London, 30 March 1892 

Dear Schliter, 

First of all I must thank you for the letter you sent me last year,*** 
which provided me with so much valuable information. Unfortunate- 
ly I cannot repay you in the same coin. By and large enough can be 
learned about the general political situation in Europe from a care- 
fully selected reading of the newspapers and in order to allow time for 
my work it behoves me to keep myself out of the internal affairs of in- 
dividual socialist parties as much as possible, otherwise I should never 
get anything done. I cannot therefore give you any information about 
the sequence of events inside the parties in the various countries in 
so far as these take the form of squabbles amongst the leaders, 
as is usually the case, for even the little that I do know about it has 
as often as not been told me only on condition that I keep my 
mouth shut. 

Had I known that the Figaro article *°* would have interested you 
people over there, I should have let you have it, for I was sent one by 
Lafargue. It has long since gone astray, departed into limbo, so 
I shall write to Paris but hardly imagine I shall be able to unearth 
another copy or get any real information out of Lafargue who has 
doubtless long since forgotten about it. Since his election he has been 
travelling indefatigably all over France on his free ticket, agitating 
and propagating (I don’t mean the race) evidently with great success. 
May Day —since it coincides with the municipal elections *?° to be 
held throughout France except Paris—vwill on this occassion be 
a highly critical day for the French; they are spurred on by the ambi- 
tion to emulate the Germans. 

It seems to me that in America your great stumbling-block consists 
in the exceptional position of the native-born working man. Before 
1848 one cannot speak of an established, native-born working class 
except by way of an exception; the few who constituted its beginnings 
in the cities of the east could always hope to become farmers or bour- 

geois. Such a class has now come into being and has also largely orga- 
nised itself along Trades union lines. But it still adopts an aristocratic 
attitude and whenever possible leaves the ordinary, ill-paid occupa- 
tions to immigrants of whom only a small proportion enter the aris- 
tocratic Trades. These immigrants, however, are split up into nationa- 
lities which understand neither each other nor, for the most part, the 
language of the country. And over there your bourgeoisie is far more 
adept than the Austrian government at playing off one nationality 
against another — Jews, Italians, Bohemians, etc., against Germans 
and Irishmen, and each against the other so that in New York the 
workers’ living standards vary, or so I understand, to an extent un- 
heard of elsewhere. And on top of that you have the complete indiffer- 
ence of a society, which has grown up without any of the easy-going 
background of feudalism and upon a purely capitalist basis, towards 
human beings who have fallen victim to the competitive struggle; 
THERE WILL BE PLENTY MORE, AND MORE THAN WE WANT, OF THESE DAMNED Dutcn- 
MEN,” [RisHMEN, Irauians, Jews AND HuncariaNs — and in addition, stand- 
ing in the background, you have Joun Cutnaman who far outdoes them 
all in his ability to live on next to nothing. 

In such a country repeated endeavours followed by no less certain 
set-backs are inevitable. Except that the endeavours grow more and 
more strenuous and the repulses less and less crippling, so that on the 
whole the cause nevertheless advances. But one thing I regard as cer- 
tain, namely that the purely bourgeois basis without any pre- 
bourgeois humbug behind it, and the correspondingly colossal vigour 
of a development which manifests itself despite the insane lengths to 
which the present system of protective tariffs has been taken,?? 
will one day bring about a change that will astonish the whole 
world. Once the Americans get going it will be with a vigour 
and ferocity that will make us in Europe look like babes in arms 
by comparison. 

With kindest regards. 

Your 
F. Engels 

4 This is how Germans were called in the USA. 

[From Louise Kautsky] 

Dear Schliter, 

A woman does not usually lift a finger and hence only becomes affable when she 
wants something. What I should now like to have is some authentic information on the 
bourgeois women’s movement in America, i.e. their relative privileges and voting 
rights in the various states as regards not only school or municipal elections but also po- 
litical suffrage, etc. I, or rather the General on my behalf, gets through Sorge the 
2 most prominent women’s rights papers, Woman’s Journal and Woman’s Tribune. But 
I need more, I need a brief, concise but historically complete account of the struggle to 
attain women’s civil rights, not the dreadful, dreary catchphrases of the female pio- 
neers of women’s civil rights. The book which you...’