[Manchester,] 20 April 1852 

Dear Marx, 

I was grieved to see that my fears concerning your little 
daughter have been all too soon confirmed. If only there were 
some means by which you and your family could move into a 
more salubrious district and more spacious lodgings! 

I would gladly have sent you some money, but while in 
London I spent so much more than I had anticipated that I 
shall be pretty short myself until the end of the month, and next 
month I shall have to pay out at once £12 in bills and for books 
ordered from Germany. But I shall see if I can get hold of 
something for you by the beginning of May. I wish I had known 
beforehand how things stood in London, for in that case I should 
have foregone what was au fond* a quite superfluous trip there, 
and my hands would not have been quite so tied. 

Pindar is here, having failed to find employment in Liverpool. 
He is looking for a position or for private lessons and [ shall, of 
course, do what I can for him. As a token that I am well disposed 
towards him I have been taking Russian lessons from him. But if I 
am to recommend him here, I must know something more about 
him, and since such intelligence can only be dragged out of him 
with the utmost difficulty, I should be glad if you would write and 
tell me what you know about him and his circumstances, how you 

4 at bottom 

became acquainted with him, etc., etc. With his taciturn manner, 
by the way, it doesn’t seem to me as though he'll be lucky here. 

In considering the present state of commerce, particularly as 
regards India, there is one point that should not be overlooked.* 
Despite 3 years of colossal and ever-increasing imports of English 
industrial goods into India, the news from there has for some time 
been moderately good again, stocks are gradually being sold and 
are fetching higher prices. The reason for this can only be that, in 
the provinces most lately conquered by the English, Sind, the 
Punjab, etc., etc., where native handicrafts have hitherto almost 
exclusively predominated, these are now finally being crushed by 
English competition, either because the manufacturers here have 
only recently come round to producing materials suitable for these 
markets, or because the Natives have finally sacrificed their 
preference for local cloths in favour of the cheaper price of the 
English materials usually exported to India. The last Indian crisis 
of 1847 and the concomitant sharp pvepreciatTion of English products 
in India may have contributed greatly to this; and it is already 
clear from old Giilich that even the parts of India occupied by 
the English in his day had not for a long time completely 
abandoned their traditional domestic manufactures.” This is the 
only explanation for the fact that the 1847 affair has not long 
since recurred in more acute form in Calcutta and Bombay. But 
all this will be changed once the 3,000,000 bales of cotton from 
the last crop have come onto the market, been processed and con- 
signed as finished goods, predominantly to India. The cotton 
industry is now so flourishing that, despite this season’s crop, 
which is 300,000 bales more than that of 1848/49, cotton prices 
are rising both here and in America, that American manufactur- 
ers have already bought 250,000 bales more than last year (when 
they used in all only 418,000 bales), and that manufacturers here 
are already beginning to maintain that even a crop of 3 million 
bales would be insufficient for their needs. Up till now, America 
has exported 174,000 bales more to England, 56,000 more to 
France and 27,000 more to the rest of the Continent than she did 
last year. (Each season runs from 1 Sept. to 7 Apmil.)© And, given 
prosperity of this order, it is of course easy to explain how Louis 
Napoleon can prepare at leisure for his bas-empire’; the surplus 

2 See also this volume, pp. 83-84. - > G. Giilich, Geschichtliche Darstellung des 
Handels, der Gewerbe und des Ackerbaus der bedeutendsten handeltreibenden Staaten 
unserer Zeit, Bd. 3, S. 263-64. - © Engels may have used the article ‘Commercial 
Intelligence. New York, 7 April’ in The Times, No. 21094, 20 April 1852, but the 
figures given by him somewhat differ from those in the newspaper. 

of direct cotton imports into France between 1850 and 1852 now 
amounts to 110,000 bales (302,000 against 192,000), i.e. more than 
33%. 

According to all the rules the crisis should come this year and 
will, indeed, probably do so; but if one takes into consideration the 
present quite unexpected resilience of the Indian market, the 
confusion created by California and Australia, the cheapness of 
most raw materials, which also means cheap industria! manufac- 
tures, and the absence of any heavy speculation, one is almost 
tempted to forecast that the present period of prosperity will be of 
exceptionally long duration. At any rate it may well be that the 
thing will last until the spring. But wrruin srx MONTHS MORE OR LESS it 18, 
after all, safest to stick to the old rule. 

Many regards to your wife, and write soon. 

Your 
F. E.