[Manchester,] Friday, 9 May 1851 

Dear Marx, 

Yesterday I sent you 2 letters, one containing nothing but a Posr 
Orrice Orver, the other through Tupman.* I hope you received them 
both. 

As far as the construction goes, the electrical business is simple.? 
At the four corners, A, B, C and D—I assume that you have the 
drawing before you—pegs are driven into the ground and a stout | 
wire, buried 3 inches below ground, is led from one of these pegs 
to the next, so that it encompasses the whole field below the 
surface. At E and F, North and South, two poles are driven into 
the ground, the tops of which, 15 feet above the surface, are also 
connected by a wire. The two ends of this wire are carried down 
the poles and connected below ground with the buried wire, A B 
C D. Similarly a transverse wire from’G to H, on two posts, 
crossing the wire E F at its centre. I’m not quite clear about the 
function of the bag of charcoal and the plates of zinc, since I have 
forgotten the electrical properties of charcoal—but I suspect that, 
by means of this charcoal at G and zinc at H, both of them also 
buried and connected to the main buried wire, the fellow intends 
to polarise the electricity, to establish a positive (zinc) and a 
negative (charcoal) pole. 

The rest is concerned with technical matters, insulation of the 
wires, etc. 

Since you say nothing else about the subject, I assume that the 
business refers to some sort of experiment; I believe you once told 
me that it had appeared in The Economist or some such paper.‘ 
I’m a little doubtful about the success of the thing, but maybe 
something could be made of it if it were expanded and improved. 
The question remains: 1) how much electricity can be extracted 
from the air by this means and, 2) how that electricity affects the 
growth and germination of plants. Anyhow, let me know if the 
experiment has already been carried out and with what success, 
and where an account of it may be found. 

2 Wilhelm Pieper - > See this volume, pp. 344-45. - © The Economist, Vol. II, Nos. 17 
and 18, 26 April and 3 May 1845. 

In any case there are two snags about the thing: 

1. The fellow wishes the wire, which is to catch the electricity, to 
lie due north and south, and instructs the farmers to lay it out by 
compass. He makes absolutely no mention of magnetic variation, 
which here in England is of the order of 20-23 degrees, and he 
should at least say whether he has taken this into account. The 
FARMERS, at any rate, know nothing about magnetic variation and 
would lay the wire according to the compass needle, which, 
however, would not be pointing from north to south, but from 
north-north-west to south-south-east. 

2. If the effect of the electricity is to encourage the germination 
and growth of plants, it will cause them to germinate too early in 
the spring, thus exposing them to night frosts, etc. Anyhow, this 
would inevitably come to light and could be remedied only by 
disconnecting the overhead and underground wires during the 
winter. This point, too, the fellow fails to mention. But either the 
electricity so caught has no effect whatever on growth, or it forces 
it prematurely. Here again, elucidation is required. 

There’s no assessing the thing, however, until it’s been tried out 
and the results are available, so let me know where I can find out 
more about the subject. 

I render thanks to the Lord on high that the Central jackasses * 
have come together again, and I don’t even begrudge them their 
Kosmos. We shall, after all, have a press organ again soon, so far as 
we need one, in which we shall be able to repel all attacks without 
appearing responsible for so doing.*”* That is the advantage the 
proposed Cologne monthly will have over our Revue. We'll lay the 
entire responsibility on the bonhomme Burgers; after all, he must 
get something for his profound thinking. 

It was only to be expected that vituperation should breed in 
Germany no less freely than in America and London. You are 
now in the proud position of being attacked by two worlds at once, 
something that never happened to Napoleon. Our friends in 
Germany, incidentally, are jackasses. To ignore mere vituperation, 
apart from issuing a brief comment once a quarter on the state of 
this savoury Trape, may be all very well. But when it comes to 
slander, when the democratic philistine, no longer content with 
the simple conviction that one is the blackest of monsters, begins 
to lay about him with trumped-up and distorted facts, then it 
would really not be asking too much of these gentlemen that they 
should send one the document so that one could take steps 

a members of the Committee for German Affairs (see this volume, p. 342) 

accordingly. But your German thinks he’s done enough if he 
simplement* does not believe such nonsense. So get Tupman to 
write to Miquel, telling him that there’s no actual need for an 
immediate reply; rather, having accumulated a few dozen exam- 
ples of the stuff, one should let fly in earnest and squash the 
bedbugs d’un seul coup de pied.” As for their seeking to make it 
impossible for us to live in Germany— laissons-leur ce plaisir!’ They 
can’t erase from history the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, the Manifesto“ 
and tutte quante, and all their howling will avail them nothing. The 
only people in Germany who might be dangerous to us are hired 
assassins and, now that Gottschalk’s dead, no one there would 
have the courage to turn such people loose on us. Et puis’ again, 
in 1848 in Cologne were we not first compelled to fight for our 
position—and anyway we shall never be loved by the democratic, 
the red, or even the communist mob. 

I’m glad that the Exhibition chaps have so far left you in peace. 
I'm already being plagued by them. Two merchants from Lecco 
were here yesterday, one of them an old acquaintance of 1841. 
The Austrians are managing very nicely in Lombardy. After all 
the levies, the succession of compulsory loans, and thrice yearly 
tax demands, things are at last becoming regularised. The average 
merchant in Lecco has to pay 10,000-24,000 zwanzigers (£350- 
700) a year—in direct, regular taxes, all in hard cash. Since 
Austrian bank-notes are also to be introduced there next year, the 
government intends to withdraw all metallic currency beforehand. 
This means that the great aristocracy—1 gran ricchi—and the 
peasants will, relatively speaking, be let off very lightly, the whole 
burden falling on il medio liberale, the liberal middle classes of the 
cities. You can see the policy these fellows are pursuing. Under 
this sort of pressure—in Lecco they have sent the government a 
signed declaration to the effect that they will pay no more even if 
it means distraint, but rather emigrate en masse if the system is 
not abandoned, and already several have suffered distraint—it is 
understandable that the fellows are waiting for Mazzini and 
declare that things must come to a head because they can stand it 
no longer, perché rovinati siamo e rovinati saremo in ogni caso.” This 
explains much of the Italians’ furious desire to go into the attack. 
The fellows here are all republicans and highly respected 
bourgeois at that—one of them is the leading merchant in Lecco 

a simply - > with one stamp of the foot - © we'll allow them the pleasure! - 
4 K. Marx and F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party. - © all the rest - And 
then - 8 the exceedingly rich - h because we're ruined and shall in any case be ruined 

and pays 2,000 zwanzigers a month in taxes. He asked me straight 
out when the fun was going to begin, since in Lecco—the only 
place where I’m popular—they had come to the conclusion that I 
must know the exact day and hour. 

Tomorrow Wellington, whom these fellows have kept me from. 

Your 
F. E. 

This letter is sealed with sealing-wax and our firm’s seal, E. & E. 
So you'll be able to see if it’s been opened.