


ENGELS TO MARX IN LONDON

[Manchester,] 20 April 1852

Dear Marx,

I was grieved to see that my fears concerning your little daughter have been all too soon confirmed. If only there were some means by which you and your family could move into a more salubrious district and more spacious lodgings!

I would gladly have sent you some money, but while in London[1] I spent so much more than I had anticipated that I shall be pretty short myself until the end of the month, and next month I shall have to pay out at once £12 in bills and for books ordered from Germany. But I shall see if I can get hold of something for you by the beginning of May. I wish I had known beforehand how things stood in London, for in that case I should have foregone what was au fond a quite superfluous trip there, and my hands would not have been quite so tied.

Pindar is here, having failed to find employment in Liverpool. He is looking for a position or for private lessons and I shall, of course, do what I can for him. As a token that I am well disposed towards him I have been taking Russian lessons from him. But if I am to recommend him here, I must know something more about him, and since such intelligence can only be dragged out of him with the utmost difficulty, I should be glad if you would write and tell me what you know about him and his circumstances, how you became acquainted with him, etc., etc. With his taciturn manner, by the way, it doesn't seem to me as though he'll be lucky here. In considering the present state of commerce, particularly as regards India, there is one point that should not be overlooked.[2]

Despite 3 years of colossal and ever-increasing imports of English industrial goods into India, the news from there has for some time been moderately good again, stocks are gradually being sold and are fetching higher prices. The reason for this can only be that, in the provinces most lately conquered by the English, Sind, the Punjab, etc., etc., where native handicrafts have hitherto almost exclusively predominated, these are now finally being crushed by English competition, either because the manufacturers here have only recently come round to producing materials suitable for these markets, or because the NATIVES have finally sacrificed their preference for local cloths in favour of the cheaper price of the English materials usually exported to India. The last Indian crisis of 1847 and the concomitant sharp DEPRECIATION of English products in India may have contributed greatly to this; and it is already clear from old Gülich that even the parts of India occupied by the English in his day had not for a long time completely abandoned their traditional domestic manufactures.[3] This is the only explanation for the fact that the 1847 affair has not long since recurred in more acute form in Calcutta and Bombay. But all this will be changed once the 3,000,000 bales of cotton from the last crop have come onto the market, been processed and consigned as finished goods, predominantly to India. The cotton industry is now so flourishing that, despite this season's crop, which is 300,000 bales more than that of 1848/49, cotton prices are rising both here and in America, that American manufacturers have already bought 250,000 bales more than last year (when they used in all only 418,000 bales), and that manufacturers here are already beginning to maintain that even a crop of 3 million bales would be insufficient for their needs. Up till now, America has exported 174,000 bales more to England, 56,000 more to France and 27,000 more to the rest of the Continent than she did last year. (Each season runs from 1 Sept. to 7 April.)[4] And, given prosperity of this order, it is of course easy to explain how Louis Napoleon can prepare at leisure for his bas-empire; the surplus of direct cotton imports into France between 1850 and 1852 now amounts to 110,000 bales (302,000 against 192,000), i.e. more than 33%.

According to all the rules the crisis should come this year and will, indeed, probably do so; but if one takes into consideration the present quite unexpected resilience of the Indian market, the confusion created by California and Australia, the cheapness of most raw materials, which also means cheap industrial manufactures, and the absence of any heavy speculation, one is almost tempted to forecast that the present period of prosperity will be of exceptionally long duration. At any rate it may well be that the thing will last until the spring. But WITHIN SIX MONTHS MORE OR LESS it is, after all, safest to stick to the old rule.

Many regards to your wife, and write soon.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ Engels was in London for a few days in mid-April 1852 (at Easter)
  2. ↑ Engels describes here the reaction of the European Press to Louis Bonaparte's policy of unrestrained social demagogy on the one hand and increased personal power on the other after the coup d'état of 2 December 1851. On 1 January 1852, a solemn service in honour of the President for which 190,000 francs were assigned was held in Notre Dame de Paris; the eagles on state banners (symbol of Napoleon's Empire) were restored. The Prince President moved to the royal palace of the Tuileries, where on 14 January a new Constitution was proclaimed under which all power was concentrated in the hands of the head of the State elected for a term of 10 years, the composition and legislative functions of all the higher state institutions were also placed under his control. A detailed analysis of the methods and essence of the demagogic policy pursued by Bonaparte in the social sphere and of repressions against the democratic and working-class movements is given in Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (present edition, Vol. 11)
  3. ↑ G. Gülich, Geschichtliche Darstellung des Handels, der Gewerbe und des Ackerbaus der bedeutendsten handeltreibenden Staaten unserer Zeit, Bd. 3, S. 263-64.
  4. ↑ Engels may have used the article 'Commercial Intelligence. New York, 7 April' in The Times, No. 21094, 20 April 1852, but the figures given by him somewhat differ from those in the newspaper.