| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 12 October 1893 |
ENGELS TO AUGUST BEBEL
IN BERLIN
London, 12 October 1893
Dear August,
We are sending you Reeves's edition of Woman.[1] In my view the legal position (upon which the whole thing turns when you're dealing with a chap like Reeves) is as follows:
1. So far as the translator is concerned, international copyright provides protection for three years from the publication of the original, but only if during the first year the first part of a translation authorised by the author has actually appeared in print. Accordingly you would have absolutely no claim unless Walther's[2] translation had appeared within one year of the publication of a new German edition containing substantial alterations and additions not contained in the earlier one; this was hardly the case.
2. There remains Mrs Adams Walther's claim. Whether she has any depends on whether, upon the publication of the first English edition, she reserved the Copyright or whether she expressly or tacitly assigned it to the publishers, the Modern Press. This should be ascertained. If she did not expressly reserve it then, legislation over here being what it is, it is ten to one that it was tacitly assigned to the publisher and that consequently she too no longer has any claim.
3. So far as I know, the latter, one Foulger, had long since had to wind up his business and was no doubt glad to come to any sort of agreement with Reeves.
Accordingly it is almost certain that you cannot do anything in the legal line, nor is it at all likely that Mrs Adams Walther can do anything either, but this should be ascertained. If you could procure me a copy of the agreement between Mrs Walther and the Modern Press I could, if necessary, consult a lawyer. But unless everything is absolutely cut-and-dried there's nothing to be done with a laddie like Reeves; in his speculative enterprises he is as unscrupulous as they come, and getting money out of him is a virtual impossibility; I, too, have unfortunately had dealings with him, and not even the threat of a lawsuit is of any real avail. In cases such as these, laddies of his stamp generally make over everything to their wives or concoct a BILL OF SALE (assigning their stock, etc., to a fictitious or genuine creditor).
Yesterday we got two splendid bits of news. First, the beginning of the end of the pit strike. After the lock-out of the workers, engineered by the big colliery owners on 28 July: 1. in order to raise prices and curtail production, 2. so that ruinous contracts, carelessly entered into, for a year's supply of coal to gasworks and other municipal undertakings could be broken with impunity because, in all such contracts, strikes provide indemnity against breach of contract, 3. to depress wages and 4. to ruin the small mining companies and buy them up at knock-down prices—this is coming increasingly to be the permanent motive behind all big LOCK-OUTS—well then, after the said lock-out had been going on for over two months and public opinion among the middle classes, who had been hit by the coal shortage, had also begun to turn—against the mine owners, things came to a head. During the first week of October the agreement expired whereby the mine owners had undertaken, on pain of a £1,000 fine, to re- open their pits, but only if wages were reduced by a full 25 per cent (of the former wage plus the 40 per cent increase gained after 1889, i.e. at the 1889 wage plus 15 per cent), and on condition of the strike's being called off by the miners' committee. A number of the smaller collieries immediately defected and resumed work at the pre-]uly wage (i.e. at the 1889 wage, plus the 40 per cent increase). The mayors of the larger towns in the Yorkshire and Midlands mining districts then foregathered and proposed a settlement which, in fact, boiled down to a 10 per cent reduction in wages. Had the masters accepted, this could have been dangerous as it might have placed the workers on the horns of a dilemma— either they, too, accepted or they risked turning against themselves a public opinion that is always fickle and ready to applaud any kind of compromise. But luckily the MASTERS—the big ones in the lead—were deluded enough to refuse forthwith, and within twenty-four hours the collapse of their ring was manifest to all. As from yesterday some thirty or forty thousand miners have returned to work at the pre-July wage, which means that the masters have totally renounced their demands and the hash of the colliery-owners' ring has been well and truly settled. This is the first instance in which a big strike, set on foot by the masters themselves at a time of their own choosing, has gone so completely awry, and therein lies its significance. It will be some time before they try the same thing again, but the workers have themselves suffered so much and endured such poverty that they, too, are unlikely to have much stomach left for a 'general strike'.
(Have just got yours and Julie's letter.) The second piece of news was about the new Austrian Electoral Reform Bill.[3] It is a resounding victory for our people and I hastened to congratulate Victor upon it.[4] The Daily News thinks that the number of voters in Vienna will rise from 80,000 to 350,000, while the Chronicle estimates the number for Austria as a whole at three million—these estimates come, of course, from Viennese sources. At all events it's a bonus that is not to be sneezed at. The bourgeois in Vienna are already thinking in terms of twenty Social Democrat deputies.
It's more than probable that Taaffe is counting on his Bill being changed for the worse by Parliament, but it's a long shot and our chaps will see that he doesn't get away with it. What a delicious quirk of history if it should so turn out that our chaps have to protect the Prime Minister against his Parliament and against his own secret self! The main thing is that the ball has at last started rolling and in Austria our movement is powerful enough to prevent its being brought to a halt. And Taaffe cannot very well suppress demonstrations in support of his Bill.
From my general impression of Austria, I should say that that country will give us much cause for rejoicing in the immediate future. What with the general prostration of all the parties, the general perplexity, the feuding over nationalities, what with a government that never knows what it wants and lives only from hand to mouth, what with laws that exist for the most part only on paper and the general sloppiness of the administration—of which I have, from my own observation, only recently got any real idea— what with all these things, a party which knows what it wants and how to get it, which genuinely wants it and is possessed of the required tenacity, is bound in the long run to prove invincible especially when, as in this instance, all its demands follow the same trend as the economic development of the country as such and are no more than the political expression of that development. Our party in Austria[5] is the only living force in the field of politics; otherwise there is nothing but passive resistance or new ventures that never come to anything, and this places us in an exceptionally favourable position in Austria. Furthermore, the changes that occur in the grouping of the bourgeois parties sometimes make it impossible for the government to be Conservative and, when it ceases to be Conservative, it simply becomes unpredictable, if only by reason of the fact that the party groupings of which it has to take account are likewise unpredictable. And again, the Austrian government is that of a great power which, though in decline, is nevertheless still a great power and, as compared with Prussia, a small power in the ascendant, is still capable of remarkable initiatives at such times as conservatism, sheer clinging to the status quo, ceases to be possible. That is my explanation for Mr Taaffe's 'leap in the dark'.
Another fact to be considered is that the growth of the proletarian movement in all countries is about to precipitate a crisis and that in conse- quence any successes one country may achieve will react powerfully upon all the others. The suffrage movement won its first victory in Belgium[6] and now Austria is about to follow suit. At the outset this will ensure the survival of universal suffrage, but also encourage us to make further demands—in Germany no less than in France and Italy. The way was paved for the February Revolution[7] by Switzerland's internal struggles and the constitutional upheavals in Italy. Again, the Sonderbund War[8] and the bombardment of Messina[9] by the Neapolitans[10] (Feb. 1848) were the immediate signal for the outbreak of revolution in Paris. Maybe the crisis will not be upon us for some five or six years yet, but I should say that the preparatory role will this time fall to Belgium and, in particular, Austria, while the dénouement will take place in Germany.
There is no fear that the cause will ever again be dropped in Austria; our people in that country will see to that. The Austrian Diet is an infinitely more stagnant froggery than the German Reichstag or even the Saxon or the Bavarian Chamber. The presence of a dozen Socialist deputies will have a far more galvanic effect there than it would in our case, and we are exceptionally lucky in having in Victor a chap who has so clear a conception of the complexities of conditions in Austria and is able to subject them to so incisive an analysis. His speech in the last Arbeiter-Zeitung is a real tour de force.[11]
Ede and Gina were here this morning. He isn't yet at all as he should be, has a mania for splitting hairs and increasingly recalls the sagacity of his Volks-Zeitung uncle; I often get the impression that old Aaron[12] in person is standing before me. It was he who spoilt things for himself in Switzerland. Having been told in Berne that one of them but not both at once would be admitted, he should have realised that the best policy would be to give precedence to Julius, as an invalid and, banking on this, to return six months later, when they could hardly refuse him admittance, at least for any length of time. But this his impatience would not brook. The best of it is that he now sometimes avers he would prefer to stay here and that it's Gina who wants to go to Switzerland. His dream is, as it always will be, to go back to Berlin. He really imagines this to be possible and is always consulting lawyers about it. Remains to be seen!
If Schlüter has any sense he will do himself and his wife the kindness of starting divorce proceedings. A suit of this kind against an absent wife for deliberate desertion has few disadvantages for either party, and after all he too must wish for complete freedom. This is not, of course, to say that he hasn't in any case been accustomed to enjoying that freedom whenever op- portunity arose. It is always satisfactory, by the way, to hear that a woman one knows is plucking up the courage to make herself independent. The decision to part from her Hermann for good may have cost her many a mental struggle and she may thus at one time have given the impression of being by nature irresolute. What an expenditure of energy bourgeois marriage demands—first until one has got to that stage, then for so long as the nonsense lasts and then until one is finally done with it.
We have just come back from a walk in the park—glorious autumn weather, a pretty sunset in a cloudless sky and beautifully coloured foliage. Downstairs the table is being laid; we are having Welsh mutton dressed as venison, accompanied by good old noodles. So I must hurry up and finish this. Louise and I thank Julie for her kind letters and are saving up our answers for next time. Warm regards from us both to both of you, likewise to Singer and his sister, to the Liebknechts and all our dear friends whose names I cannot list if the joint is not to grow cold.
Yours,
F. Engels