Letter to Sigfried Meyer, September 2, 1870

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 2 September 1870


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXVI, Moscow 1935. Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 44


MARX TO SIGFRID MEYER

IN HOBOKEN

London, 2 September 1870 1 Maitland Park Road, Haverstock Hill

Dear Meyer,

Just a few lines in great haste (if I am to catch die post). I shall write to you more fully next week. I came back yesterday from the seaside where the doctors had sent me for my health[1] but where a violent and painful attack of SCIATICA bent me double for weeks on end.

The first thing I did on my return was to reply to a pile of letters waiting for me; among my letter-creditors was Sorge, with half a dozen letters. Your letter had been mislaid and I only received it after sending off my reply to Sorge,[2] so I was unable to modify that in the light of the information contained in your letter.*5

In any case I simply had to write to Sorge because he had sent me newspapers and LABOR STATISTICS (Massachusetts)[3] , ditto information about Hume of use to the General Council, together with 2 SAMPLES of the International cards, etc., he had produced.[4] Lastly, I could not under any circumstances permit friend Vogt's erroneous view of Schily—one of my oldest and most intimate friends—to stand uncorrected.[5]

I was delighted to see from Sorge's last letter that you were being sent as a delegate to Cincinnati.[6]

If the German Workers' Union has nominated other correspondents this FACT should be reported to me officially for communication to the General Council.

Salut et fraternité.

Yours,

K. M.

Could you give me any further information, such as the relevant acts of Congress, etc., about the economics of the railroad in the West?

  1. ↑ Marx and his family were on vacation in Ramsgate from 9 to 31 August 1870.
  2. ↑ See this volume, pp. 56 57.
  3. ↑ Report of the Bureau of Statistics of Labor...
  4. ↑ Marx wrote this letter in reply to several letters from Sorge, written between 4 May and 4 August 1870. A correspondence developed, linking Marx, and also Engels, with Sorge in close friendship for many years.
  5. ↑ At the beginning of 1870, Gustave Paul Cluseret was empowered by the General Council to establish contacts with the French sections in the USA. However, passing himself off as an organiser of the International, Cluseret ignored the already existing sections in the USA and went beyond his brief. Several sections, including Section No. 1 (see Note 354), protested at Cluseret's behaviour and contacted the General Council, Johann Philipp Becker and Eugene Varlin with an inquiry about the powers granted to Cluseret. Marx replied to the inquiry in his letter to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt of 9 April 1870 (see present edition, Vol. 43).
  6. ↑ Marx is referring to the groundless assertion made by August Vogt, a member of German Section No. 1, that Victor Schily, who fought in the 1848-49