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Letter to Friedrich Engels, September 30, 1853
First published: in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, 1913.
To Engels in Manchester
[London,] 30 September 1853, 28 Dean Street, Soho[edit source]
Dear Frederic,
Your piece on the war [The Russians in Turkey] is capital. I myself had serious misgivings about the westward advance of the Russian forces but did not, of course, dare trust to my judgment in such matters. I have already written a whole series of strike articles, produced at intervals throughout the 6 months during which the thing has been going on. Now, however, the affair has taken a new turn. In the article where I used your strike-generalities, I have mentioned a host of strike-localities by name, also the Preston and Wigan affairs. I couldn’t get hold of any particulars about Manchester. I have depicted the manoeuvring in Preston (very briefly, mind you) 1. as an attempt by the manufacturers to use the operatives, whose demands are forcing the closure of the mills, to cover their retreat from over-production; 2. as an attempt to starve the operatives into submission.
As you can see, my history of strikes goes no further than last Tuesday and doesn’t touch on Manchester.
You might, perhaps, expand somewhat the notes on yarn and cotton prices and, if possible, the price of goods, so that they amount to at least one paragraph of an article.
In each article, besides the subject proper, I naturally have to follow step by step the Russian Notes and England’s foreign policy (and right brave it is!), since the jackasses in New York consider this to be of prime importance and, after all., nothing is easier to write about than this business of high politics.
Next Tuesday week I shall have finished an article on the ‘Oriental Church’, and next Friday week the first of three articles on Denmark where next month the various assemblies of estates will be again taking the stage.
Should there be any military movement, I shall count on receiving immediate information from the Ministry of War in Manchester, and the same applies to cottons and yarns which are wretchedly covered by the papers down here.
Above all I want to slay the fellows with my pen, the moment being propitious, and if at the same time you keep me supplied with material, I can spin out the various themes over longer periods. What is more, without my secretary [Pieper] I feel a little nervous about my English.
No regards to Lupus.
Your
K. M.