London, 9 April 1890 

Dear Comrade, 

I fear that there is no chance of your son being taken on as an appren- 
tice in an engineering workshop over here. Thirty or forty years ago, 
engineering firms used to engage apprentices of this kind and my 
brother* worked as such in Bury near Manchester for a year. He had to 
pay a premium of one hundred pounds sterling, was enrolled as an 
apprentice in the Engineers’ Trades Union and in due course received 15 
shillings a week. But now that the continentals and especially the 
Germans are competing with the British in the engineering field, they 
have ceased by and large to accept any more foreigners as apprentices. I 
shall make further inquiries in Manchester and, if anything more hope- 
ful comes to light, shall get in touch with you straight away. 

I’m glad to hear that things are also moving ahead briskly where you 
are; after the excitements of last summer a certain torpor has set in over 
here, while at the same time the personal, local and other forms of fric- 
tion inevitable in England are proliferating again to a greater extent than 
is desirable. However a practical people like the English and, for that 
very reason, one that is very terre @ terre” in its way of going about 
things, must eventually learn from its own mistakes; it’s the only way 
here, and then again the movement has already penetrated far too wide 
sections of the working class for it to be held up more than temporarily 
by all these squabbles. 

The third volume of Capital weighs heavily on my conscience; 
certain parts are in such a state that they won’t be fit for publication 
until they have been carefully revised and to some extent rearranged 
and, as you may imagine when so imposing a work is at stake, I shan’t 
do anything of the kind without the most mature reflection. Once the 
5th section is polished off, the two that follow will involve less work; 
the first four have to be read over, but apart from that are ready for the 
press. If I could spend a year right away from the day-to-day affairs of 

Emil Engels — > matter of fact 

the international movement, a year without newspapers to read, with- 
out letters to write, without involvement in anything else, I should 
polish it off easily. 

With kind regards. 

Yours, 
F. Engels