| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 27 November 1852 |
ENGELS TO MARX
IN LONDON
[Manchester,] Saturday, 27 November 1852
Dear Marx,
Assuming I can raise anything towards the cost of printing the pamphlet,[1] it will be at most £2-3—at the moment I am myself in a fix. But 3 printed sheets will cost between £10 and £12, and even more with stitching, etc., etc. Unless the thing is printed on the Continent for the account of, or at least in partnership with, a bookseller, it will not get round at all. On reaching Prussia, etc., etc., it will be confiscated, and we shall be cheated by the booksellers. So we shall have to regard the money as sacrificed on this business, for there certainly won't be any return in the way of £. s. d. The question now is whether we can spend this amount upon it; or at least, whether it might not be better to condense the thing into 1-1½ sheets, so that the cost is rather more commensurate with our resources. December and January are for me the two most difficult months in the whole year; I can hardly consider making any further contribution to the cost before February. If we have it printed on credit, the printer will, as with Weydemeyer, end up by withholding copies until he has been paid.[2] And whatever we do, we must begin by finding out what prospects there are of its being distributed; at the moment there would seem to be virtually none.
Weerth is coming up to London tomorrow and sails from Southampton on 2 December. His OUTFIT cost him a great deal of money. Strohn, too, will shortly be travelling to London and thence to the Continent. The travelling expenses he must incur in establishing himself (on foreign capital to boot, or so I hear) are so heavy that we shall not be able to squeeze anything out of him either. So we are all of us in a fix.
It is my opinion that, unless you have reasonably good channels of distribution through booksellers, the thing won't even be heard of, and, like all literature published by émigrés, will go before anyone in Germany has a chance to see it. And that is very bad—even worse, in some ways, than if nothing were done at all. For it would provide public proof that we are dependent on hole-and-corner German emigrant printing presses and are powerless to get anything done. We were able to disassociate ourselves from the fiasco of Bürgers' circular[3] by withdrawing into our literary sanctum, but even this could be compromised were we to admit literary impotence in such a way. The Prussian government would be delighted to see us reduced in matters of publicity to the same expedients as were available to the demagogues of 1831 during their exile,[4] i.e. virtually zero. Lamentable though this is, it would, I think, be better, if we at least did not blazon it abroad. Furthermore, now that the new crime of treasonable correspondence [...] has been recognised by the jury, we could not send a single copy to the Rhine Province, which would be the chief market, without compromising hundreds of people.
I shall send you the money on 1 or 2 December. Consider the matter once more and, if you still think it would be better to print the pamphlet in this way rather than not at all, you should at least try so to arrange things that we do not run into difficulties over payments for, as I have said, I can commit myself to nothing before February.
Weerth may already have written and told you that Mr Chr. Coilmann is not to be found at the address indicated, 58 or 59 Neue Königsstrasse or, for that matter, in Berlin, nor does anyone know a bookseller of that name.[5] Après tout, il paraît pourtant qu'on a voulu nous jouer.[6] For the time being I shall not let Mr Bangya have any of the stuff back. So Schulz, the 'commercial traveller', and the dead policeman,[7] were one and the same person after all!
Warmest regards to your wife and children. I shall be in London in somewhat over a fortnight.
Your
F. E.