London, 22 July 1880 
122 Regent’s Park Road, N. W. 

Dear Madam, 

After a number of vagaries, your letter from Biarritz 2° has safely 
reached me here, where I have been living for the past 10 years, and 
I hasten to let you have such information as it is within my power to 
give. 

I have talked over the matter with my friend Marx, and we both 
take the view that no better sources on the English industrial school 
system are to be had over here than the official reports* you already 
possess. The content of other non-official literature on the subject 
amounts to little more than window-dressing, where it is not expressly 
designed to provide an advertisement for some humbug or other. 
I shall have a look round and see if I can find anything that might 
interest you among the reports of the School Boards and the Educa- 
tion Department in recent years, and shall send you further details if 
you would be so kind as to let me know to what address I should 
write or send packages, either within the next fortnight or so, or else 
in the autumn (since I shall be away from London for some time 3°). 
The industrial education of young people is in an even worse state 
here than in most countries on the Continent and what is being done, 
is done mostly for appearances’ sake. You will have seen from the ac- 
tual reports that the ‘Industrial Schools’ are by no means on a par 
with continental industrial schools, but are a kind of penal institute 
where neglected children are committed for a given number of years 
by order of court. 

On the other hand, the efforts made in America might perhaps be 
of greater interest to you. The United States has sent a wealth of ma- 
terial connected with this to the Paris Exhibition,?! material which 
must be lodged in the big library in the rue Richelieu 3? and of which 

 Reports of the Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the State of Popular Education in Eng- 
lgnd and Reports of Reformatory and Industrial School. 

you will find details in the catalogue of the exhibition at the said 
library. 

I am further endeavouring to find out for you the address of a 
Mr Da Costa‘ in Paris; his son” played a part in the Commune in 
1871, and the father is himself employed in education, is passionately 
interested in his profession and would be more than willing to be of 
assistance to you. 

Again, the schools for the further education of adult working men 
over here are not as a rule up to very much. Where anything worth 
while is done, it is usually thanks to special circumstances and individ- 
ual personalities, i.e. local and temporary. In all such matters, the 
only element that systematically recurs here is humbug. The best of 
establishments relapse after a short while into a stultifying routine 
and the avowed purpose increasingly becomes a pretext for the em- 
ployees to earn their keep as comfortably as possible. So much is this 
the rule that even establishments for the education of the children of 
the middle classes — bourgeoisie — form no exception. Indeed I have 
latterly come across a number of notable instances of this very kind. 

I am sorry that at this stage I should not myself be able to place 
any fresh material at your disposal; for a number of years it has unfor- 
tunately been impossible for me to follow the course of public educa- 
tion in any detail. Otherwise I should have been only too delighted to 
be able to offer you more. Everything that furthers public education 
and hence the movement, however indirectly, in a country such as 
Russia, which stands on the threshold of a world historical crisis, 
and has produced a dynamic party of exceptional devotion and 
vigour — everything of this nature commands our most ardent sym- 

pathy. 
I am, Madam, 
Yours truly, 
F. Engels