Letter to Friedrich Engels, January 23, 1857

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 23 January 1857


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 2, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXII, Moscow, 1929
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 40


MARX TO ENGELS[1]

IN MANCHESTER

[London,] 23 January 1857 9 Grafton Terrace, Maitland Park, Haverstock Hill

Dear Engels,

D'abord,[2] very many thanks for your kind letter. I wrote to Olmsted about 10 days ago; am therefore awaiting his reply. It strikes me that Dana's annoyance over Freiligrath's blabbing his secret has something to do with the Tribunes

behaviour, or rather with the fact that Dana has not brought his influence to bear.127

To work for The New-York Herald is out of the question; The New-York Times is the one to go for. I am thinking of approaching them unobtrusively through Dr Abraham Jacobi, who is at least discreet and whose quiet manner seems to impress the Yankees GENERALLY. I intend to write to him next Tuesday, and at the same time to Dana in such a manner as will at any rate involve him in a contretemps more disagreeable than he had bargained for. I should be grateful if you could let me have by Tuesday—after Tuesday I shall probably discontinue the articles for the Tribune pending further news from New York—a military article on Persia.[3] No need for much detail this time. Just a few general strategic VIEWS. The Tribune probably imagines that, now they have turned me out, I shall resign myself to abandoning the American camp altogether. The prospect of their 'military' and 'financial' monopoly going over to another paper is hardly likely to please them. Accordingly, I have today sent them a 'financial' piece. 28 An introduction to the Persian war,129 however cursory, would be important because it would give them to understand that we still have a 'WAR' up our sleeves with which other papers could be helped to make a splash. The (military) prospects of the Russians and English need only be hinted at, of course.

So I shall postpone any outright rupture until I find out whether I can fix anything up elsewhere in New York. If I cannot and the Tribune, for its part, does not change its attitude, then the break will have to be made, of course. But in a sordid contest like this I believe it important to gain time. It seems to me the Tribune has come to believe that, since the 'great turn' taken by events in America,1S0 it can dispense with all special editions (European ones, at least). It's truly nauseating that one should be condemned to count it a blessing when taken aboard by a blotting-paper vendor such as this. To crush up bones, grind them and make them into soup like PAUPERS in the WORKHOUSE—that's what the political work to which one is condemned in such large measure in a CONCERN like this boils down to. I am aware I have been an ass in giving these laddies more than their money's worth—not just recently but for years past.

Pieper is taking a schoolmaster's post SOMEWHERE between Portsmouth and Brighton; has been chasing after something of the kind for months.

What about that ADVENTURE of Lupus'? You forgot to say anything about it.

Your

K. M.

P.S. I envy fellows who can turn somersaults. It must be a splendid way of ridding the mind of vexation and bourgeois ordure.

I saw in The Morning Advertiser an excerpt, strategic in content, from the Grenzboten concerning the Persian business.

  1. ↑ This letter was first published in English in The Letters of Karl Marx, selected and translated with explanatory notes and an introduction by Saul K. Padover, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliff, New Jersey, 1979.—66, 97, 122, 143, 225, 315, 321, 328, 369, 378, 429
  2. ↑ First
  3. ↑ F. Engels, 'Prospects of the Anglo-Persian War'.