18 August, 1869.  

Dear Fred,  
Somewhat disappointed by your letter, since all had hoped to see you here this evening. The plan with Ireland is very fine (Lizzy and Tussy would be able to admire the “convicted” in natura), if nothing new intervenes. This evening the family Lafargue arrives, travelling today at 10 o’clock from Dieppe. The £10 received. Cannot, however, send the receipt before Saturday, the day of the meeting of the Sub-Committee. The money came extraordinarily conveniently just before the gate closed. Yesterday Dupont reported that the French (or rather Paris) Trades Unionists (bronze workers) had repaid £45, which they had sent to him, i.e. for repayment. This money (lent and partly given to them a year and a day ago through our mediation by the Unions here. (Earlier, £20 had already been sent from Paris to Rouen by our instruction.) I have carried it through that deputies are to be sent to the Unions here, who, when the money is paid in, are to give them a lecture. – Moreover, the Parisian Unionists have behaved very decently. Likewise, yesterday a letter arrived from Ludwig Neumayr, dated Eisenach, to the effect: “At the Eisenach Congress it was resolved that the workers of Germany are to be called upon to join the International Working Men’s Association in such a way that they obtain cards as central members. Since I have now been appointed by Joh. Ph. Becker in Geneva as agent of the German-language section group of the ‘Int. Working Men’s Assoc.’ for Wiener-Neustadt and its environs, I request precise instructions as to how I am to act now. With social-republican fraternal greetings, etc. Address: L. N., Editor of the Wiener-Neustädter Wochenblatt in Wr. Neustadt, Austria.” This is a blow for old Becker, especially also for the “language-group fund”. But for the sake of private friendship one cannot bungle the thing itself. You remember Werner of Leipzig (bookbinder), to whom I wrote from Manchester. He has worked hard for us ever since. Yesterday also came the affiliation of an (Italian) group from Trieste. Likewise from Barcelona; I enclose a copy of the organ of this new group. In Posen – as Zabicki reported – the Polish workers (carpenters, etc.) have victoriously ended a strike with the help of their Berlin colleagues. This struggle against Monsieur le Capital – even in the subordinate form of the strike – will deal with national prejudices differently from the peace declamations of Messieurs the bourgeois. I hope to receive some lines from Tussy as to her state of health. My best compliments to Mrs. Lizzy El Moro. Very much to be regretted is the sudden death of Sylvis (41 years old), President of the American Labor Union, just before the meeting of the Labor Union Congress, for whose purposes he had travelled and agitated the length and breadth of the United States for almost an entire year. Part of his work is thus lost.