ENGELS TO FLORENCE KELLEY-WISCHNEWETZKY 

London, 10 February 1885 
122 Regent’s Park Road, N. W. 

Dear Madam, 

I herewith return Mr Putnam’s letter—of course it would be 
a splendid success if we could secure publication * by that firm— but 
I am afraid Mr Putnam will stick to his objections, the great strength 
of which, from a publisher’s standpoint, I fully recognise. Perhaps the 
fact that a new German edition of my work is in actual preparation, 
may shake him a little. My friends in Germany say that the book is 
important to them just now because it describes a state of things 
which is almost exactly reproduced at the present moment in Ger- 
many; and, as the development of manufacturing industry, steam 
and machinery and their social outcrop in the creation of a proletari- 
ate, in America corresponds at the present moment as nearly as possi- 
ble to the English status of 1844 (though your go-ahead people are 
sure to outstrip the old world in the next 15-20 years altogether) the 
comparison of industrial England of 1844 with industrial America of 
1885 might have its interest too. 

Of course in the new preface to the English translation °°° I shall 
refer as fully as space will permit to the changes in the condition of the 
British working class which have taken place in the interval; to the 
improved position of a more or less privileged minority, to the cer- 
tainly not alleviated misery of the great body, and especially to the 
impending change for the worse which must necessarily follow from 
the break-down of the industrial monopoly of England in conse- 
quence of the increasing competition in the markets of the world, of 
Continental Europe and especially of America. 

Very sincerely yours, 
F. Engels