| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 2 May 1888 |
ENGELS TO FLORENCE KELLEY-WISCHNEWETZKY10
IN NEW YORK
London, 2 May 1888
Dear Mrs Wischnewetzky,
By this mail I send you registered the ms.[1] that is to say the copy Mrs Aveling made of it when she found that with your close handwriting and absence of margin it was impossible to insert in pencil legibly the suggested alterations. There were many, arising from the fact that you translated from a German translation and we had the original to work upon. Many alterations have therefore no other purpose than to bring the English text nearer to the French original. In others, I have for the sake of clearness taken more liberties.
The preface[2] is nearly done in the rough, but as you will require a German translation, I shall have to keep it a little longer on that account.
Anyhow I will hurry on as much as the two hours a day will allow me to do—my doctor has again last week bound me strictly to that limit.
Will you please tell Sorge that according to present arrangements the Sozialdemokrat1 is going to be removed to London. But it will be well to keep this quiet for the present, when our friends intend this to be talked about and to get into the news-hunting press, they will no doubt arrange that themselves.
I am boycotted here almost as much as you are in New York—the various socialist cliques here are dissatisfied at my absolute neutrality with regard to them, and being all of them agreed as to that point, try to pay me out by not mentioning any of my writings. Neither Our Corner (Mrs Beasant) nor To-day nor the Christian Socialist (of this latter monthly, however, I am not quite certain) have mentioned the Condition of the Working-Class though I sent them copies myself. I fully expected this but did not like to say so to you until the proof was there. I don't blame them, because I have seriously offended them by saying that so far there is no real working-class movement here,[3] and that, as soon as that comes, all the great men and women who now make themselves busy as officers of an army without soldiers, will soon find their level, and a rather lower one than they expect. But if they think their needle pinks can pierce my old well-tanned and pachydermatous skin, they are mistaken.
Yours very truly,
F. Engels