in Washington
London, 15 September 1853
(Excerpt)

Today I receive in the last number of the Reform your letter from Quebec and Kellner’s apology for the same Pösche, who in the Neu-England-Zeitung of 3 September, which reaches me at the same time, makes his vapid would-be witticisms about the comical “odd fellows” of “class fighters”. Since you sent extra Reform numbers, I had been receiving them regularly again without that; on the other hand I did not get the Tribune regularly, which is important for me. Thus I am missing, e.g., the article in which I cite the diplomatic exchange of notes on Denmark and the article in which I characterise the landed property relations.

I think it is time that you make a new start in the polemic and give these insipid Göpp-Pösches, who have invented the materialist conception, while their materialism is that of the everyday bourgeois, a good dressing down. The opponents are getting impudent, a fact which, at least in the time of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, would not have dared to occur. Studiosus Schläger, who more or less took to his heels during the 1848 Revolution and peddled his genius to America, still constantly sends me his N. E. Z., probably to demonstrate ad oculos to me what kind of fellows they are. Has a little rag ever existed where stupidity and vanity so mated with presumption?

Kellner is too sleepy; he does not seem to understand that polemic is necessary for every journal so long as it has to struggle. There is also the unfortunate instinct always to praise his enemies, 2 days before they regale him with kicks. So with Heinzen, so with Pösche, who, by the by, has palmed off his conversational-lexicon knowledge in his wretched article on money circulation.

In any case the movement is coming down on my neck before I wish it (I think the commercial downfall will begin in the spring, as in 1847). I always still hoped beforehand to manage to withdraw into solitude for a few months and to be able to work out my economics. It seems I am not to get round to it. The constant scribbling for newspapers bores me. It takes up much time, disperses my efforts, and in the end is nothing after all. Independent, as much as one likes, one is tied to the paper and its public, especially when one receives cash payment, as I do. Purely scientific works are something totally different, and the honour of figuring alongside an A. P. C., a Lady correspondent and a Metropolitanus is certainly not enviable.

Carl Wilh. Klein (from Solingen, worker) has asked me to put you in touch with him. His address is —— He is a capable fellow. He has formed a workers’ association and the Gradaus, as he writes to me, has come under their influence. Pieper writes to him from here; if your time permits in any way, you must support them from Washington.

Vater Blind continues his xxx articles with much pathos in the N. E. Z. and congratulates himself and his editor and vice versa on the unheard-of achievements that must inspire respect in Brüggemann of the Kölnische Zeitung.

I am writing only a few lines today. Nothing is happening in the way of events. Merely the invasion of the cholera morbus in London.

Yours,
KM