Letter to Friedrich Adolph Sorge, February 9, 1886

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 9 February 1886


First published abridged in Briefe und Auszüge aus Briefen von Joh. Phil. Becker, Jos. Dietzgen, Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx u. A.an F.A.Sorge und Andere, Stuttgart, 1906 and in full in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXVII, Moscow, 1935
Published in English in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 47


ENGELS TO FRIEDRICH ADOLPH SORGE

IN HOBOKEN

[London,] 9 February 1886

Dear Sorge,

You have no doubt received my letter of 30 January,[1] also To-Day and the new edition of the Communist Trial.[2] Have had New Yorker Volkszeitung, weekly edition[3] of 23 January, but nothing else. You should also have had the September number of To-Day.

Yesterday the gentlemen of the SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC FEDERATION were yet again responsible for a fearful public gaff—as you will already have heard by telegraph.[4] With any luck they will now be played out.

How is Adolf[5] getting along with his business?

Your

F.E.

  1. ↑ See this volume, pp. 393-95.
  2. ↑ K. Marx, Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne.
  3. ↑ Wochenblatt der N. Y. Volkszeitung
  4. ↑ The supporters of protective tariffs, including pro-Conservative trade union officials (S. Peters, T. M. Kelly, W. Kenny and T. Lemon, who were expelled at the Trades Union Congress in Manchester in 1882) held a meeting in Trafalgar Square on 8 February 1886. The Social Democratic Federation (see Note 300) organised a meeting and unemployed demonstration in opposition to the Conservative campaign for protective tariffs. This demonstration (see this volume, pp. 403-04 and 406-08) was joined by the lumpenproletarian elements, who began to behave in an unruly manner and loot shops. The police subsequently arrested Henry Mayers Hyndman, John Burns, Henry Hyde Champion and John Edward Williams, the leaders of the Federation, on a charge of making 'inciting speeches'. The trial ended on 10 April with their acquittal.
  5. ↑ Adolf Sorge jun.