Letter to Karl Marx, December 11, 1868

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 11 December 1868


First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 4, Stuttgart, 1913
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 43


ENGELS TO MARX

IN LONDON

[Manchester,] 11 December 1868

Dear Moor,

I return you 2 letters, the most the ENVELOPE can hold, in all haste; I wanted to write to you from the office, but was held up, and the last post will be leaving soon out here.

Nincompoop[1] is extremely charming and tactful. This honourable gentleman appears to need to apply the sNOB-standard everywhere. When you see him, just ask him sometime if he is related to Mr Hersch Kriminand, and where the man lives. (This gentleman exists and signs himself exactly thus; he lives in Lemberg.) Then you can ask him what Lemberg is called. Polish Lwow, Little Russian and Great Russian AbBOBi>, that is to say Lvov or Löwenstadt from lev[2] =lion. The Jews translate that as Löwenberg, abbreviated Lemberg.

Here we have the finest crisis, and this time pure (though only relative) overproduction. The spinners and manufacturers have, for nearly 2 years now, on their own account, been consigning goods unsaleable here to India and China, thus doubly overload- ing the overloaded markets. This is no longer possible, and they are failing right and left. One of the first victims was Knowles, our fatty, who failed not so much because of consignments, but through general corporeal weakness—the 4 brothers had simply gobbled, up the money.

I call this overproduction relative because it only becomes overproduction as a result of the cotton prices, which are still high. Two pence difference would and will suffice to absorb the whole lot lying around. Cotton Middling Orleans today lid., before the war 6V2 d., 7d., 8d., according to season. Thus still 60 to 80% above the old price.

What you say about cotton 1860-61 is not quite so bad.[3] The harvest of 1860 was the largest ever, and the STOCK at the outbreak

of the war greater than ever before. We lived on this in 1861 and even 1862, and the highest prices came only in 1863. But this also depended on other things—the effective blockade of the Southern harbours, etc., etc. But there was never any question of 3 years' reserve, that is enormously exaggerated. If you like, I can compile the things for you from the official report (i. e., the LIVERPOOL BROKER ASSOCIATIONS report), and I shall do it in any case before I abandon COMMERCE. Incidentally, you will find a lot in Watts[4]

I expect any day to receive the draft contract with Gottfried Ermen.[5]

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ Sigismund Borkheim
  2. ↑ Engels gives the Russian word nee in Latin letters.
  3. ↑ See this volume, p. 179.
  4. ↑ J. Watts, The Facts of the Cotton Famine.
  5. ↑ See this volume, pp. 167 and 170.