Letter to Henry Demarest Lloyd, May 27, 1893


ENGELS TO HENRY DEMAREST LLOYD

IN CHICAGO

London, 27 May 1893
122 Regent's Park Road, N. W.

Dear Sir,

I beg to acknowledge receipt of your book A Strike of Millionaires against Miners, 2nd ed., for which please accept my best thanks. 211 I shall read it with great interest. Here in England modern capitalism, during the century and a half of its full development, has lost much of its original brutal energy and moves onwards with a moderated step; even in France and Germany, this is to a certain degree the case also; it is only in industrially young countries like America and Russia, that capital gives full fling to the recklessness of its greed. The consolation, however, lies in this: that by this very recklessness it hurries on the development of the immense resources of these young countries, and thereby prepares the period when a better system of production will be able to take the place of the old.

In America, at least, I am strongly inclined to believe that the fatal hour of capitalism will have struck as soon as a native American working class will have replaced a working class composed in its majority by foreign immigrants.

Yours very faithfully

Fred. Engels