ENGELS TO FLORENCE KELLEY-WISCHNEWETZKY"° 

London, 9 February 1887 

Dear Mrs Wischnewetzky, 

I reply at once to your letter, postmark 28th January. The preface!! 
was sent on January 27th, and to your telegram received Sunday, 
February 6th, I replied immediately per cable: ‘Sent registered 27th 
January’. 

As to the distorted passage from my letter which the irrepressible 
Baton could not refrain from publishing, it is no use for Rosenberg and 
Co. to saddle Aveling with it. The passage about the 100,000’s and the 
millions occurred in my letter to you? and in no other letter. So you will 
know who is responsible for this indiscretion and for putting this 
nonsense into my mouth. As far as I am concerned, I have no objection 
to your publishing the whole passage, indeed the whole letter. 

Your fear as to my being unduly influenced by Aveling in my view of 
the American movement, is groundless. As soon as there was a national 
American working-class movement, independent of the Germans, my 
standpoint was clearly indicated by the facts of the case. That great 
national movement, no matter what its first form, is the real starting 

4See Engels’ letter to Florence Kelley-Wischnewetzky of 28 December 1886 
(present edition, Vol. 47) 

point of American working-class development; if the Germans join it 
in order to help it or to hasten its development in the right direction, 
they may do a deal of good and play a decisive part in it; if they stand 
aloof, they will dwindle down into a dogmatic sect, and be brushed 
aside as people who do not understand their own principles. Mrs 
Aveling, who has seen her father at work, understood this quite as well 
from the beginning, and if Aveling saw it too, all the better. And all my 
letters to America, to Sorge, to yourself, to the Avelings, from the very 
beginning, have repeated this view over and over again.? Still I was glad 
to see the Avelings before writing my preface, because they gave me 
some new facts about the inner mysteries of the German party in New 
York. 

You appear to take it for granted that Aveling has behaved in America 
simply as a swindler; and not only that; you call upon me, upon the 
strength of the assertions and allusions contained in your letter, to treat 
him as such and to do all in my power to have him excluded from the 
literary organs of the party.2* Now for all these assertions you cannot 
have any proof because you have not been able to hear any defence. Still 
you are better off than we here; you have at least heard one side, while 
we do not even know what the distinct charge is! 

In the early hole-and-corner stages of the working-class movement, 
when the working men are still under the influence of traditional preju- 
dices, woe be to the man who, being of bourgeois origin or superior 
education, goes into the movement and in rash enough to enter into 
money relations with the working-class element. There is sure to be a 
dispute upon the cash accounts and this is at once enlarged into an 
attempt at exploitation. Especially so, if the ‘bourgeois’ happens to have 
views on theoretical or tactical points that disagree with those of the 
majority or even of a minority. This I have constantly seen for more than 
forty years. The worst of all were the Germans; in Germany, the growth 
of the movement has long since swept that failing away, but it has not 
died out with the Germans out of Germany. For that reason Marx and I 
have always tried to avoid having any money dealings with the party, no 
matter in what country. And when the Avelings went to America, I had 
very strong misgivings on that point. Only when it was arranged that the 
tour should be made together with Liebknecht I felt more at rest, 

See Engels’ letters to EF A. Sorge of 29 November 1886 and Florence Kelley- 
Wischnewetzky of 28 December 1886 (present edition, Vol. 47) and also his 
letter to her of 27 January 1817 (this volume) 

because Liebknecht, as an old hand, would know how to deal with such 
complaints, and because any charges brought against him on that score 
would merely make the complainants ridiculous in Germany and in 
Europe generally. Well, the tour was arranged differently afterwards, and 
here is the result. 

From this you will see that I look upon this matter a great deal cooler 
than what people seem to do in New York. But moreover, I have known 
Aveling for four years; I know that he has twice sacrificed his social and 
economical position to his convictions, and might be, had he refrained 
from doing so, a professor in an English university and a distinguished 
physiologist instead of an overworked journalist with a very uncertain 
income. | have had occasion to observe his capacities by working with 
him, and his character by seeing him pass through rather trying circum- 
stances more than once, and it will take a good deal more than mere 
assertions and innuendos before I believe what some people tell about 
him now in New York. 

But then. Had he tried to swindle the party, how could he do that 
during all his tour without his wife being cognisant of it? And in that 
case the charge includes her too. And then it becomes utterly absurd, in 
my eyes at least. Her I have known from a child, and for the last seven- 
teen years she has been constantly about me. And more than that, I have 
inherited from Marx the obligation to stand by his children as he would 
have done himself, and to see, far as lies in my power, that they are not 
wronged. And that I shall do, in spite of fifty Executives. The daughter 
of Marx swindling the working class—too rich indeed! 

Then you say: ‘No one here imagines that Dr Aveling put the money 
in his pocket, or spent it as the bills indicate. They believe that he merely 
tried to cover his wife’s expenses, —That is a distinct charge of forgery, 
and this you give as an extenuating, charitable supposition. What then, if 
this be the attenuated charge, what is the full charge? And on what 
ground is this charge made? “The ridiculous bills which Dr Aveling sent 
in.’ I should like to see a few of these ‘ridiculous’ bills. For fifteen weeks 
they were sent every Sunday to the Executive who gave no sign of disap- 
proval. Nor did they budge when the Avelings, December 19th, returned 
to New York. It was only on the 23rd when they were on the point of 
leaving, when they could no longer defend themselves against charges, 
real or trumped-up, that the Executive discovered these bills, to which, 
singly, they had never objected, were ridiculous when added up! That is 
to say they object, not to the bills, but to the rules of addition. Why, 
then, did the Executive, instead of shortening the tour, try to extend it, 

and just at the close of it plan a second visit of the Avelings to Chicago 
which fortunately did not come off? It strikes me that in all this, it is not 
the bills which are ridiculous, but the Executive. 

Well, at the meeting of December 23rd, the Avelings hear for the first 
time that their bills are ridiculous, and the Executive lay before them a 
statement of accounts drawn up by themselves. As soon as his statement 
is objected to, Aveling at once accepts that of the Executive, according to 
which—as I have seen myself in Rosenberg’s handwriting—a balance is 
due to him of $176. Then, being again bullied by Walther, he refuses that 
balance, returns $76 at once, and sends the rest from London. And then 
you say that ‘Dr Aveling returning the $100 has not helped matters at 
all.’ Why what in the name of goodness do those people want then? Is 
Aveling to be treated as a swindler because the Executive appropriate 
$176 which, on their own showing, belong to him? 

Then the mystery with which the Executive envelops this matter, 
becomes darker and darker. When the article in the New York Herald* 
appeared and was cabled across, the Avelings sent the enclosed circular 
to the sections, and, at the same time, to the Executive.*° That circular— 
unless I take Aveling to be a liar and a swindler, which I decline doing 
until further conclusive evidence—is in my eyes conclusive against the 
Executive, at least until I see their reply. But what do the Executive do? 
They get infamous attacks into the Volkszeitung.” They spread rumours 
and reports behind Aveling’s back, they call meetings of the sections and 
lay their version before them, and get them to vote resolutions in a 
matter which cannot be judged without an impartial audit of the whole 
accounts and a full defence of the absent accused. And having, as it 
appears, succeeded in their New York circle to slander Aveling, not as a 
man who has spent their money extravagantly (for such, rightly or 
wrongly, might be their honest conviction), but as a swindler and forger 
of accounts. They rise to the level of the occasion created by their own 
inventive genius, and promise a circular proclaiming Aveling a swindler 
and forger to the working-class of the whole world! And all this, mind 
you, behind the back of, and unknown to, the man whom they charge, 
and who can not only not defend himself, but not even make out the 
precise facts on which the charge is based! If this is the way people are 
to be judged in our party, then give me the Leipzig Reichsgericht”” and 
the Chicago jury.78 

@ ‘Aveling’s Unpaid Labor’, New York Herald, 30 December 1886 

Fortunately we have passed that stage in the older parties in Europe. 
We have seen Executives rise and fall by the dozen, we know they are as 
fallible as any pope, and have even known more than one that lived 
sumptuously on the pence of the working-men, and had swindlers and 
forgers of accounts in its midst. In their circular, the Executive will not 
only have to define their charge —- which perhaps will thus at last become 
known to us — but also to prove it. People on this side do not take the 
word of their own Executives for gospel, much less that of Mr Walter 
and Mr Rosenberg, be it ever so ‘official’. 

In my opinion, the Executive have placed themselves in a very 
uncomfortable position. Had they grumbled at the accounts as merely 
extravagant, they might have secured a hearing outside their own circle; 
for that is more or less a matter of opinion. But having never objected 
to the accounts sent in, they felt they had cut the ground from under 
their feet, and, as weak people do under circumstances, exaggerated the 
charge in order to cover themselves. Thus they come to the fresh charge 
of swindling and forgery which they can never prove and must be 
content to insinuate. But an infamy insinuated to cover mere weakness, 
remains neither more nor less an infamy. And having swelled what was 
originally a mere trifling matter of disputed accounting into a criminal 
offence, they naturally feel bound to go before the various working- 
class parties with it. And naturally, they do it in a sneaking underhand 
way, preventing the accused from even hearing the charge. One 
mistaken step leads to another, and at last they arrive in a complete mess 
and are caught in their own net. And all that not out of inborn malice, 
but sheer weakness. 

You will now see that I must most distinctly decline following your 
advice as to ‘giving Kautsky a hint, not to let the letters appear which are 
advertised in the name of Dr Aveling’, because the Executive are going 
to launch ‘an official circular’ against Aveling, and ‘his name as one of 
the staff can only injure any organ’. Neither Kautsky nor myself have, I 
believe, ever given any grounds for anyone to suppose that we would 
treat thus the friends we have worked with for years, upon the strength 
of mere assertions and innuendos. And if I was to say anything of the 
kind to Kautsky, I should simply drive him to the conclusion that I was 
either falling rapidly into dotage, or that I was no longer to be trusted 
across the road. Indeed I feel certain you regretted having written this 
passage as soon as the letter had gone. 

I see very well that you wrote your letter in what you considered the 
interests of the party, and thus were led to represent to me the case of 

Aveling as hopeless and judged without appeal. But so far he is judged 
by nobody but the Executive who are themselves parties, accusers, 
judges and jury all in one; for the resolution of the New York sections, 
whatever it may be counts for nothing. What the other sections may say 
remains to be seen, but even they, if impartial, can only declare them- 
selves incompetent until they have the full facts and until the accused has 
been heard. And I for one consider it utterly ruinous to the party to 
introduce into it, and even to outdo, the kind of justice practiced by 
Bismarck and by the American bourgeois, who do at least respect forms 
and give the prisoner at the bar a hearing—and for us to act thus at the 
very moment we protest against these infamous proceedings. 

No doubt it may suit the Executive, under the pretence of avoiding 
public scandal, to shirk publicity. But that will not do. Either they must 
retract the dishonouring charge, reduce the case to its simple dimensions 
of a dispute about accounts, and settle that honourably and straightfor- 
wardly; or they must come out publicly with the charge and have it 
fought out. There has already too much of it been allowed to leak out, 
and it cannot remain where it is; nor is Aveling the man to leave it there. 
And as I cannot allow the Avelings to be accused of infamies behind 
their back, it was my duty to communicate your letter to Mrs Aveling 
(he being too ill at present) and to read to her my reply. And if at any 
time circumstances should require the publication of this my letter, you 
are at liberty to publish it in full, while I reserve to myself the same right, 
of course without dragging in your name, unless other people should 
have done so previously. 

I am, dear Mrs Wischnewetzky, 

very truly yours 
F. Engels