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Special pages :
Letter to Friedrich Engels, August 13, 1859
| Author(s) | Karl Marx |
|---|---|
| Written | 13 August 1859 |
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 40
MARX TO ENGELS
IN MANCHESTER
[London,] 13 August 1859
I received the enclosed note[1] on Thursday afternoon. I therefore hastened into town. Matters could only be arranged by my borrowing £4 from Garthe, which will have to be returned. On Monday I shall write to Borchardt. To abandon the paper now would seem to me foolish on several counts: 1. because this would save the now foundering Gottfried[2]; 2. because after the King of Prussia's[3] death there will be radical changes in Germany, when we must have a paper of our own; 3. because of the growing number of subscribers (although for the time being this is simply a disadvantage financially, since the cost in STAMPS increases weekly while payments aren't due until the end of the quarter). The Volk already wields considerable influence in the United States. For instance the preface to my book[4] has been reprinted from the
Volk and variously commented on by German papers from New England to California.
You couldn't, I suppose, arrange to let me have your article[5] by Wednesday, there being nothing 'topical' about it this time?
Might it be possible to raise some money from German business employees in Manchester through your cousin Siebel?
I shall certainly succeed in getting some money out of Berlin and New York. But there's the next 6 to 8 weeks to be taken care of.
As TO Freiligrath, just come and TRY extracting one shilling from him if you can!
Incidentally, and between ourselves, we'd have done better over money if new deficits hadn't continually arisen as a result of renewed thefts. But these were perpetrated by the old agents. Beginning with Scherzer, I've thrown out all those who had compromised themselves. But what remained of the old leaven[6]
wasn't any good and, even if these uncouth louts have been well-behaved hitherto, they blot their copybook when they make their exit. I finally threw out the last of them—Mr Lange—last week. It would have been relatively much easier to start up a completely new paper from scratch rather than, as Biskamp and
Liebknecht did, continue, if only nominally, the existence of an organ that was rotten through and through.[7]
Herewith a letter from Dana. Though I don't think much of his POETRY, could your RELATIVE Siebel do some little piece of verse for the Volk? But nothing sublime, please! So as to nettle Freiligrath, we simply must unearth some poet or other, even if we have to write the verse for him ourselves.
Salut.
Your
K. M.
Copies of Po and Rhine next week.
- ↑ The note is not extant.
- ↑ the weekly Hermann, of which Gottfried Kinkel had been publisher until July 1859
- ↑ Frederick William IV
- ↑ A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
- ↑ F. Engels, 'K. Marx. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy'.
- ↑ I Corinthians 5:7
- ↑ See this volume, pp. 437-39.