Manchester, 5 September 1869 

Dear Moor, 

Got back here again midday yesterday* from Ostend. I arrived 
in London at 6.15 in the morning, found a train going here at 
7.30, and journeyed on through, since I had scarcely slept ali 
night, and was good for nothing else. I also thought you were 
away with Jenny,’ and only here heard the contrary. This delay in 
your departure looks a littke queer to me; I can’t think that the 
Basle Congress *”’ is alone to blame, and I am forced to ask myself 
whether it is not a money matter. When you asked for the £75 I 
sent you 100, imagining you could use the rest for the journey; 
since, however, I did not state this in so many words, you perhaps 
found another use for it; if this is so, telegraph me tomorrow 
morning (before 10 o'clock if possible), saying how much you need. 
We shall, you see, be leaving for Dublin tomorrow evening,*”’ and 
I shall be going into town around 11-12 to look after money 
matters, so I could deal with this at the same time. 

a 4 September - > See this volume, pp. 353-54. 

I was in Engelskirchen ** for a few days. People in Germany are 
becoming increasingly stupid. It is true that the workers’ 
movement is closing in upon them threateningly, and they all flirt 
with it and have nostrums of all sorts, but their intelligence has not 
become any sharper; the opposite is true. My brother,* for 
instance, wanted to solve the social problem by ‘redeeming labour’, 
just as he redeems factory installations, buildings, machinery etc., 
by, for instance, putting a groschen on the price of each pound of 
yarn, and thus paying off the workers who have become old, sick 
and disabled! The bonhomme? was very surprised when I explained 
to him how hopelessly naive and absurd this idea was, and he 
finally promised to read your book.° Concerning the Prussian 
journeymen’s provident funds, he gave me an article in Engel’s 
statistical journal; the most blatant infamies of the statutes of 
Saxony are not present there, but otherwise everything similar.*”° 

The greatest man in Germany is undoubtedly Strousberg. The 
fellow will soon become German Kaiser. Everywhere you go 
people talk of nothing but Strousberg. Incidentally, the fellow is 
not as bad as all that. My brother, who had negotiations with him, 
has described him very vividly to me. He has a lot of humour and 
some brilliant qualities, and, in any case, is immeasurably superior 
to Hudson the railway king. He is now buying up all sorts of 
industrial establishments, and immediately cuts the working time 
to 10 hours everywhere, without reducing wages. He also has the 
clear knowledge that he will end up a really poor wretch. His main 
principle is: only swindle share-holders, but deal fairly with 
contractors and other industrialists. In Cologne I saw his portrait 
on exhibition; not bad at all, jovial. His background is completely 
dark: some say he is a qualified lawyer; according to others he 
kept a brothel in London. 

Wilhelmchen has now fallen so low that he may no longer say 
that Lassalle cribbed from you, and wrongly at that. This has 
emasculated the whole biography, and only he can know why he 
continues to print it.’ 

And he has declared the miserable Felleisen, not even the 
Vorbote, the journal of the bumpkins in Switzerland.*”’ They are a 
fine bunch. Cf. the debate about social-democratic, democratic- 
social, or social-democratic + democratic-social workers’ party at 
the Eisenach Congress. And Rittinghausen their prophet! ** 

Wilhelm still makes no mention of the 18th Brumaire. Here, too, 

a probably Rudolf Engels - > honest fellow -¢ the first volume of Capital - 
4d Wilhelm Liebknecht