Letter to Karl Marx, January 26, 1860

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Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 26 January 1860


First published in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Bd. 2, Stuttgart, 1913
Printed according to the original
Published in English in full for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 41
Keywords : Letter, Karl Marx


ENGELS TO MARX[1]

IN LONDON

Manchester, 26 January 1860

Dear Moor,

Tomorrow being Tribune day,[2] I'm sorry that there should again be no material to hand; the few notes on Morocco in The Times" don't even run to the engagement at Cabo-Negro,[3] nor has anything else happened. However, you'll have enough material with the parliamentary stuff.1' I am still waiting to hear about the reform of the Prussian army as well.[4]

Your opinion of the importance of the slave movement in America and Russia1 is already being confirmed. The Harpers- Ferry affair,'" with its sequel in Missouri,[5] is bearing fruit. Everywhere the free NIGGERS'1 in the South are being hounded out of the states, and I have just seen from the first New York cotton report (W. P. Wright & Co of 10 January 1860)[6] that the planters HURRIED their cotton ON TO EHE PORTS IN ORDER TO GUARD AGAINST ANY PROBABLE CONSEQUENCES ARISING OUI OE THE HARPERS-FERRY AFFAIR. I n R u s s i a, tOO, t h e confusion is growing admirably; the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung's St. Petersburg correspondent is very good on this subject, though he pays more attention to the constitutional movement among the aristocracy,[7] which, however, also provides a certain impetus for the peasants, of course.

In India we have the makings of a tremendous crisis. As far as the views of the local philistines on the subject are concerned, CONFER the enclosed MARKET REPORTS. NOW yarn prices are mostly so high, almost higher than the peak in 1857, and yet cotton is 2'7s to 2 V2d cheaper. Twenty-six new mills are under construction in Burnley alone, and a proportionate number in other places. Everywhere, by degrees, the workers are getting a 10% rise in wages and will shortly receive even more. In my view, the practice of operating on fictitious capital is again just as RIKE in Indian business as it was in 1846/47, and most people are buying only because they have to, and cannot stop. But, even if that were not so, the increase in production alone will bring about a colossal COLLAPSE this autumn or in the spring of 1861 at the latest.

Already these idiotic English believe that they will shortly inundate. France.[8] A jackass of a calico printer—ONE OE THE SHARPEST—says that, with a 30% protective tariff in France, the business he could do there would be 15% more profitable than on any other market. The fool imagines that monopoly prices will continue to obtain in France, even if the monopoly is abolished. It has occurred to no one that the whole thing is a piece of sharp practice, the aim being to get at John Bull where he is notoriously vulnerable, and ultimately to fleece him good and proper.

Who, actually, is the Mr Fischel who wrote the Duke of Coburg's[9] pamphlet for him[10] and now writes for The Free Press} Even from the excerpts from his pamphlet I could see that the Coburg chap has Urquhartite LEANINGS.

Dronke is now in Liverpool and holds a very good agency for a Franco-Spanish copper mining company—£500 guaranteed and the possibility of earning up to £1,000, or so I'm told. Garnier-Pagès got it for him. He comes here quite often, but always steers clear of me, sending me his regards post festum.

Lupus has had a bad bout of bronchitis but is better now though still very anxious about himself and not yet fully recovered. Once again he has so arranged inatters as to be in a chronic state of strife with his LANDLADY.

I have a great deal to do at the office just now, hence the irregularity of my correspondence. Nor, for the time being, do I see that anything can be done about this excessive drudgery unless, as I hope, there is a crisis.

Many regards to your wife and the YOLNG LADIES.[11]

Your

F. E.

  1. ↑ An excerpt from this letter was first published in English in: Marx and Engels, On the United States, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1979.
  2. ↑ Marx sent articles to the New-York Daily Tribune on Tuesdays and Fridays; 27 January 1860 was Friday.
  3. ↑ At Cabo Negro (a mountain ridge in Morocco) a battle of the 1859-60 Spanish-Moroccan war was fought in mid-January 1860 (see also Engels' article 'The Moorish War', present edition, Vol. 16, pp. 554-55).
  4. ↑ This refers to press reports about the Prussian government's intention to submit a bill to the Diet providing for longer army service and a bigger military budget. The bill, tabled on 9 February 1860, was rejected by the Diet's liberal majority, and this precipitated a Constitutional crisis (see Note 290). The proposed reform of the Prussian army was discussed by Engeis in the articles 'Preparations lor War in Prussia' (present edition, Vol. 17) and 'The Prussian Military Question and the German Workers' Party' (Vol. 20).
  5. ↑ There was an abortive black uprising in the town of Bolivar, Missouri, in December 1859. Marx refers to a note published in the New-York Daily Tribune on 30 December 1859 (No. 5830).
  6. ↑ 'Commercial Matters', New-York Daily Tribune, No. 5839, 11 January 1860.
  7. ↑ 'Zur russischen Leibeigenschaftsfrage und die Finanz-Verhältnisse des Staats', Allgemeine Zeitung, Nos. 3 and 5 (supplement), 3 and 5 January 1860; 'Die Bauern-Emancipation in Russland', Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 16 (supplement), 16 January 1860; 'Die russische Leibeigenschaft und der Adel', Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 18 (supplement), 18 January 1860.
  8. ↑ On 24 January 1860, Britain and France signed a commercial treaty which envisaged a temporary reduction of import duties on English cottons and woollens and French silks and the lifting, from July 1860, of duties on imported raw materials.
  9. ↑ Ernst II
  10. ↑ This refers to Fischel's pamphlet Despoten als Revolutionäre, published anonymously in Berlin in 1859. The same year it appeared in English under the title The Duke of Coburg's Pamphlet. See also p. 153 of this volume.
  11. ↑ Marx's daughters—Jenny, Laura and Eleanor
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