ENGELS TO FLORENCE KELLEY-WISCHNEWETZKY °88 

{[London,] 3 June 1886 
122 Regent’s Park Road, N. W. 

Dear Mrs Wischnewetzky, 

I have looked over the proofs and corrected in pencil a few addi- 
tional mistakes. 

That the set-up of the work would be anything but elegant, I fore- 
saw as soon as I knew who had it in charge, and am therefore not 
much surprised. I am afraid there is no help now, so it’s no use grum- 
bling. 

Whatever the mistakes and the Bormertheit’ of the leaders of the move- 
ment, and partly of the newly-awakening masses too, one thing is 
certain: the American working class is moving, and no mistake. And 
after a few false starts, they will get into the right track soon enough. 
This appearance of the Americans upon the scene I consider one of 
the greatest events of the year.! What the downbreak of Russian 
Czarism would be for the great military monarchies of Europe — the 
snapping of their mainstay -— that is for the bourgeois of the whole 
world the breaking out of class war in America. For America after all 
was the ideal of all bourgeois: a country rich, vast, expanding, with 
purely bourgeois institutions unleavened by feudal remnants or mo- 
narchical traditions, and without a permanent and hereditary prole- 
tariat. Here every one could become, if not a capitalist, at all events an 
independent man, producing or trading, with his own means, for his 
own account. And because there were not, as yet, classes with oppos- 
ing interests, our—and your—bourgeois thought that America 
stood above class antagonisms and struggles. That delusion has now 
broken down, the last Bourgeois Paradise on earth is fast changing 
into a Purgatory, and can only be prevented from becoming, like Eu- 
rope, an Inferno by the go-ahead pace at which the development of 
the newly fledged proletariat of America will take place. The way in 
which they have made their appearance on the scene, is quite extra- 
ordinary: six months ago nobody suspected anything, and now they 
appear all of a sudden in such organised masses as to strike terror 
into the whole capitalist class. I only wish Marx could have lived to 
see it! 

I am in doubt whether to send this to Zurich or to the address in 
Paris you give at foot of your letter. But as in case of mistake Zurich is 
safest, I forward this and the proofs to Mr Schliiter, who no doubt 
will forward wherever it may be necessary. 

Ever sincerely yours, 

F. Engels