Letter to Karl Marx, December 12, 1855

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 12 December 1855


First published abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 2, Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XXII, Moscow, 1929
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 39


ENGELS TO MARX

IN LONDON

Manchester, 12 December 1855

Dear Marx,

Something can be arranged with the good Tribune people after all, you see, and the £200 are assured. So that a start can be made straight away, I shall do a military article this evening, then you must do a political one. Both of them can then go on Friday,[1] hoc facit[2] £4. I return Dana's letter herewith.[3] Au fond,[4] it is all to the good that the noble Mirbach has settled down to a life of idleness in London, for after all nothing has been definitely settled with the New Yorkers about the Crimean articles.[5] At all events, I am now relieved of any indirect obligation to the chap, and il ne me regarde plus.[6] I have said nothing at all here about the matter, otherwise it would give Lupus qualms of conscience in the end, and next time he would turn rebellious.

Jmeyer[7] wrote to me recently, not so much to inform me that he was still awaiting a letter from you, as to let me know what to say at my brother-in-law's[8] at Christmas. He has heard nothing at all from the little man.[9]

We shall bear in mind Mr Karl Joest and his caricatures. I believe I shall do an even better caricature of him when he is dangling from a lamp post.

Whether I shall be able to do an article on Tuesday[10] depends, of course, on events, which are now very few and far between. Kars and Omer Pasha will have to be my victims today; if anything happens tomorrow I shall add it on.[11]

The STRIKE is going ahead here. The MASTERS said that they were willing to pay, provided the Ashton rates were taken as a basis. The HANDS replied that if the MASTERS chose Ashton, they would choose Oldham and be prepared to accept as a basis the average for the two places. Thereupon the MASTERS gave an evasive answer and proposed yet a third place in the district as a norm. This was refused and there the matter rests. The HANDS seem to me to be completely in the right; but they obviously still have in mind a few old trade union traditions whereby only this or that machine may be operated and only in the specific, time-honoured manner. But they'll soon drop this rubbish. The neighbourhood is beginning to support them.

The editor of the Guardian, whom I've come to know, is a wise man IN HIS OWN MIND and a kind of oracle in the eyes of a number of philistines; apart from that a teller of dirty stories and a moderate carouser. He has obviously heard about me for, whenever I mention some shabby trick, he listens with attention and asks questions which show a desire to know. I shall gradually encourage the man's advances and then draw him out about the people on the Examiner and Times, after which I shall approach the latter rag. Après, on avisera[12]

Warmest regards to your wife and children.

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ 14 December
  2. ↑ that makes
  3. ↑ In his letter of 20 November 1855 Dana informed Marx that the Tribune editors had agreed to publish two articles by Marx every week and to pay him 10 dollars for each
  4. ↑ At bottom
  5. ↑ Judging by Dana's letter (see Note 675) Marx proposed to organise the dispatch of articles to the New-York Daily Tribune directly from the Crimea probably expecting that the German emigrant O. Mirbach, a former Prussian artillery officer who intended to leave for Constantinople, would be the correspondent
  6. ↑ he's no longer any concern of mine
  7. ↑ Joseph Meyer
  8. ↑ Emil Blank Jeremiah Garnett
  9. ↑ Ernst Dronke
  10. ↑ 18 December
  11. ↑ Engels recalls the time when he fought in the ranks of the revolutionary detachments of the Palatinate provisional government (its seat was in Kaiserslautern) against the Prussian troops during the campaign for the Imperial Constitution (see Note 77). Engels was an aide-de-camp of August Willich who commanded a workers' corps. This corps was covering the retreat of the Baden-Palatinate insurgent troops to Switzerland and was the last to cross the border on 12 July 1849
  12. ↑ Afterwards we shall see.