Manchester, 22 October 1867

Dear Mohr,

Herewith I return the letters from Becker and Eccarius. The shortage of money is certainly a great misfortune for the Party and a greater one for those poor devils. Siebel writes me from Honnef on the Rhine, he is coming here at the beginning of November to re-embark at Liverpool for Madeira. He says I should send him the articles by return, I shall sit down this evening and write up a couple for him.

What I write for the German press is of course all in a disguised form; for America one would have to write differently again, there one can come out with more. Sam Moore has written from Eisenach, he seems to be making considerable progress in German. Liebknecht amuses me greatly. It is a real stroke of luck that he is still stuck to a good extent in the south German federalist sauce, so that he can come out against Bismarckery with great singleness of purpose and with unbroken moral indignation. A somewhat more critical and dialectical view would only create confusion in his head and make him lose his way. He has evidently modelled himself on Lupus in the Frankfurt Assembly and has also honestly earned his call to order by calling the Reichstag the fig leaf of naked absolutism. You will have seen that he got a clause for the protection of factory children inserted in the coalition law. The Progress Party rejected the commission of inquiry as not falling within its competence. The Confederation is, however, competent for all industrial matters, only the Reichstag cannot appoint a commission, but can well call upon the federal authority to do so. In the debate on usury, Bismarck refused to support the mortgage banks by state aid: if there was talk of state support, this could at most be granted solely to the workers’ associations. The rogue still believes he can cheat the workers. Victor Emmanuel seems to be playing a very risky game. However, the Roman row is not yet at an end. The atmosphere is becoming more electric every day; I shouldn’t be at all surprised if things were to blow up as early as next spring.

Best greetings to your wife, the girls and Doctor Eisenbart.
Your F. E.

I am glad the matter with Borkheim is in order. I can under no circumstances give Gottfried Ermen now a pretext to dissolve the contract with me on the grounds of direct breach of contract. Hopefully the money will drive away your carbuncles; don’t forget to take a lot of exercise in the open air. I’ll gladly do the thing for the Saturday Review. But let me know how much space I may roughly claim. You will probably prefer it to be done in summary form, so that the main points of the book – genesis of capital – surplus-value – working day – revision of the Ricardian laws – &c &c are communicated in brief; I cannot, after all, criticise the thing anyway. Also, I should like to know by when approximately the thing must be there. For the 1 Nov. issue it is too late, so for the 1 Dec. issue.